Thought I did by implication, but just to spell it out (and I disagree that that large laundry list was SOP, as you can be sure that lots of those forces were just “coincidentally” moved into place so they’d be there for war. Exercise Eager Mace looks like an obvious ploy along those lines. The signal that and the rest of it sent wasn’t lost on anyone at the time, as I recall.):
An air force and navy capable of projecting power but principally focussed on defending the US itself. (The marines belong to the navy, so there they would still be.)
A small army for rapid response to developing situations, backed by a large reserve to be called up if needed. That would be consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, and in fact what we had until the early part of this century.
A larger and more capable intelligence service. As Kerry said on Meet the Press this morning, and as I have repeatedly pointed out around here, fighting terrorists is principally an intelligence and police matter. To the extent the military would be needed, it would mostly consist of small operations probably undertaken by special forces type people.
Full disclosure: even though I get the willies just looking at him, I took a test that jshore posted on which candidates you agree with the most earlier this year, and I came up with a 100% match with Kerry. It was weird watching him with Russert this morning, as he was making the exact arguments I would have had I been there. An odd feeling.
Free markets don’t happen in a vacuum. There has to be an element of trust present to allow the exchange of goods and services.
This requires sound monetary policy, the rule of law, enforceable contracts, stable commodity pricing, convertible currencies, and a whole host of other things.
In the case of world sea power, it depends on the navies of the world keeping the shipping lanes open. The United States Navy is most important at this. The Persian Gulf region is a potential flashpoint in this system.
Free markets are also disrupted mightily by wars and other conflicts. The United States, as a global hegemon, can help prevent these conflicts, and can intervene when they occur, if doing so can be shown to help end the conflict and bring about a satisfactory conclusion for the all of the parties involved, including the United States.
Your objections about Congress bending to pressure to support war due to inertia aren’t well founded. If inertia were the only force in play, Congress would have continued to fund adaquately the South Vietnamese after 1973. It wasn’t, the funding was cut, and the end of the Republic of Vietnam was likely hastened as a result.
This seems to be a recurring theme. The need to be able to wage two simultaneous wars. Why the need to be able to fight two wars? Is it to ensure trade routes? Whay couldn’t a naval focre accomplish that? Are there really that many significantly threatening forces arrayed against the US? What are they?
I asked if the US requires 130,000 active troops (130,000 in reserve), 4000 planes, about 400 ships and a well stocked nuclear arsenal. That is a massive force for a country with secure land borders, an Atlantic ocean lined with allies and a Pacific ocean with one potential rival and various allies along its coast. The degree of security afforded by simple geography makes the question interesting don’t you think? However US obligations within S.Korea and NATO would seem to require troops. The question is are they the primary cause for the size of the US military?
From what I can find, the Balkan operation took about 50-30k troops. citeThat is roughly equivalent to the deployment in South Korea. And troop levels dropped over time (94-98). So that’s 6 divisions worth of troops needed through treaty obligations (SK and NATO). That’s would be half of the available active divisions in 2001.
The numbers are from 2001 estimates and so indicate what troops the US had at it disposal prior to invading Iraq. That is why I put the “Iraq aside” in the OP. Besides, if the troops merely had to remove a physical threat (i.e. an opposing army, WMD, etc) then they wouldn’t be required to stay once that army had been defeated or the weapons found and destroyed.
Does this mean the ability to pacify a country of 25 million should also be factored into the size of the US military?
As if such stupid question could even deserve an answer.
I didn’t link that Pit thread at all. We hashed it out fairly well already. Basically you wanted Canada to bulk it military up to some nebulous point you think would be nice without providing a useful guidance to measure success. Wonderfully useful advice I’d say.
Among other things, and bear in mind that there are all kinds of “wars” of all kinds of sizes. What they have in common is their frequency.
There is a recurring theme in *your * posts that the only reason any country should need a military force at all is to defend its own borders. Period. The rest of the world can go fuck itself until they come knocking on your own door, is that it? Well, friend, one lesson that one might have thought would be fully learned long ago is that we’re all in one world together, we all have responsibilities to each other, and that isolationism is not both practical and moral as an approach to the world. It has been suggested to you several times, without a thoughtful reply yet, that the fortunate position of being a large industrial democracy entails obligations. But you keep smugly dismissing that.
Oh, that it were that easy. Assuming the threat really had existed and had been dealt with, the problem of controlling a suddenly-governmentless large country, many of whose people would still see it as an occupation, would remain. That takes troops, a lot of them, and the “huge” numbers there now may still not be enough. Comprenez-vous?
