Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley says maintaining world order requires a bigger U.S. Army to maintain global stability.

The size of the Army “depends on what you want it to do,” Milley said in recent remarks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. World order “is under stress, intense stress, today,” Milley said. “It is under stress from revolutionaries, terrorists and guerillas. It is under stress from nation-states that don’t like the rules of the road that were written and want to revise those rules.”

The U.S. has been a global force since World War II, he said. “One of the U.S. military’s significant roles for seven decades has been to enforce world order, to maintain it and to maintain its stability,” Milley said. “The question is how much to you want, how much do you value that system.”

Today’s Army is a global force with about 180,000 soldiers deployed in about 140 countries, Milley said, helping to provide a stable and secure world order backed by about 70 other countries aligned with the U.S. “That is a significant amount of U.S. forces,” he said. “That is not a small number. It is about 20 percent or so of the Total Army.”

“Based on the tasks that are required, I believe we need a larger Army,” Milley said. “It is not some arbitrary number. We have done the analysis. We need to be bigger, and we need to be stronger and more capable.”