May 28, 2004

The Peace Dividend paid out too much
Posted by Jon Henke

Kevin Drum makes a good, practical point about our limitations...

The practical problem [with sending 450,000 troops to Iraq] is that we don't have 450,000 troops. I don't mean this in the trivial sense that Donald Rumsfeld decided not to use that many troops, I mean that we don't have them.
[...]
Unless we're willing to make a World War II style commitment to doubling or tripling the size of the Army, we flatly can't provide 450,000 troops in Iraq (or anywhere else) over a period of several years.
[...]
I suspect that "adequate security," which everyone agrees is essential to democratization, is simply not possible for us to attain in Iraq for both practical and systemic reasons. [...] So if security is impossible, and democratization via military occupation depends on security, it means —
Might I suggest that it means our "peace dividend" from the 90s - when "scores of bases were closed, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were demobilized" - was not so much a dividend as an expensive loan. And we're paying for it today.

Which, I suppose, is why you don't read guys like this writing that much about "Clinton's Army" anymore.

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Comments

After the fall of Communism, it would have be illogical not to have a “peace dividend” (although its size was surely debatable).

But OK, so we ended up in 2001 with the military we had: extremely powerful in some ways; not nearly so powerful in others. And as luck would have it, it was the “others” (e.g., ground combat capability) that we ended up needing most.

You can’t grow an Army overnight, and so it became the responsibility of the defense leadership to match our military commitments to our actual, current combat capabilities. Did they do that? In a word, no. Instead, they made extremely optimistic assumptions about the Iraqi people and the nature of a ground campaign in Iraq.

In summary, the great crime (except in hindsight) was not the post-Soviet military drawdown. The crime was a failure to match the mission to our actual capabilities.

Posted by: George at May 28, 2004 12:30 PM

George, I think you have it backwards, the mission was and still is bringing a representative government to Iraq. This mission is no less valid because our military is lacking the tools to do it quickly and easily. Should we be trying to retrain parts of the military to fill the current gaps? Of course. Are we? I should hope so, but do not know for sure. Either way, our choice was more in how we try to accomplish the mission, and less in what mission we were trying to accomplish.

Posted by: Curt Mitchell at May 28, 2004 01:37 PM

George, I think you have it backwards, the mission was and still is bringing a representative government to Iraq.

Backwards? My point was that one doesn’t voluntarily undertake a mission for which one lacks the requisite military resources. (This was, as you’ll recall, General Shinseki’s point as well.) But we did, and now we’re paying the price.

Posted by: George at May 28, 2004 02:48 PM

George, you may get some disagreement about this being a VOLUNTARY mission....

Posted by: shark at May 28, 2004 04:19 PM

George: "OK, so we ended up in 2001 with the military we had: extremely powerful in some ways; not nearly so powerful in others.

"..*ended up*...with..." sounds like the stereotype of 'Gen-X reasoning', subtly implying that the drastic down-sizing of the U.S. military--so much that critics of Bush are complaining that we sent too few troops to Iraq--somehow just happened by itself. George--as all loyal Democrats--somehow omitted the name of the agent responsible, who of course was William J. Clinton.

George: "In summary, the great crime (except in hindsight) was not the post-Soviet military drawdown. The crime was a failure to match the mission to our actual capabilities."

First, omitting "hindsight" from a purported analysis of how our armed forces reached their current, dangerously-undermanned state by definition cuts off any attribution of mistakes to Clinton. It's tantamount to saying we're not allowed to look at what happened since then and say, "Ah, the mistake was that Clinton (or whichever agent you wish to claim did it) cut the military too much."

Second, one of the oldest lessons in the world of politics and military operations is that nations that drastically cut their armed forces will soon wish they hadn't done so--usually within less than a decade.

But hey, it "just happened"--can't blame anyone. At least not a Democrat.

Posted by: sf at May 29, 2004 03:27 PM

Not piling on the "ended up with"/hindsight oversight ....

The crime was a failure to match the [voluntary] mission to our actual capabilities.

I think this really strikes at the heart of Bush's weakness on Iraq.

If the mission was to depose Saddam, we did extremely well from a military as well as humanitarian (casualties, refugees, property damage) POV with economy of force, despite critics that more troops were needed or catastrophic results (Arab states collapsing in civil war, radicalizing the entire Middle East, nuclear war, ...)

If the mission was to put in place a Marshall Plan and allied occupation reflecting post-WWII Europe, Japan and/or Korea, the Bush administration was reactive and poorly prepared.

My take is the Bush administration was overcome with rosy optimism from expatriate assurances of what post-war Iraq would be like, leading to a relatively short peaceful occupation (3-9 months) and Iraqi oil limiting our financial hardships.

Didn't happen. The critics argument is that more troops would have improved security, and from there everything else would have gone right. I'm not convinced.

There is an asymmetrical aspect to more boots on the ground that does not guarantee a pacified populus, especially an occupied one. It actually could have ascerbated the situation.

More troops also would not have resulted in opening the US treasury for rebuilding any faster. I'm not convinced that more troops could have prevented much of the pipeline sabotage.

Afghanistan's and Iraq's history is replete with examples of hardship by anyone who steps foot there. The biggest mistake by the Bush administration was not preparing the public for that.

Posted by: Tim at June 1, 2004 10:19 AM

Tim,

While we may quibble on some specifics, I'd largely agree with your points, including the overly optimistic judgements from the administration and the problem with "more troops".

Posted by: Jon Henke at June 1, 2004 10:27 AM