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(Part 1 - Starting with a solid
base)
Part 2: Counting the dollars and cents
By David Isenberg
To paraphrase the well-known
saying of former US Senator Everett Dirksen, a division
sent here, a division over there, and pretty soon you
are talking about real empire.
However, a real
empire costs money, lots of money; especially when it
involves stationing or deploying military forces around
the world.
How much money? Let's turn to the
budget. For fiscal year (FY) 2004, Congress approved
about US$400 billion for "national defense", or in plain
English, military spending. But hold on to your hats
because, as they say on Broadway, you ain't seen nothing
yet.
In FY 2004, military spending accounted for
over half of all US federal discretionary spending. The
annual military appropriations bill is expected to grow
from $369 billion this year to nearly $600 billion by
2013, according to the US Congressional Budget Office.
Despite concerns about rising deficits,
protracted wars and costly weapons, budget and political
analysts predict that President George W Bush will ask
Congress for about $470 billion in military spending for
2005. True, the request will not come all at once: The
first installment was delivered to Congress February 2
in the form of a just over $420 billion budget request
($401.7 billion for the Defense Department and $19.0
billion for the nuclear weapons functions of the
Department of Energy). This is an increase of 7.9
percent above current levels. The second installment, a
$50 billion supplemental bill to pay for Iraq and
Afghanistan war costs, won't come until after the
November 2 presidential election.
That would be
the third massive supplemental spending bill sought to
support the wars. Congress approved a $62.6 billion
supplemental last spring and an $87 billion supplemental
in November.
The financial costs of maintaining
US forces in Iraq are currently running at $4 billion
per month, or an annual rate of $48 billion. Last
September, the White House informed congressional
leaders that it was preparing a new budget request of
$60-70 billion to cover mounting military and
reconstruction costs in Iraq. Then Bush announced a $7
billion supplemental request to cover Iraq and
Afghanistan. Less than a week later, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said that Iraq's postwar reconstruction
costs were likely to run another $35 billion above and
beyond those contained in the $87 billion supplemental.
And an assessment in the Wall Street Journal
last September predicts further spirals in future Iraq
postwar costs attributable to gross overestimation of
near-term Iraqi oil revenues; surprise at the decrepit
state of Iraq's basic infrastructure; extensive and
continued looting; sabotage of oil pipelines, electrical
power lines, and other key reconstruction costs;
downstream costs of financing expanding Iraqi government
and security forces; and poor prospects for significant
international donor support.
But wait, there's
more. British historian Niall Ferguson noted last July:
"The United States is attempting 'nation-building' - the
fashionable euphemism for empire-building - on a
shoestring." In other words, the US is cheap. He
asks:
"Is it possible to run an empire on the
Wal-Mart principle of 'always low prices'? Maybe. But
that was not the way it was done in West Germany and
Japan after World War II. And since those are
President Bush's favorite examples of successful
nation-building, he will only have himself to blame
when the hoped-for economic miracle in Iraq becomes an
economic debacle."
Another cost of Iraq
is its effect on military force structures. As should be
apparent to all by now, fighting "major combat
operations" is relatively easy. Occupations are a whole
other story. As military analysts Charles Knight and
Marcus Corbin wrote in January:
"Our total deployable ground forces (Army
and Marines) number about 400,000 active duty men and
women and another 500,000 reservists. Together these
numbers are more than enough to fight America's wars
of short duration, such as the 1991 war with Iraq. But
when policy choices result in long occupations, such
totals quickly become insufficient - a result of the
dismal math of force rotations. It takes four troop
units on active duty to sustain deployment of one
active unit in the field for multiple years, and it
takes nine reserve units to sustain deployment of one
reserve unit. A four or five year occupation of Iraq
by 65,000 regular and 35,000 reserve troops - a
realistic possibility - will require a rotation base
of 260,000 active troops (65 percent of our deployable
active ground forces) and 315,000 reserve troops (63
percent of our deployable reserve ground forces.) This
illustration does not properly capture the full effect
of our broader 'war on terror' on our reservists.
