The most serious challenge facing today’s Army isn’t the Islamic State, cyber warfare or the heating up of the new Cold War. The biggest problem lies in unprecedented levels of uncertainty.
After 13 years of war, the Army is shrinking in size and resources at the same time there are growing threats, expanding requirements and no room for mistakes. There have been post-war drawdowns before. After World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War and the perceived end of the Cold War, the Army shrank. What is different now is that the world clearly is not at peace. We run the risk of deflating the size of the Army so far that it puts our nation at far greater risk.
After World War I, the Army dropped in one year by almost 36 percent from its peak of almost 3.7 million soldiers. By 1940, the Regular Army had 243,000 soldiers.
After World War II, the Army was reduced from about 8.2 million soldiers at the start of the war to about 550,000 by 1949, a pace determined in large part by how quickly soldiers would be transported home. There was a Soviet threat at war’s end, but this was viewed as a situation calling for nuclear options that didn’t need a large ground force.
At the start of the Korean War, the Army stood at about 593,000 soldiers, peaking at about 1.6 million in 1952, and dropping back to about 870,000 by 1960.
After the Vietnam War, the Army dropped from about 1.5 million soldiers in 1969 to about 780,000 by 1975. This was recognized as a risk. Then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger warned Congress in 1975 that “we basically went too far in reducing our active-duty ground forces”
I oversaw part of the Post-Cold War drawdown, when the active-duty Army dropped from 780,000 in 1985 to 508,000 in 1995, a reduction partly due to the end of the Cold War but mostly driven by budget constraints. The Army bottomed out at around 479,000 active-duty soldiers in 1999.
Unlike the post-war periods in the past, today’s world is viewed by many as being less safe than before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars started. It is far less clear today than after past wars about whether ground forces will be needed not in the next decade but maybe in the next few days to respond to a global crisis.
It becomes more obvious every day that it was a terrible miscalculation three years ago to decide our national security needs could be met with a smaller Army. Every day we don’t reverse course increases our strategic risk because everywhere you look, the world is unsafe.
As much as it may be difficult to admit, conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and the entire region is not over. We have cut our bases in Europe, only to now be sending thousands and thousands of troops on deployments to Eastern Europe to work with allies and to show U.S. resolve to stand up to Russian interference and aggression.
In Asia, North Korea remains led by an erratic leader and China is expanding its territorial claims by making new islands in disputed waters of the South China Sea.
The threat from the Islamic States is different than anything we’ve ever faced, and we need to understand it better and find a way to stop it.
Ground forces are not the only solution to every national security situation but they are a key element of the balanced force our nation needs to prepare for threats in the land, in the air, on or under the sea and in space or cyberspace. The solution to all of the above is a force that has the throw-weight and depth to meet current and unexpected threats. We cannot accept vulnerability in any one area, for it is inevitable that our adversaries will find and exploit weakness wherever and whenever they can.
While we may not need land forces to respond to all of these global threats, we have to be prepared to send ground troops if they are needed. And it is worth noting that we don’t always get to pick the time and place of deployments, nor the duration of an operation. To do this, we must maintain balance among our active Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve. For the United States Army, and the Joint Force, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Sullivan served more than 36 years in the U.S. Army, rising to be the 32nd Army Chief of Staff. Today, he is president and CEO of the Association of the U.S. Army.