Clinton Legacy Watch # 17: Dangers of a ‘Hollow Military’
(Washington, D.C.): Even as President Clinton earnestly tries to signal determination to use
significant military power against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the message is being undercut by the
cumulative effects of his past five-years of hollowing out(1)
the U.S. armed forces. It appears that
this President, who has studiously ignored the painful lessons of history — which teach clearly that
American weakness invites aggression — is dooming his troops and his people to repeat them.
The attached article in today’s Washington Post
pointedly illuminates the Clinton legacy in this
area:
- “…The latest [Persian] Gulf conflict comes in the wake of substantial troop cuts and
rising commitments to non-combat missions in places such as Bosnia that have taxed
U.S. forces. Various Pentagon reports, congressional studies and independent
assessments have recorded evidence recently of inadequate military staffing levels,
spare parts shortages and eroding combat skills….The surge of military personnel [in
the Gulf] has left U.S. commanders in Europe and the Pacific without any carrier
presence.
“While senior military officers say the strains are not yet critical, they warn that
extending the extra deployments through the year — past any brief,
near-term bombing campaign — would significantly disrupt U.S. military
operations and erode overall readiness. Already, they say, the commitment of
resources to the Gulf has caused greater turmoil in Air Force operations
elsewhere and greater vulnerabilities in potential European and Asian
trouble spots.“
Just how great these vulnerabilities may be is underscored by the Post‘s
report that the
Pentagon has now committed to keep two carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf through 1999.
As the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jay Johnson, observed: “‘If we have a two-carrier
presence in the gulf, it means we have a zero presence somewhere else.”
Symptoms of a Hollow Military
In the current issue of National Review, John Hillen, a
decorated veteran of Operation Desert
Storm who is now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, authored a brilliant article entitled
“Hollow to the Corps.” It should be considered required reading by anyone concerned about the
adequacy of our Nation’s armed forces. Particularly valuable are Mr. Hillen’s insights into the
deleterious impact President Clinton’s policies have had on the recruitment, retention and moral —
and, therefore, the readiness — of today’s military personnel:
- “The continued truculence of Saddam Hussein highlights the precipitous erosion of the U.S.
military deterrent. Our Armed Forces could not replicate the Desert Storm force
today.
They couldn’t come even close. - “In 1998, almost all the active Army’s heavy-tank and armored-cavalry units
outside of
Korea and Bosnia would have to go to the Persian Gulf in order to equal the fighting
power of America’s VII Corps in 1991. And VII Corps was only one of
three American
corps engaged in Desert Storm. In October of 1990, before General Norman Schwarzkopf
had VII Corps, the best attack plan he could come up with was the infamous ‘Hey diddle
diddle, straight up the middle’ assault. The additional American forces sent to him in the late
fall of 1990 allowed for the unprecedented boldness of the ‘left hook’ and proved again the
truth of the old Trotskyist expression that quantity has a quality all its own. - “Even a Navy reduced by some 180 ships in seven years finds it difficult to recruit and retain
enough sailors to operate them. The Navy has missed its retention goals four years running.
Some ships are undermanned by as much as 25 per cent, especially in key areas: fire
controlmen, electronics technicians, sonar operators, intelligence specialists. Naval officers,
especially aviators, have left in record numbers; not enough are staying to staff senior positions
in the fleet. A Navy Times story chalked up the exodus to the pace of
operations and to
officers’ being ‘discouraged by changes in the culture and by funding and parts
shortages.’ - “The Air Force, although cut from 35 tactical wings to 20 in the past seven years, has similar
personnel problems. Repeated deployments have prompted a mass departure of pilots
from the service. In 1996, 498 trained pilots quit the force. By September 1997,
another 626
had walked.” (Emphasis added throughout.)
It is no longer debatable that the hollowing-out of the U.S. military is translating into a
real —
and potentially quite dangerous — decline in the war-fighting capabilities of the Nation’s armed
forces. The 19 January 1998 edition of US News & World Report featured an
article by Richard
Neuman entitled “Can Peacekeepers Make War,” which warned:
- “Throughout America’s armed forces, there is mounting evidence that
conventional combat skills — and the warrior ethic that goes with them — are
being eroded by a combination of down-sizing, budget cuts, and widespread
commitments to noncombat operations in Bosnia, the Middle East, and
elsewhere. A December report by a Senate Budget Committee analyst cited
‘extremely serious Army-wide personnel and training (i.e., readiness) problems,’ such
as units half staffed in key positions like infantry and mechanics. With troop levels
being cut to free more money for high-tech weapons systems, the report predicted,
those problems will get worse.