Is that the best explanation you have? Your best argument? Why should anyone here bother with you, then?
OK, you referred to it. Whoopdedoo.
No, you did not. You still have not acknowledged that there could be any reasonable worldview other than your own.
All you did is try to poke holes in details via the phony question route you are still using in this thread while still smugly, isolationistically avoiding the main point. You still are, in fact.
So are you going to debate or just find politely-worded ways to bash those who do recognize and accept their responsibilities to others? You are accomplishing exactly nothing with *this * “approach”.
The thinking is simply that there needs to be a “spare” so that when US forces are involved in one place, the other is still acting as a deterrent to others elsewhere; i.e., if we had to pull troops out of Korea to fight Iraq, that might give NK ideas.
At the risk of being snide, I recall someone telling me to “educate” myself …
The vast majority of modern Marines are not based on or with Naval units. The Navy supplies the ships and certain specialist support MOSs, but tell any Marine that they “belong to the navy” and it’ll get ugly.
Okay, but be specific. Which (if any) airbases do you want to get rid of? Keeping in mind the fact that supporting the Iraq war pretty much tapped out our carriers, do you want to eliminate or cut back on them?
Personally, I’d like to see us mothball most of our nuclear missle subs; essential in the cold war, they are less needed now. But that’s about it.
Okay, how small? We currently have 32 regiments of active-duty troops; do you want to go down to 30? 20? 10?
I’d agree with trimming that down to maybe 25 or so and replacing them (or not) with ANG. Actually, I’d like to see them pursue the idea of “cadre” units, where officers and maybe non-coms are full-time, but all or most of the troops are reservists.
Pre-positioning, BTW, is part of the way to reduce the size of the military. If all the equipment is ready and waiting someplace where it might be needed (say, Korea), the troops can be sent back to the US and deactivated. If need arises, then it’s just a matter of loading up jumbo jets and sending over troops to pick it up; and yet any proposed action would then face the political realities involved in calling up guys, limiting “adventurism.”
Fully agree. The limits imposed on the CIA in favor of the NSA have proved foolish.
Mr Moto:Nothing naive about it at all. It only appears naive, and it takes a highly selective sifting of the evidence to make it appear that way.
The profit motive is underrated as a force for peace. Saudi Arabia sells us oil regardless of their loathing of Israel and our friendliness towards it; Venezuela sells us oil regardless of their President’s anti-Americanism; India trades with China even though the two of them have gone to war and regard each other with deep suspicion; ditto for India and Pakistan; the list goes on and on.
It’s obviously self-contradictory to on the one hand say that the markets will provide if we let them and on the other hand say that we need to keep a large military force on hand because without it everything would fall into chaos, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The evidence, whether from the pre-WWI arms buildup, Vietnam, the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, or our latest Iraqi adventure, points very strongly towards the proposition that a large military will find a way to be used, to the detriment of world commerce and peace.
As to keeping the shipping lanes open, we’re not the only Navy on the planet. Call me naive, but somehow I think that if China needs to keep the sea lanes open for Persian Gulf oil, it will find a way to do it.
Exactly. But also, one-front wars have a nasty habit of turning into two-front wars. Especially if your first front leaves your flank exposed.
