Currently, the United States has exactly three uncommitted combat brigades.  (for reference, a brigade is a third of a division, of which the United States Army has ten.) Approximately ten thousand troops are available for new missions, the rest are either in tasked to S. Korea, Europe, or are in refit/retraining on their way to being available once more.  This means that if some great threat were to emerge that isn’t the paranoid raving lunatics of North Korea, we’re screwed.  And we’re even more screwed if a third of our available unallocated military strength is sent to Liberia.

At the end of the first Gulf War, the Army had 18 active duty divisions along with a number of independent brigades, and any number of support and logistics units.  During the Clinton administration, with the acquiescence of the Republican congress, that was nearly cut in half.  The Navy and Air Force suffered similar, though not quite so deep, cuts in their forces.  Only the Marines, smallest of the four branches, survived nearly untouched.

The recent unpleasantness in Iraq has stretched our downsized military almost to the breaking point.  During the conflict, we heard of the Carrier task forces that were on station for more than a year.  The Army’s third division just had its deployment in Iraq extended indefinitely.  The reason that these forces were so overused is for one simple reason - there was nothing to replace them with.

While many have commented on the facts I just mentioned, few realize that overdeploying units have far reaching effects beyond the immediate morale of the troops in those units.  The extension of the Third division’s deployment basically was a decision to sacrifice one tenth of our army for immediate needs.  Sure, we can use the 3rd now, but when the division eventually comes home, huge percentages of its soldiers will not reenlist.  When these soldiers leave, they are not available to train the new soldiers who are assigned to the unit.  It will be most of a decade if at all, before the 3rd is as effective as it was when it entered Iraq.

The civilian leadership of the DoD have spoken of reorganization as a possible solution, saying that by contracting out more logistical and administrative functions we can assign more uniformed personnel to combat units.  This is probably true.  But it cannot actually solve the problem. 

There are only two solutions.  Reduce the number and scale of military deployments by a) cutting back on peacekeeping and commitments to other nations and b) fighting far fewer wars; or increasing the size of the military to something close to what it was in 1991.  (Alright, there’s a third solution that is an average of the first two.)

For a variety of reasons, the first option can’t solve all our problems.  We can cut back on deployments by nibbling around the edges - the Sinai, cutting back in the Balkans and Central Europe, etc.; but there are certain core needs that must continue to be met.  In most cases, American troops already in place are there for a good reason.  Further, for all that you’ve heard me say that unilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing, I also feel that multilateralism is not necessarily a bad thing either.  Cuttign back drastically on our military commitmentst to other nations will have deleterious diplomatic consequences, and possibly encourage aggression that is now deterred by the presence of American forces. 

So, we need to not merely increase defense spending, we need to increase the number of combat troops that can be sent to the sharp end - so that we can meet the threats that the next couple decades may offer.  If we burn up all of our combat strength now by overdeployment, we might have very little left by the end of the decade.  Right now, we spend a little over 3% of GNP on defense.  This is somewhat more than many other nations spend.  Of course, the sheer size of the American economy makes that number seem very large when compared to others. 

At the height of the cold war, we were spending double the percentage that we are now.  Given our role of first team peacekeeper, spending say, 5% of GNP does not sound that unreasonable.  Especially when that would give us six more army divisions, a couple carrier battle groups and several Air Force bomber and fighter wings.  Which might even give us the real leeway to lower the bar for humanitarian interventions.