Insights from the Army's Drawdowns

Abstract

Abstract: This article provides five insights extracted from discussions concerning the Army's long history of drawdowns. Perhaps the most important take-away is the Army can, and should, use the current drawdown constructively. ********** With the termination of the recent campaign in Iraq and the winnowing of forces in Afghanistan, the US military faces a drawdown of standing force structure and capabilities. The policy debate concerning how best to carry out this force reduction, however, lacks proper historical perspective. Twenty-four civilian historians and military professionals recently offered such a perspective by focusing on previous drawdowns over the span of American history. Beginning with a consideration of the cyclical nature of drawdowns and whether a crisis mentality is warranted in such periods, three major questions emerged. Was the attempt to preserve military effectiveness during drawdowns contradictory to traditional American values? Given the reoccurrence of force reductions in American history, how did the military best preserve combat capabilities? What was the relationship between the regular standing Army and militia/National Guard forces, and how did these reflect broader attitudes towards the military? Insights from the discussions follow. (1) 1. The drawdown of American forces has been a cyclical part of the nation's military experience. Whether they allowed colonial forts to fall into disrepair or furloughed hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened Union troops after the US Civil War, Americans historically have tightened their financial belts at the conclusion of major conflicts. This attitude reflects traditional Anglo-American values dating back to the late-Middle Ages in England. Latent fears of regular armies surfaced before the Revolutionary War with both the Quartering Act and the Boston Massacre. Americans carried these attitudes forward into the twenty-first century. The debate over the US military establishment has never been a purely rational one with biases inherent in the American cultural framework. Concerns over previous drawdowns have not run counter to traditional American values, and have not always been justified even by initial combat effectiveness. For example, the Kennedy/Johnson administrations reversed conventional drawdowns of the Eisenhower era in time to create the most competent US Army ever to engage in the initial battle of any war up to 1965. American forces also met with initial successes in 2001 and 2003 after a decade of drawdowns, paralleling the US experience nearly forty years earlier. However, American forces have not always reconstituted effectively for battle. Significant drawdowns left the Army unprepared for initial campaigns in the early 1790s against Native Americans, the War of 1812, the US Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean War. Significantly, these wars ended in American military victory, indicating the initial risk of fielding forces based on reduced military infrastructure, though costly in first battles, has often been acceptable in terms of overall strategic costs. Put differently, US foreign policy and national strategy objectives often exceeded military means. There was unanimous agreement among conference participants on this point. 2. Competition between the Regular Army and National Guard (militia) has always been part of the American military discourse. A number of scholars highlighted the historical importance of this competition. This debate is both rational and irrational as it stems from Anglo-Americans' historic preference for virtuous militia over suspect standing armies, while overlooking the sometimes poor initial military performance of militia/National Guard forces. A serving officer's presentation detailed how the relationship between active and reserve components works best in a complementary (but not interchangeable) arrangement. …