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| NAME |
peacemaking |
DATE |
2003-07-26 |
HIT |
379 |
| TITLE |
Military fatigue? |
Military fatigue?
by Jonathan Eyal
The killing of Saddam Hussein's two sons has given Washington a political respite.
Until this week, the US administration stood accused of not knowing what it wanted to do in Iraq, and of gradually sliding into a military quagmire in the Middle East with no evident way out.
None of these problems has been addressed, but the tracking down and elimination of two of the most reviled leaders of the former Iraqi regime have at least deflected the discussion in the American media and put the US intelligence services hitherto accused of incompetence in a better light.
Washington has also moved quickly to reassure its public that it does intend to withdraw from Iraq, with the publication this week of a detailed plan for the political and economic reconstruction of the country, all supposed to be achieved in the next few months.
And yet, as the army commanders and planners in the Pentagon know only too well, this is a mere diplomatic smokescreen.
For the reality is that the United States' predicament is only just beginning.
Its armed forces are now severely overstretched, and its number of military commitments around the world is increasing by the day.
The US remains the biggest military power the world has ever known. But it is starting to experience the classic symptoms of imperial fatigue.
At first sight, the suggestion that US armed forces are now over-stretched appears startling. In the past three years alone, the American military has removed successfully from power no fewer than three governments which, for one reason or another, Washington did not like: in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Furthermore, this was accomplished through the use of relatively small number of troops - surgical strikes which created vast destruction to America's enemies but left US troops more or less unscathed.
Even if US reinforcements are now required in Iraq and even if the country's occupation lasts longer than was originally envisaged, the deployment in the Middle East will not involve more than a quarter of America's total military might.
In terms of size, the US military remains bigger than the next 12 ranking military powers around the globe put together.
America accounts for half of the world's military expenditure, and no less than two-thirds of all the globe's spending on military technology research.
Seen from this perspective, the US remains more than capable of holding Iraq down while confronting North Korea and Iran - its next main targets.
Washington's declared policy of being ready to fight two major wars around the world at the same time remains, therefore, intact.
However, this is only part of the story.
Of the US army's 33 regular combat brigades, 21 are already on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans, amounting to roughly 250,000 fighting men and women.
And this does not include a substantial number of US troops stationed regularly in Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan, or smaller contingents now scattered around the world.
A traditional calculation assumes that for every soldier deployed on an active mission, two more are required to be kept in reserve, either in order to rotate those in action or to prepare for that rotation.
Under this assumption, the US has already reached its limit today.
But, to the frustration of the Pentagon, neither America's diplomatic priorities nor the sheer pace of international developments appears to take this into account.
The cost of occupying and rebuilding Iraq now runs at roughly US$4 billion (S$7 billion) a month and is rising.
More importantly for the US military planners, it also costs, on average, the life of one US soldier a day.
Furthermore, Washington has already decided, largely for political reasons, that it will make no further cuts in its presence in Europe and cannot extricate itself from Afghanistan.
Given the North Korean situation, no cuts in US troops can be expected in Asia either, notwithstanding the planned redeployment of American forces inside South Korea.
And to cap it all, Washington is now under pressure from the United Nations and the wider international community to deploy troops in the African state of Liberia.
Officially, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appears unruffled by these developments.
He is one of the chief architects of America's global interventionist policy, the arch-priest of the doctrine which suggests that there is no problem around the world which the US cannot solve with a bit of military might and lots of political will.
Yet behind the scenes, he is facing an increasingly strident chorus of disapproval from his own military commanders.
General Tommy Franks, who initially commanded the US troops in Iraq, said recently, with a barely disguised sense of exasperation, that the soldiers would be in the country for at least four years.
General John Abizaid, his successor in the Iraq command, has contradicted Mr Rumsfeld flatly by declaring that Iraqis are now engaged in a classical guerilla-type campaign against American troops, thereby implying that the task facing his men and women is essentially unwinnable in the long term without a political solution.
Ordinary soldiers posted to Iraq now grumble openly about their service conditions and the lack of any immediate prospect of returning home.
And, to the fury of the top brass in Washington, the US administration now seems destined to approve the deployment to Liberia, a mission which is seen by the generals as one of seeking to maintain a peace which does not exist in the hope of bringing a peace which cannot be imposed.
The crunch time for the administration is still some way off. But a broader political debate on America's global military priorities now appears inevitable.
And it coincides with the wider controversy about the condition of America's finances which must underpin such a global commitment.
The US budget deficit is US$455 billion and rising, and its trade deficit is US$500 billion, two figures which are roughly similar to what the country spends on its military every year.
Over the past two decades, the amount spent by the US on its health-care services has risen five times faster than its defence budget.
And the trend is set to continue. In just five years' time, 77 million 'baby boomers' will start collecting Social Security benefits; in two decades from now, the US will have doubled the size of its elderly population.
Maintaining a vast military establishment from a shrinking working population and paying for it from lower financial resources is going to be a challenge regardless of what the country's politicians now say.
None of this appears to worry the Pentagon for the moment.
In a little-noticed development this week, the US decided to call to active duty 10,000 national guardsmen in order to fill any anticipated shortfalls in Iraq deployments early next year.
But Washington continues to be pulled in all directions at the same time. Right-wingers are demanding military action against rogue regimes around the world, such as in North Korea or Iran. Meanwhile, left-wingers ask for humanitarian military interventions in failed states such as Liberia.
At the end, the US will have face the unpleasant reality that, even for the world's only military superpower, some hard choices are inevitable.
We are not about to witness the end of the American empire. But we may yet experience the start of a more selective US imperial engagement around the world.
(The author is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London)
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