By FRED KAPLAN
Published: January 1, 2006

ONE million men and women serve in the United States Army, so why is it proving nearly impossible to keep a mere 150,000 of them in Iraq?


The Pentagon expects to face many Iraq-type conflicts in the coming years, wars that involve battling insurgents and restoring stability. As a result, a debate is beginning to churn in defense policy circles: Should the government enlarge the military so it can more easily fight these wars? Or should the government alter its policies, so as not to fight such wars as often, at least not alone?

Senior Pentagon officials argue that neither shift is necessary, that reorganizing the Army's existing combat units into stronger, faster and more flexible brigades will have the same effect as adding more soldiers. But some analysts doubt these adjustments alone will go far enough.

Lawrence Korb, who was assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, states the issue baldly: "We cannot fight a long, sustained war without a larger ground force." He defines a "long war" as lasting two years or more. The Iraq war has gone on now for nearly three.

The claim may seem strange, until you peel apart the numbers. Of the Army's one million soldiers, fewer than 400,000 are combat troops (the rest are support personnel). Only about 150,000 of those combat troops are on active duty; the rest are in the National Guard and Reserves.

Then there is the matter of rotation. Combat units, at least in an all-volunteer force, cannot be deployed for much longer than a year. (To do otherwise would risk exhaustion and demoralization.) Replacements come while the battle-weary go out for rest, retraining and resupply. Therefore, to sustain one active brigade (about 3,500 troops) in a war zone, one or two additional brigades must be ready to replace it.

Finally, Iraq isn't the only foreign country where American combat troops are stationed.

In a study published in October, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that given all these factors the military could not sustain more than 123,000 troops in Iraq for much longer.

Additional forces, the budget office concluded, would require the United States to "increase the size of the land forces, terminate some other commitment or rotate forces to Iraq at more demanding rates." In the past year, the Pentagon has already stretched the rotation cycle in Iraq, for both active and reserve forces; and it has redeployed one brigade from Bosnia and another from South Korea. "There isn't much more leeway for simply moving people around," Mr. Korb said.

That leaves the other option: adding more land forces overall. How many? James Dobbins and James Quinlivan, military analysts at the RAND Corporation, have analyzed historical data on the numbers of foreign troops in various occupations after a war. They found that all the successful missions involved troop levels totaling at least 2 percent of the occupied country's population.

Taking that figure as a rough rule of thumb, securing Iraq, which has 25 million people, would require 500,000 foreign troops. American and coalition forces now total about 180,000.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, drew on similar historical studies when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2003, a month before the war started, that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to restore order after the fighting (a claim that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at the time, vigorously disputed).

A force that large probably could have been mobilized to Iraq for some period, maybe for a year. In 2003-2004, before the insurgency got seriously under way, that may have been enough to impose order. But now, it is generally recognized that it's not possible to send any more troops from the Army as it stands.

The Pentagon expects to face many Iraq-type conflicts in the coming years, wars that involve battling insurgents and restoring stability.

As a result, a debate is beginning to churn in defense policy circles: Should the government enlarge the military so it can more easily fight these wars? Or should the government alter its policies, so as not to fight such wars as often, at least not alone?

That leaves the other option: adding more land forces overall. How many? James Dobbins and James Quinlivan, military analysts at the RAND Corporation, have analyzed historical data on the numbers of foreign troops in various occupations after a war. They found that all the successful missions involved troop levels totaling at least 2 percent of the occupied country's population.

Taking that figure as a rough rule of thumb, securing Iraq, which has 25 million people, would require 500,000 foreign troops. American and coalition forces now total about 180,000.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, drew on similar historical studies when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2003, a month before the war started, that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to restore order after the fighting (a claim that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at the time, vigorously disputed).

All I have to say is...how about we stop sticking our fucking noses, and our dicks, into other countries and other peoples business.

If not for my thunderous hangover, I would write a much longer reply.

All I have to say is...how about we stop sticking our fucking noses, and our dicks, into other countries and other peoples business. If they are massing people inside thier country to blow us up here in America, that is one thing (Afghanistan), but just the thought of another Iraq makes me want to explode.

And if the US doesn't act when action is needed (Iran, Sudan, etc.) .... who will?

What determines when action is "needed"? More than we need it in our own country? Shit, every country on this planet needs help. Are we the ones that should give it to them? Not when it gets us into the shit it has been in recent years: Iraq, Vietnam, etc. The last thing we "need" is to "help" more countries in "need".

I think his point was that we have the fiscal resources to help, and that obligates us to do so to some extent. You can argue about the scale all you want, but it makes sense.

I think his point was that we have the fiscal resources to help, and that obligates us to do so to some extent. You can argue about the scale all you want, but it makes sense.

First, does our fiscal situation really lend us to giving help on the scale that we do? We are trillions of dollars in debt, and that is going up very fast, and hundreds of programs on the homefront are in a downward spiral due to lack of funds; See the Education system.

Second, why can't we be like the other 1st world countries, and donate a moderate amount of help/money without sending over an army and occupying thier country. I mean, tons of other countries are giving money and helping the struggling countries, but only the US and to a much lesser extent the UK have taken that to a ridiculous extreme.

The world does not want to be saved by the US.

I gaurantee you that if America was to lift anchor, and become truly isolationist, that waaaayyyyy more people out there would us than do today.

You left out a word or two in there, but I'm too afraid to guess what they are.

I gaurantee you that if America was to lift anchor, and become truly isolationist, that waaaayyyyy more people out there would hate us than they do today.

Everyone loves to hate the West untill they find themeselves in a shitty situation and then complain when we don't get there fast enough.

Helping other nations is like a stock market trade. It almost always pays off in the long run, but it can cause some real scares in the short term. So long as you have an achievable goal, a clear entry and exit plan, and support from all the stakeholders, the investment will put you in a better financial position in the future. Everyone just needs to remember there will be up and down days in the market for peace and future stability.

Most multinational forces are almost always useless, like the African forces currently in Sudan. They are all bark, no bite. An example to hold up and say "Look! We took the moral high ground and sent in peacekeepers instead of invading." U.N.fortunately for the people on suffering, the moral high ground doesn't always work.

But we are obligated to help even so, albeit on a scale much closer to some of our European and Asian allies.

The US cannot save the world by itself.

With all the money that China is pumping into their military, you'd think they could help out more in their hemisphere, wouldn't ya? Its not like they have anything else to do other than quash major protests and point missiles at Taiwan.

Even China won't drag it's army into an unwinnable war against the will of its people.