Pantom and Grey seem to be of the same opinion - that the pupose of a military is to protect your borders, and that’s it. This is a highly naive opinion for several reasons:
[list]
[li]The U.S has long-term commitments around the world. These include 50,000 troops in South Korea, 70,000 in Europe, 12,000 in Okinawa, etc. These troops are there by mutual agreement, and it’s not easy to simply withdraw them. Not just because they serve a strategic purpose, but because it would put pressure on allies. Some drawdowns may be a good thing, but on the other hand, new commitments like Iraq are cropping up.[/li][li]The U.S. has mutual defense treaties it must uphold, such as NATO and NORAD. Plus numerous agreements to do joint training exercises with allies, provide military support to other countries, etc.[/li][li]The concept of ‘borders’ is getting fuzzier. In the old days, the only way an enemy could attack you was to mass an army, then mobilize it against you. This gave you plenty of warning, and you could counter the attack along your border. Today, enemies are more likely to strike at your interests/citizens abroad. And some threats are simply too dangerous to ignore. It’s one thing to wait at your border for a tank assault, trusting in your military to repel it. It’s quite another to sit behind your border while an enemy is building nuclear or biological weapons which, once built, can quite easily get past your border defenses.[/li][li]With the rise of air power, missiles, and nuclear weapons, it is no longer reasonable to allow two far-flung nations to atttack and destroy each other. Ditto for a globally interconnected economy. For example, let’s say the U.S. pulled out of South Korea and announced a ‘hands-off’ policy to all far-eastern conflicts. What do you think the result would be? A nuclear Japan, for one. Perhaps an attack on South Korea by North Korea. Perhaps a nuclear strike against Japan by North Korea before Japan could put its own nukes into play. Any of those scenarios would have drastic worldwide economic and environmental effects. Like it or not, the U.S. has a strong interest in seeing that that doesn’t happen, even if the U.S. itself is under no danger of attack.[/li]
[/quote]
Ask yourself this - in your ideal world where the U.S. withdraws into its own borders seriously downsizes the military, and ignores the world, what are you going to do when North Korea fires a missile over Alaska , then detonates a test nuke at home, then announces it can hit any city in North America - and now it has demands? What are you going to do when Iran develops nuclear weapons and imports long-range missiles from North Korea? And then what if Israel launches a pre-emptive strike on Iran and the middle east erupts in flames?
The world is getting more, not less dangerous. The cold war may have been larger, but it was also more manageable, and had the great advantage that the opponent was somewhat rational. The new world, with widespread terror groups getting access to increasingly more dangerous weapons and with various failing states getting closer to nuclear weapons status, is much more likely to result in a war.
Then there are other benefits to a large military. For example, if the U.N. wants to do anything of substance, it NEEDS the U.S. military. No one else has the force projection capabilities. Therefore, the U.S. gets to dictate terms that are favorable to itself. This may cause resentment in the rest of the world, but it’s an indisputable advantage of being the big kid on the block.
Hey at least I get the formal “vous” and not that buddy, buddy “tu” stuff.
Basically here you’re saying that the US military must be sufficiently large to not only be able to deal with two regional wars, it must also be able to completely eliminate the governing structure of an adversary and then pacify the state. I’ll put you down as “We need a bigger military”. Though again you’re not really being specific.
Ok, Canada will raise a massive memorial to American’s who fell defending exclusive Canadian interests about two seconds after you actually provide those events and numbers.
We (not just the two of us) beat the topic into the ground. I was as impressed by your arguments as you apparently are of mine. shrug.
Basically I argued my point with actual numbers and cites while you…well you’re arguing the same way here. Avoiding the posts, rejecting actual numbers, providing no cites and generally waving you arms around about every industrialized nation’s obligation to world peace through military spending.
Look. The OP basically boils down to “Does the US require X amount of forces”. Maybe you have a factual answer to that. If so, throw it out and ask that this thread get moved to GQ. On the off chance you don’t actually have a factual answer, you can enlighten me with some actual numbers. In all honesty, I’m curious.
As an aside, Pit me if you’re so bent out of shape about my purported views. I might care, I might not.
furt
Fair enough. But I pointed out that the forced deployed in the Balkans was about 50,000 which I think is on par with those in Korea. That’s about 4-6 divisions total. Add in 4 more for breathing space and then make the reserves the same size you have 20 Divisions and not the 29 from my cite.
Look, can someone actually show me where I said this? My question is how much is required. The difference between a two front war with no allies and a two front war where the contribution of allies is marginal escapes me. American military size is a result of the cold war, but also a result of the desire to be able to mandate force deployments. It’s like the Delian league except the allies barely pay and Athens builds the fleet anyway.
Here’s my personal view. History allowed America to take a pre-eminent role in Western defence. The ability to initially provide the bulk of forces and then the responsibility to maintain the alliance provides several advantages.
The US could direct alliance activities through sheer scale. This placed allies into niche roles to compliment the main force body. As the requirement for a complete and large scale army faded it becomes progressively harder to remove the need for American oversight and military contributions. Since the allies could no longer provide sufficient forces American needed to expand her forces to make up the difference. Note the nasty feedback cycle possible here.
At the same time a large number of allies were able to engage in a drive for legalistic resolutions to conflict. The EEC and EU are the result of such maneuvering. This also provided the illusion that nation states can talk their way to conflict resolution. Since all actors are rational and all rational people want to live the public perception of a need for a military faded. However, in instances where force is required the Americans are needed since the allies are unable to operate independently.
