The United States, arguably the most powerful state in the world today, has a problem. At great cost it has built a military that is second to none in its capabilities with a potentially critical weakness: it is prone to “overstretch.” Overstretch is the general term used to describe what happens when excessive demands are placed on something to the point of injury or failure. For example, Yale University historian Paul Kennedy argued that empires are prone to “imperial overstretch,” where their expansion results in military and economic commitments that exceed their capacity, resulting in either their collapse or being superseded by a rival (Kennedy 1987). Military overstretch can take one of two forms. Simple overstretch, where the military lacks enough capabilities to perform the mission(s) it is tasked with, and compound overstretch, where a state seeks to stretch inadequate military capabilities to perform a mission well beyond the scope of their traditional missions (Wilson 2013, p. 23). Since the end of the Cold War, the US military has repeatedly suffered from overstretch whenever it has been asked to perform what by historical standards are quite moderate missions, and it will continue to do so in the future if nothing changes.
This book explores how and why the United States has built a military prone to overstretch. It focuses on one critical factor, the consistent emphasis on gaining and maintaining technological superiority. The US military has consistently seen technology as the solution to military problems such as the challenges offered by potential foes ranging from the Soviet Union to Iran. I argue that this effort to maintain a technologically superior military capable of dealing with all potential foes is directly responsible for the instances of overstretch since the end of the Cold War. I further argue that absent major changes in military procurement and force structure, it has become almost inevitable that overstretch will occur any time the American military is asked to conduct sustained operations much more extensive than routine deployments and training. This fixation on achieving technological superiority is the result of pro-technology attitudes that are deeply rooted in American culture. As such, the search for technological superiority is neither an accident of history nor is it a natural solution to the various military problems facing the United States. Instead, it is a natural expression of the very materialistic American “way of war,” and as such it will be very difficult to reform the procurement process and the military to make overstretch less likely.
The vulnerability of the US military to overstretch became apparent fairly soon after the occupation of Iraq, though there were instances in the 1990s that should have raised warning flags. In December 2003, Jeffrey Record of the Strategic Studies Institute (U.S. Army War College) and U.S. Air Force Air War College suggested that unexpected post-war requirements for ground forces in Iraq were stressing the U.S. Army “to the breaking point” (Record 2003, p. 39). Rather than dissipating as the occupation of Iraq progressed, they continued and, by late 2004, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution was arguing that the demands on the Army risked “breaking the all-volunteer force” (O’Hanlon 2004, p. 10). These concerns about overstretch persisted for the next several years, until the end of the Iraq occupation and the drawdown in Afghanistan reduced the stress on the U.S. Army (Haddick 2009; Isenberg 2007; Kagan 2006; Korb and Ogden 2006).
This raises an important question: why was the U.S. Army stressed by conducting operations in Iraq to the point that analysts worried about “breaking” it? The United States spends far more on national defense than any other country in the world, over $646 billion in 2018 (almost 36% of total world defense expenditures in 2016, the latest year available) (Office of the Undersecretary of Defense [Comptroller] 2017, p. 6; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2017). In size, the United States has the third largest military in the world, after China and India (two states with at least four times the population of the United States) (Total available active military manpower by country 2018), though its Army is a much smaller share of the total US military than is the case for most countries.1 Because of its size and technological sophistication, the US military is typically considered to be the most powerful military in the world by far. If any country should be able to handle the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan without too much trouble, it is the United States. Nevertheless, while the fears of “breaking” the Army turned out to be overblown the U.S. Army was severely stressed during the eight years when it was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This is particularly interesting because the much larger deployment into the Middle East to conduct Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990–1991 caused no such strain.
The fundamental problem is that the US military, particularly the Army, was simply too small for the missions it was asked to perform during the occupation of Iraq. From 2003 to 2010, the United States generally had between 150,000 and 180,000 troops (mostly from the Army and Marine Corps) deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan (Belasco 2009). In addition, up to 120,000 more personnel were deployed to the region in support of operations in those countries, for a total of up to 300,000 military personnel deployed to perform those two missions. In addition, the US military has roughly another 160,000 personnel deployed outside the United States on more or less permanent assignments in East Asia (81,000 personnel), Europe (66,000 personnel), Africa (11,000 personnel), and the Western Hemisphere (2300 personnel) (Defense Manpower Data Center 2018). US overseas deployments thus peaked at around 460,000 military personnel between 2003 and 2010, though some of those forces in Europe and East Asia were available for other missions if need be. Since 2010, the number of personnel deployed overseas has decreased but still total some 240,000 (The Editorial Board 2017).
To accomplish these missions, the US military had up to 1.45 million active duty personnel (currently about 1.3 million) and 850,000 reserve personnel (currently just over 800,000) (Office of the Undersecretary of Defense [Comptroller] 2017). That sounds like plenty of personnel to support those overseas missions, but in reality it would put some stress on the US military even if the total force were being utilized. The U.S. Army considers the demands on its personnel to be at a “steady state” level (meaning they can be conducted indefinitely) when the “active” to “dwell” ratio is 1:3 for its active duty troops and 1:5 for reserve troops. This means that active duty personnel should not spend more than one out of four years in what it euphemistically calls “full-spectrum” operations (e.g. combat zones) and reserve component troops should not be on active duty more than one out of every six years (of which they are only available for operations for nine months). If we extend this to the US military as a whole, at its peak size in the last decade it would be able to maintain a rotation of 362,500 active duty and 106,250 reserve troops available for operations indefinitely. That is very close to the estimated 460,000 military personnel deployed during the peak of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, so why did these wars pose such a burden?
The simple answer is that the burden of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan did not fall evenly across the US military. Because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were counterinsurgency campaigns, the main burden of fighting these wars fell on the Army (Baiocchi 2013; Belasco 2009). The Marine Corps was also a significant participant in these operations, especially compared to the Air Force and Navy, but the percentage of the Corps deployed for these operations at any time was much lower than that of the Army. Because the majority of the troops deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) were Army personnel, a mission which would have only put minor stress on the US military as a whole put a lot of stress on the Army. At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, the Army had a total strength of just over 1 million (480,000 active duty, plus 550,000 in the Army Reserve and National Guard) (O’Hanlon 2004, p. 5).2 The peak strength of the active duty Army was 566,000 in 2010–2011 (Office of the Undersecretary of Defense [Comptroller] 2017, pp. 246–248).3 The Marine Corps had about 175,000 active duty troops in 2003 (plus 40,000 reserves), increasing to 203,000 in 2009, so the total active duty ground forces available for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other missions around the world (Korea, Okinawa, at sea Marine Expeditionary Units, training missions around Africa and the Western Hemisphere, etc.) was at most a little over 750,000. From 2004 through 2010, the combined (Army and Marine) troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan ranged from 146,000 to 188,000, averaging just under 167,000 per year (Baiocchi 2013; Belasco 2009). In 2006, the Army had roughly 120,000 troops deployed in Iraq, at least 15,000 in Afghanistan, and another 64,000 deployed elsewhere in the world (Congress of the United States: Congressional Budget Office 2007; Isenberg 2007, p. 14). To support this deployment of 199,000 troops the Army had 505,000 active duty forces available, far short of the nearly 800,000 required for such a deployment rate to be indefinitely sustainable.4 Even if we assume a “surge rate” rotation is acceptable, which accepts some wear and tear on the Army in exchange for a higher deployment rate, the active duty forces were still nearly 100,000 personnel short of the 600,000 needed to sustain that deployment rate. Reserve and National Guard forces were not able to make up the shortfall because they had already been heavily used. Roughly 95% of the National Guard’s combat troops had already been mobilized by 2006, and some had already hit ...