Even sustaining the Army at its present size is not easy, as witnessed by the Pentagon's stop-loss policies that have forced soldiers to remain on active duty even when their committed period of active service has ended. The Pentagon rationalizes this as necessary for unit cohesion, but the real problem is that the Army cannot recruit and train enough replacements. Military recruitment is the Achilles heel of U.S. strategy. The present Pentagon insistence on avoiding a draft or a program of national service. As I pointed out several years ago, in a lead article in Current History, the aggressive use of the military by the Bush administration will necessitate a national debate about military manpower and perhaps a restoration of the draft.
In recent months, as this NYT article details, recruiting sergeants have fallen well short of their goals in recent months. This is a trend and will continue.
If you want to know why the U.S. cannot sustain it deployment in Iraq for years to come (now just under 150,000 troops and that does not count the "tail" of support and logistics that requires virtually the entire U.S. Army to focus on supporting the Iraq mission), just look at the present size of the Army. The Iraq deployment cannot be sustained without a sizable increase in the size of the Army, i.e., well beyond the 40,000 suggested by Donald Rumsfeld.
The New York Times > New York Region > For Army Recruiters, a Hard Toll From a Hard Sell
"The Army announced in September that it would add about 1,200 active-duty and Reserve recruiters to the field. It has also more than doubled bonuses for three-year enlistments to $15,000 and increased its advertising budget.
"For the first time since 1998, the Army has lowered its standards, last week increasing its age limit for Reserve and National Guard recruits to 39. Last year, it agreed to accept thousands more recruits without high school diplomas."
Recruiting men and women to serve in the all-volunteer military is a tough sell these days.
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