“Soldiers seem to agree: In a 1997 ‘leadership assessment,’ Army officers in 36
percent of a series of focus groups said their units don’t know how to fight;
nearly half of those groups expressed concern about the Army’s growing
‘hollow,’ a provocative allusion to the inept, so-called hollow force of the
1970s.”
What Passes for National Security ‘Strategy’
Mr. Hillen explores what has been behind the Clinton Administration’s hollowing out of the
U.S.
military to the point where the requirement for just one significant regional
deployment now calls
into question the Nation’s ability credibly to project power elsewhere around the world:
- “The military is beginning once again to take on the hollow feel it had in the 1970s….It
is caught in a downward spiral continuously exacerbated by a national-security
strategy that is at once an abstraction and a fabrication, a funding and readiness
crisis that steadily eats away at the ability of our forces to carry out missions
more challenging than peacekeeping, and a cultural imbroglio over issues of
identity, institutional ethos, and sexual integration.
“The U.S. now offers the world a grand strategy that is, in essence, a
gigantic bluff. With a force shrunk by some 40 per cent over the past seven
years, America promises to lead the defense of five separate regions of the world,
be prepared to defeat both Iraq and North Korea handily at almost the same time,
and take on most of the peacekeeping and humanitarian relief tasks that arise….
“Nonetheless, a bluff is not a bluff until it is called — the thought with which our
strategists comfort themselves. And U.S. strategy rests on the fragile
assumption that nothing too serious will happen anytime soon — at least, not
during this Administration. Short-term tactical planning has reached cynical
heights. The President’s official national-security strategy of “Engagement and
Enlargement” — a therapeutic document described as ‘pabulum’ by Johns Hopkins
University Professor Eliot Cohen — offers an insight into Clintonian thinking.
‘Diplomacy is our first line of defense against threats to national and international
security,’ it reads. So much for deterrence. Thus, as in the recent stand-off with
Iraq, Madeleine Albright and her black Stetson will be dispatched to bring peace
in our time, and the military can be left to the important business of ethnic
reconciliation in the Balkans. It is a strategy that assumes the triumph of good
intentions whenever the U.S. encounters a potential adversary.” (Emphasis
added.)
Will Corrective Action Now Be Taken?
In October of this past year, Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) warned that a
hollow military was
on the horizon: “We have lived off the Reagan build-up about as long as we can. The
fact is
that our defense structure is getting weaker, our equipment is getting obsolete and our
troops are stretched too thin.” He urged that additional resources be given to the
military.
The U.S. News article makes clear that even the Clinton Defense Department has
been forced to
recognize this reality(2): “A classified Pentagon memo
written after a Joint Staff war game last
spring said the game ‘made it obvious that we cannot sustain current levels of overseas presence,’
citing negative effects on ‘maintenance, personnel, and training readiness.'” To date, however,
the party line is that the Administration is determined to live within existing resources — or
less if
Congress refuses to go along with new rounds of base closures.
The Bottom Line
In fact, additional funds are not the only thing the Nation needs to give its armed forces on
the
eve of what may be a dangerous new round of confrontation with Saddam Hussein: As the
Center for Security Policy’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., told a Cato Institute
audience last
year:
- “Corrective actions in these areas will take more than just increased resources. It will
take vision and will. My unshakeable conviction is that the American people have
sufficient common sense to be willing to pay the price for a robust defense posture on
the scale available at the time of Desert Storm. All they require to make such a
sacrifice is to be told coherently, consistently and credibly that the world in which
we now live is not one free — as President Clinton persists in saying — of missile
threats and is one in which vital American interests and even our people are at
risk.
“Most especially, they require from their elected leaders and above all from
their military commanders the truth. It’s time to start telling it.”
– 30 –
1. The term “hollow army” was coined in 1978 by then-Army Chief
of Staff Edward “Shy”
Meyer to describe the effects of years of defense budget cuts. The Center for Security Policy was
proud to have Gen. Meyer participate in its recent High-Level Roundtable Discussion on the
Need for U.S. Space Control, where his courageous contribution to turning around that earlier,
deplorable military state of affairs was recognized. For more on that day-long Symposium, see
the Center’s Press Release entitled Required Reading: Center
Issues Summary of Roundtable
Discussion on the U.S. Requirement for Space Dominance (
2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch #2: The Re-Emergence Of A
Hollow U.S. Military (No. 97-D 105, 25
July 1997).
3. See the Center’s Press Release entitled
In Cato Institute Debate, Center’s Gaffney Joins
Speaker Gingrich’s Call for Increase Investment in Defense (
1997).
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