Some reservists and active-duty soldiers no doubt thrive on unexpected assignments. But for the military as a whole, the stepped-up "ops tempo," or pace of operations, is hard to sustain with a volunteer force. Since the elimination of the draft, in 1973, the military has had to compete with the rest of the U.S. economy for manpower. It has done so in material ways, by increasing pay and benefits, and with its traditional appeal to those seeking challenge, service, and personal growth. But it has also offered volunteers a certain amount of control over their destiny, because they could always resign if they chose. And although recruiters would never put it this way, the enlistees of the 1990s could reasonably assume that the greatest physical danger they would face would come during training exercises, not from roadside bombs in a place like Baghdad or Fallujah. Guard and Reserve members could, within certain limits, assume that their lives would remain normal.
Last fall, two years into the emergency, numerous indicators suggested that Americans were beginning to vote with their feet. Guard units across the country fell short of their recruiting targets, and the Army Reserves reported a shortfall in re-enlistments. An un-scientific poll of U.S. troops in Iraq conducted by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in October found that nearly half planned not to re-enlist. "We are expending the force and doing little to ensure its viability in the years to come, years we have been assured it will take to win the war on terrorism," retired Army General Frederick Kroesen wrote in a military journal on hearing that reservists would be mobilized for a second year. "It might be prudent now to ask the managers who decreed the current second-year Reservists' extensions what they plan for the third year."
An overworked military can function very well for a while, as ours has—but not indefinitely if it relies on volunteers. "We are in serious danger of breaking the human-capital equation of the Army," Thomas White, a retired general and a former Secretary of the Army, told me last year. "Once you break it, it takes a long time to put it back together. It took us over twenty years after Vietnam."
The second problem is that America has so many troops tied down in so many places that, for all its power, it is strangely hamstrung. Despite our level of spending and our apparent status as the world's mono-power, the United States has few unused reserves of military strength. Sending troops in a hurry to the Korean DMZ—or to Iran, or the Taiwan Strait—would mean removing them in a hurry from some other place where, according to U.S. policy, they are also needed.
The military press has been abuzz with the news that four divisions, representing nearly half the Army's active-duty strength, are now officially in the two lowest readiness categories, because of their service in Iraq. These divisions—the well-known 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, 1st Armored, and 4th Infantry—will spend six months this year repairing machines, restocking supplies, and resting soldiers before returning to fully ready status. During the 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush said, "The next President will inherit a military in decline"—in part because under the Clinton Administration two Army divisions were classified as unready because of their service in the Balkans. In a pinch all these units could of course fight and win. But throughout America's era as a world power, governments under both parties have wanted the country to seem overprepared—extra-formidable—so that our adversaries will know the United States has the means to do almost anything it chooses. Now America is over-extended. The limits on U.S. power are more apparent than they were before we committed troops in Iraq.