Currently, more than 130,000 reserve ground troops are
serving in homeland security roles, 'back filling' for
active-duty soldiers elsewhere abroad and deployed to
Afghanistan and Iraq. For the reservists, this level
of mobilization is already more than twice the
long-term sustainable rate."
There has
been much hand wringing in Congress of late over the
"stretched too thin" military. Cries of not enough
bodies are everywhere. While in strict terms this is not
true, as you could halve the active army from 10 to five
divisions and still have more than enough for defense of
the country, it is true that defending an empire is
different.
In a hearing last November
Representative John Spratt said:
"Our forces were stretched thin before
Iraq, and the engagement there has only exacerbated
that trend. The administration has come forward with a
plan for force rotation in Iraq that relies upon
several assumptions. First, it assumes one-year
deployments of more US troops - active, reserve and
guard. Second, it assumes the influx of more
multinational forces to relieve some of the pressure
on American forces at least during 2004. And, third,
it assumes the rapid training of Iraqi security forces
of all kinds, and the eventual turnover of many
security missions to these Iraqi forces. It's unclear
whether the last two of these three assumptions will
come to pass. We continue to train Iraqi police and
army forces, but it's unclear what missions they will
be able to take on and handle capably and just when.
Other nations have not committed forces in substantial
numbers, unfortunately, and some that have, such as
Turkey, have met with difficulties that make that
deployment at this point
doubtful."
Recently, Lieutenant-General
John M Riggs, who runs the task force charged with
fashioning the army of the future, told the Baltimore
Sun in an interview that the army was too small and must
be increased "substantially" by more than 10,000
soldiers.
Keep in mind that January saw the
start of the US military's biggest unit rotation since
World War II. Eight of the 10 active-duty army divisions
are now rotating in and out of Iraq, while one-third of
the Army National Guard's combat battalions have been
called to active duty, Riggs said. There are not enough
soldiers in the army to provide for a reasonable
rotation schedule of fresh troops into Iraq and for
other missions, such as Afghanistan.
Of course,
managing the military forces to maintain empire can be
complicated. Inevitably mistakes are made. On January
20, Lieutenant-General James R Helmly, the chief of the
Army Reserve, said that a series of mistakes in
mobilizing and managing reserves for the war in Iraq had
put the army on the brink of serious problems in
retaining those soldiers. About 10,000 reserves were
called up for active duty on less than five days'
notice. An additional 8,000 were called up but never
deployed. And of those 8,000, about half were
remobilized not long after they were taken off active
duty. Helmly said that serious problems are being
"masked" temporarily because reservists are barred from
leaving the military while their units are mobilized in
Iraq. He said that the reserve force bureaucracy bungled
the mobilization of soldiers for the war in Iraq, and
gave them a "pipe dream" instead of honest information
about how long they might have to remain there.
To rectify things, and to let reserve personnel
know up front that those halcyon days of service without
actually being deployed are now a historical memory,
Helmly wants to change the mobilization system so
members may be called to active duty for nine to 12
months every four or five years.
More bodies,
whether US, foreign soldiers, or mercenaries, as in
private military companies, are necessary. A bill by
Representative Ellen Tauscher, currently under
consideration in the House of Representatives, would add
40,000 to the army, 28,700 to the air force and 15,000
to the Marines. This overall increase of 83,700 can be
compared with the entire strength of the British army,
namely 114,000.
Newhouse News reported that the
rising cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, together
with expensive new weapons systems and other growing
commitments, is pushing military spending inexorably
upward, part of a pattern of federal spending that some
economists say threatens American and global economic
stability. That unanticipated cost is $12 billion to $19
billion this year and each year into the future as
forces rotate through the combat zones. And the Pentagon
is paying billions more for the health care of troops
mobilized from National Guard and reserve units, a
recurring charge expected to grow in the coming years.
David Isenberg, a senior analyst with
the Washington-based British American Security
Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in
arms control and national security issues.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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