The debate about what to do next in Iraq – and how long we should stay – presumes that we have the luxury of the full range of choices. We don’t. Our military is reaching its limit in Iraq, and few planners think that we can sustain the tempo of our presence there much longer. In fact, I’ve heard from reliable sources that Army plans for next year call for pulling at least 4 brigades out of Iraq – 15,000 troops – regardless of what happens with the political process or the training of the Iraqi forces. Not a full pullout, to be sure, but I think a sign of things to come.
Added to this is the growing role the military is assuming in many areas – from post-conflict reconstruction, to diplomacy, to domestic disaster relief. Today’s New York Times has a story about an Army idea to create a specially-trained disaster relief force.
Writing in this week’s Defense News, my colleague Julianne Smith and I have some thoughts about this. Here's what we say:
Our bottom line is that mission creep is back. In the wakes of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bush suggested that the military take on a bigger role in responding to natural disasters. Then his administration decided the Pentagon should assume responsibility from the State Department for providing assistance to Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries.
Given the U.S. military’s unique competencies, particularly in managing large-scale and complex operations during a crisis, these changes might make sense in the short term. But Washington’s increasing reliance on the Pentagon is setting a dangerous trend, one that is already straining the force and undermining military preparedness for its core mission — to fight and win wars.
The trend is not new. Starting in the 1990s, the military slowly started to outrank its civilian chain of command in influence, authority and resources in many parts of the world. As the State Department struggled to meet the demands of an increasingly ambitious foreign policy agenda, and labored under severe budget constraints, U.S. combatant commanders — four-star generals in charge of military forces deployed around the globe —- stepped in and became a kind of regional ambassador on steroids.
With large budgets, their own planes and enough cache to secure an appointment with anyone and everyone they pleased, these military proconsuls transformed American diplomacy. U.S. ambassadors and their embassies often became sidelined in the process and the Defense Department found itself taking on a growing list of diplomatic tasks. Today, these combatant commands, in addition to their core military missions, find themselves spending an enormous amount of time shaping U.S. foreign policy with very little coordination with other parts of the U.S. government, and even less congressional oversight.
The Pentagon has also been given the de facto lead in undertaking and managing the full range of tasks associated with stability operations like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Operations in Bosnia and Kosovo exposed the inability of other U.S. government agencies to mobilize sufficient personnel and resources for postconflict reconstruction. The Pentagon filled this void.
Yet, despite tireless efforts to learn from each mission, the U.S. military has little or no comparative advantage in many of the tasks associated with such operations, particularly those that fall outside of the security sector. With the exception of civil affairs units, the U.S. military is not adequately trained or equipped to build civil administrations, act as mayors of villages, establish a national financial system, rebuild health and sanitation infrastructure, instigate judicial reform, or hold elections.
Now, it looks like the Pentagon could soon supplement its military, reconstruction and diplomatic portfolios with domestic disaster relief responsibilities. The U.S. military’s enormous capacity to mobilize and turn on a dime is invaluable in the face of a natural disaster. But giving the military additional responsibilities at a time when it is already pushed to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan is more than just unfair to the men and women who serve and the civilians who work in other government agencies. It could lead to the worst of both worlds: a military that is both ill-prepared and overstretched.
Republicans and Democrats alike must find a way to break their habit of turning to the military every time another agency fails to prove up to the task. Instead of piling onto the Pentagon’s never-ending list of responsibilities, the Bush administration and Congress must decide to resource and empower places like the State Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Treasury, Department of Education and Department of Homeland Security.
Those agencies need to develop the confidence to serve as the lead agency in their areas of comparative advantage, and confidence can only come with capacity. The State Department, for example, needs the authority and resources to build its own civilian operational capacity. And FEMA needs to return to the status it had in the 1990s, when it was a Cabinet-level institution fully empowered and funded to take charge when disaster strikes.
America’s military is one of this county’s most important institutions, and its men and women show every day why they are the greatest fighting force in the world. We want the military to be flexible, and we want it to be able to adapt and take on different kinds of missions.
But adding more responsibilities to an already overburdened force is not in the military’s interest, nor is it in the American people’s. Given all the challenges we face at home and abroad, we need the rest of the government to work too.