In short the allies benefit from American scale, but America enjoys remarkable freedom to operate due to being the enabling actor amongst the western nations.
I’m not arguing the retreat of the US. I’m asking how big do they need to be?
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
[li]The U.S has long-term commitments around the world. These include 50,000 troops in South Korea, 70,000 in Europe, 12,000 in Okinawa, etc. These troops are there by mutual agreement, and it’s not easy to simply withdraw them. Not just because they serve a strategic purpose, but because it would put pressure on allies. Some drawdowns may be a good thing, but on the other hand, new commitments like Iraq are cropping up.[/li][li]The U.S. has mutual defense treaties it must uphold, such as NATO and NORAD. Plus numerous agreements to do joint training exercises with allies, provide military support to other countries, etc.[/li][/quote]
Well you can rationalize Korea and Japan. Russia now sits as a guest at the NATO table. Where is the need for 70,000 troops in Europe?
[quote=Sam Stone]
[li]The concept of ‘borders’ is getting fuzzier. In the old days, the only way an enemy could attack you was to mass an army, then mobilize it against you. This gave you plenty of warning, and you could counter the attack along your border. Today, enemies are more likely to strike at your interests/citizens abroad. And some threats are simply too dangerous to ignore. It’s one thing to wait at your border for a tank assault, trusting in your military to repel it. It’s quite another to sit behind your border while an enemy is building nuclear or biological weapons which, once built, can quite easily get past your border defenses.[/li][/quote]
Assuming the threat is from a nation state. Common ideology and wire transfers seem to be a growing threat. What role does an armoured division play there?
Which is fine, it falls under treaty obligations.
You don’t see a reduction in US forces triggering a growth in allied militaries?
Sure, I do see an increase in allied military sizes - but also an equivalent increase in the size of ufriendly or Neutral countries like China will also decrease. The result would be the loss of comparative power for the U.S., and a proportional loss in the ability to control world events. You may think that’s a good thing today, but see what you think when the crisis is a war between Pakistan and India, or a Chinese grab at Taiwan, or a full-scale war between Russia and one of its neighbors? Or an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel?
When you lose the ability to deter agression, you’ll get more agression. Those areas of the world where conflict is held in check primarily by the threat of military intervention will begin to flare up again. And the U.S. will an increasingly powerful France and China actively working to oppose U.S. interests by supporting the other side of a conflict. Then we’ll be back to those lousy proxy wars of the cold war.
The world exists under a Pax Americana. You’re proposing shrinking that. This is an inherently dangerous thing to do.
furt: well, if they’re focused on keeping their Navy occupied with protecting shipments of oil from the Persian Gulf, that leaves them with less to plot an invasion of Taiwan, doesn’t it?
Point being, the US has been, since and including WWI, unbalancing the world’s conflicts, because we’re so big that we give an overwhelming advantage to whomever we ally ourselves with. This is a very bad thing.
What it really boils down to is that every time someone proposes reducing our role in the world, someone else pipes up with - but what about WWII? or something similar.
WWII was the exception that proved the rule, though, in my book, especially given that it flowed directly out of WWI and the vengeful Treaty of Versailles, which might not have been had the US not gone in on the side of France and England and overwhelmed Germany in the West.
After all, a hundred years before, Europe was faced with much the same kind of threat from Napoleon. They fought it out among themselves, though, as the US was too small to affect that fight much one way or the other, and the result was a non-vengeful peace with France - which was made because of fear of a resurgence of militarism in France - and that resulted in nearly a hundred years of relative stability. Maybe, forced by circumstance, they would have done so again at the end of WWI, but feeling their oats from their new and extremely powerful ally across the Atlantic, the Western Powers probably felt they could exact the vengeance they wanted. We’ll never really know, of course, but it’s kind of hard to imagine a series of events worse than what happened as a result of the vengeance exacted after WWI.
Just recently we had another terrible example, with Bush backing Sharon in re the West Bank settlements. I am as dead certain that this will come back to bite us, the Israelis, and the Arabs hard in our collective asses in the form of a horribly bloody conflict as I am that the Sun will rise tomorrow.
We should keep our noses out of what doesn’t concern us, and the best way to insure that is to keep our military to a size that is appropriate for our defense and no larger. Otherwise, you have the perennial problem of a large army in search of a war.
And, what Grey said, since it amounts to the same thing.
And yes, Mr Moto, the rest of the world would have to agree to things like fully convertible currencies - no opting out of that like China is doing today - and uniform and strictly enforced rules for trade.
I don’t see that as a bad thing, as I’m sure you don’t, and the rest of the world would be forced to accomodate each other if they knew there wasn’t going to be a US around to place itself in the middle of whatever conflict flares up between two other nations.
I suppose I would propose broadening it. Not so much through the UN as through the evolution on historical alliances. By removing the overwhelming reliance on the US and encouraging interdependence I see the US centred world being able to extend its dominance past the point where the economic integration of China reduces the potential for conflict there. It’s exhausting being top dog, and an exhausted US imperils your/our Pax American
I think that 29 is a bit high; there are a handful of “loose” batallions not attached to any division, and I’m not sure how they count them.
My source counts 10 current active-duty Army and 3 Marine divisions, and 16 total NG/Reserve. There’s one division in Korea, one in Japan, and 2+ in Europe. The rest are in the US. That’s ground forces. Here’s the whole thing.
There isn’t. The 1st ID left Germany for Iraq and they ain’t gonna come back. By 2010 I’ll bet we have less than a full division in Europe, and those that do stay will have cheaper real estate. We probably will keep a large amount of stuff prepositioned there, though. I’d say park the 1st Armored’s tanks in Poland and send their crews home, and leave half of the 1st ID there.
And while I agree with you that the need of the future is not primarily armored divisons, I can’t be as blase about the “growth in allied militaries.” Which allies? In Asia, Kore and Taiwan are already pretty militarized, and a stronger Japan makes everyone antsy, including our other allies. And in Europe, I do not think France can any longer be seen as an ally in the strategic sense. They have all but said that the EU’s raison d’ etre is to be a counterbalance to the US. Not all of the rest of the EU sees it that way, of course; but who’s to say the Eastern European nations that support us now won’t slide toward a Paris/Berlin view of things in the future? I’m not sure we want to give Europe as a whole a reason to rearm when we aren’t 100% sure what side they’d be on.
You say it like the two are mutually exclusive. They’re not.
Maybe if the goal was to “fight fair” or something. As I see it, if the US military so dominant that it deters people from starting wars because they know they will lose, that’s a good thing.
If we do end up in world war against the entire Arab world, the roots will go back half a century, and this would be just one of a thousand steps. I think it’s equally likely that creating an independant Palestinian state will prove to be one of the steps away from that nightmare.
Crux of the biscuit right there. I agree; I just happen to think most of the world does concern us. I’d like to dial the wayback machine to 1900 and avert the Spanish-American war, too; but I fear that the rise to global superpower status was fated. Demographics are destiny.
Lots of folks seem to be wondering about our presence in Europe, forgetting that we’re there for very good reasons.
The Europeans seem to have a notion of being somewhat more civilized and peace loving than the “cowboy, Dirty Harry type” Americans, but this doesn’t change the fact that, for the last hundred years, we keep getting drawn into their home-grown wars. And it hasn’t ended by a long shot. The citation on one of my Navy Achievement Medals mentions my support of Operations Sharp Guard and Deny Flight in and around the former Yugoslavia.
There are over 60,000 American war dead buried on French soil, not to mention American cemeteries in Italy, Belgium, England, and the Netherlands.
This entanglement in European affairs, which predates the Cold War, pretty much ensures that the United States will maintain some kind of presence there for as long as we can do so by treaty arrangement. Perhaps it will be smaller, given the new political realities there, but we won’t ever leave Europe.
Stop right there. If there’s anything I’ve made clear, it’s that the military of the “civilized world”, as in industrial democracies, has a minimum size based on the responsibilities that come with it. That isn’t just the US - that’s a rhetorical device you’ve kept using to try to avoid making it partly your own problem.
Your other favorite rhetorical device, trying to quibble about specific numbers and details to avoid facing the larger topic, has also already been pointed out to you. This is another example, and it still isn’t helping your case.
If you had presented any, I might have been. Since you don’t try to deny that your view of the need for a country to have military power stops at its own borders, and since your own statements bear that out particular bit of smugness, it has to be assumed that that’s what you think, and you’re going to get responsed to accordingly, ya know?
Maybe you could respond to the basic question for a change? It should be clear, as I’ve already stated, that your premise that the US in particular, or the industrial democracies in total, has a gross excess of military power already is patently false. It isn’t enough. Your attempts to dismiss the reasons for that as “stupid” belong in the Pit, not GD, m’kay?