Pentagon Plans To Reduce the Size of the Army

The New York Times
is reporting that the Pentagon plans to reduce the Army to its
smallest size since before the Second World War.

According to the Times, the new Pentagon spending
proposals, which have been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
will ensure that the U.S. is capable of defending itself while
being too small to engage in long-term foreign occupations like
those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the Times:

The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the
condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes
into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the
political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and
exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a
military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for
protracted foreign occupations.

An unnamed official told the Times that the reduced
Army will “be agile. It will be capable. It will be modern. It will
be trained.” This sounds similar to the sort of military force that
the French recently deployed in Mali and the Central African
Republic. First class, but not equipped for nation
building. 

The proposals will reportedly shrink the Army to between 440,000
and 450,000 troops in the coming years. The Army’s highest number
of troops post-9/11 was 570,000.

The U.S. is not the only country planning to cut the size of its
army. The British government is planning on reducing the size of
the
British Army to 82,000 by 2020. In 2010, the British Army had
102,260 troops. The decision was criticized by former Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates, who said that the reductions would hamper the
U.K.’s ability to be a “full partner” with the U.S.

Although the Obama administration is planning on reducing the
size of the Army, this should not be taken as a sign that the U.S.
will be withdrawing from foreign engagements. Since taking office
President Obama has demonstrated that he is not shy about using

Special Forces and drones
in order to implement a foreign policy that, although not as
focussed on foreign occupation as his predecessor’s, is
interventionist and overly involved.

Even with the proposed reductions implemented, the U.S. Army
will still be one of the largest in the world, and U.S. military
spending will still be much larger than any
other country’s.