The right-sized Army

[Administrator]

The number of soldiers in the U.S. Army, both active and reserve, will continue to be a critical determinant of America's ability to win future wars and, above all, the peaces that follow them. The current force is far too small.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/03/2521797

[USMAjoe]

While I agree that the military does not have the adequate boots on ground ratio to achieve its current missions or its expected future military obligations I believe it would be absurd to assume that simply expanding the Army would be sufficient to solving its current ills.
The military provides security. I protects the the borders of our country and serves as an instrument of kinetic foreign policy. It has vast resources and capacities that are beneficial to law enforcement, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief. Time and again our military has proven its ability to accomplish these missions quickly and decisivey. However, time and again the military in recent history has proven to be insufficiently resourced and organized for rebuilding the national and political systems destroyed during conflicts or natural disasters.
The military forces that rebuilt Japan, Germany, and South Korea were enormous and could draw from within their large conscript forces a vast array of technical, political, and social experts to solve the intricate difficulties associated with nation-building without weakening thier tactical and operational forces. The modern volunteer army doesn't enjoy such depth and breadth. Efforts to conduct nation-building and capacity building exercises in parallel to security operations drains the available pool of talent very quickly. Leaders are forced to choose a balance between tactical and strategic priorities, often mitigating short term risk at the expense of long term priorities. The military attempted to solve this problem by creating a large National Guard biased towards combat support and service support organizations and designed to agument the longer term operations of the active force. These organizations, however, remain numerically difficient in the areas of intelligence, civil affairs, psychological operations, and contracting. Vastly increasing the size and blend of these resources would help for current and future operations, but would continue to be hampered by the political and social constraints that such large forces would have upon on our nation and its economy.
A large standing military is both an enormous financial burden, but also a great political temptation. Endowed with great force, and burdened by its heavy costs political leaders have historically adopted a "use it or lose it" policy. Choosing military activism over diplomacy or cost cutting measures that create a "hollow army" to justify its continued existence. The absence of total war prevents the sustained mobilization of public support necessary to create and maintain the large standing army necessary to be successful in fighting wars and rebuilding nations.
Answers to the large standing army dilemma range from reinstituting the draft to increasing the use of civilian contractors on the battlefield. Neither of these solutions have proven to be a panacea to the problem, and have also created innumerable questions about the limited quantitative and qualitative advantages that they bring to our current professional military forces.
It is my belief that there two options available that could solve our current dilemma of nation building capacity and the necessity to maitain a medium sized professional army.
One. Similar to the Joint Operational Doctrine adopted following Grenada all cabinet level organizations within the executive branch need to be expeditionary and integrated into force structures to maximize their experience and intellectual knowledge for nation building and reconstruction efforts both internally and internationally. Natural disasters, humanitarian missions, and nation building would all be better run be people who conduct those operations on a daily basis within our national bureacracy, not by the military. This would free the military to focus on rebuilding infrastracture, conducting security operations, and training indigenous forces. These integration, however, would need to be conducted at all levels of the force structure. From the CINC to the Battalion the resources of the Cabinets need to be leveraged and provided for nation building with representatives for the S-2 (CIA, FBI, NSA), S-4 (State, USAID) , S-5 (State, DEA ) and S-6 (NSA, CIA, FBI) down to the lowest level....CZARS don't cut it.
Two. If we can't succeed with the first then we need to create a civilian pool of expertise available for deployment to fulfill those needs. Scholarships for advanced degrees and bureacratic training combined with an initial basic training could serve as a positive incentive to attract smart individuals seeking to aid their country without requiring combat service. This white collar guard could be available for nation building deployments commenserate on a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 contract basis for collegiate time in schooling and would be both socially acceptable and relatively cheap to create, sustain, and mobilize.
Increasing the size of the Military isn't the solution. Reorganizing and leveraging the vast resources of our nation is.