THE RISING EAST
 |
By Richard Halloran
The armed forces of the United States are being stretched so thin that their ability to fulfill U.S. military commitments in Asia and the Pacific is being called into question. The threat, however, is not immediate in the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan Straits, or in the campaign against terror in Southeast Asia.
Rather, the question is whether the United States will have the trained forces to meet unforeseen situations. The hazard comes from possible eruptions of conflict elsewhere in the world that would require the United States to dispatch forces that might otherwise have been available in Asia.
Advertiser library photo
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware of the strain on troops, have danced around the issue because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is determined to keep the forces at their present level of 1.4 million-or to cut them to come up with money to buy more high-tech weapons.
Retired chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, appeared in favor of an increase in the size of U.S. military forces, in opposition to plans of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Shinseki cautioned at his retirement in June : "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."
Congress, however, appears ready to make the size of the force a point of contention when it reconvenes later this month. That and the stress caused by Iraq and other deployments could become a political issue in this election year.
U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was quoted before the holidays as saying a bipartisan move to increase the size of the force "recognizes the reality in the strain and the stretch in all the services."
Or, as the retiring chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki cautioned in his farewell address in June: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."
Among the challenges:
• Not enough people: Today, 300,000 of the 480,000 men and women in the U.S. Army are deployed in 120 countries. Where would the soldiers come from if another Iraq blew up?
• Too many missions: The U.S. armed forces have been assigned to fight across the full spectrum of operations, from nuclear war to peacekeeping duties, and everything in between.
• Excessive reliance on reserves: Last January, 56,700 reservists had been called up. That peaked at 219,500 in May, then slipped to 183,700 at year end.
• Maintenance of equipment: Deployments from Europe and Iraq to Japan and South Korea are wearing out arms and equipment faster than it can be maintained.
• Today robbing tomorrow: The need to pay for today's operations is stealing money that might be spent on tomorrow's arms to preserve U.S. military power.
The pace of operations has produced, perhaps ironically, a bright spot. The chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, said recently: "Many of our soldiers have now served more than once in combat, and on numerous contingency operations in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans or elsewhere, giving our Army a level of experience we have not seen in a long time."
While U.S. military commanders in South Korea and at Pacific Command in Hawai'i keep a close eye on North Korea, they have said repeatedly that they do not expect the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, to be so rash as to attack South Korea, where 37,000 American troops are posted.
More important, the armed forces of South Korea are better armed, equipped, trained, and led than those of North Korea, although the North Korea force is larger. On the ground, South Korea would need little help from the United States.
Thus soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division (Light) in Hawai'i, which has been poised to reinforce U.S. troops in South Korea, have been alerted for duty in Iraq later this year.
If mainland China seeks to capture the island of Taiwan over which it claims sovereignty, the defense of Taiwan might require U.S. naval and air forces to intervene under the Taiwan Relations act. The United States has been gradually shifting such units from the Atlantic to the Pacific against just such a contingency.
More uncertain, however, is the terrorist threat to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. So far, the United States has provided those nations with intelligence on terrorists and small training teams of Special Forces. What of tomorrow?
At a conference in Washington last month, this question was brought before a panel of senior officers. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, reflected the views of many officers: "Have we arrived at a point where we're going to have forces ... spread throughout the world, the Sinai, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan?"
"If we are," he concluded, "then I think the answer might be that we do in fact need an end-strength increase."
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.
