Is The Army Stretched Too Thin?

Deep inside the Pentagon, where young colonels arrive before dawn to revise once more the short list of available combat units ready to deploy overseas, a nightmare scenario hangs in the air, unmentioned but unmistakable. With 140,000 U.S. troops tied down stabilizing Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 10,000 in Afghanistan and 5,000 in the Balkans, what good options would George W. