February 14, 2008
A Million Boots on the Ground
America’s Land Forces Must Grow Immediately to Meet Range of Threats
By Gordon R. Sullivan -
Posted : February 18, 2008
As we continue to learn from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the southern borders of the U.S., peacekeeping operations and the expanding commitment of U.S. land forces to capacity-building tasks around the world, the sine qua non in the defense of our vital interests around the world is our ability to control land and influence people.
In such an environment, it becomes self-evident that land forces — the Army, the Marines and special operations forces — constitute the central military arm of an effective national security strategy.
It is equally obvious that our land forces are far too small to contend with the increasingly wide spectrum of missions and tasks that our nation is demanding of them.
The manifest inadequacy of the size of our land forces is most obvious in Iraq. Although the surge is paying dividends in reducing violence and setting conditions for long-term political stability, we may be compelled to reduce the size of our forces in Iraq in the near future — not because of policy decisions or progress, but because we do not have the wherewithal to sustain the commitment at surge levels indefinitely without significant troop hardship and long-term readiness implications.
Moreover, the U.S. is not positioned to respond to threats to vital national interests elsewhere or to advance U.S. objectives around the world.
Within the framework of these realities, the process of building the land forces that the nation needs must begin immediately within the current administration and be sustained by the new president and the next Congress. Specifically, the nation should commit itself to the following key points:
- Begin an accelerated development of a new national security strategy that is based on the realities of the international environment and the efficacy of the instruments of national power available to us.
- Commit the nation to a significant expansion of active-duty land forces end strength far beyond the growth to 750,000 soldiers, Marines and SOF already announced and build an active-duty land force that approaches a million men and women.
- Make the hard resource decisions. The aggregate defense budget must grow, and the proportion allocated to the land forces must increase substantially.
The demands on our land forces in the years ahead will continue to expand in both scope and magnitude as the U.S. contends with the national security implications of nontraditional threats such as global climate change, pandemic disease and rising competition for scarce resources.
If we are to recruit, train, equip, prepare and employ land forces to meet this dizzying array of challenges, we must begin immediately, and we must act with courage, foresight and vision.
When the United States of America possesses a land force — Army, Marine and special operations forces — that is as capable as today’s land force and 25 percent larger, elected and appointed leaders will be free to exercise their role as strategic decision-makers unconstrained by a force designed for a world that no longer exists.
The writer, a retired general, is a former Army chief of staff and now president of the Association of the United States Army.
Posted with permission
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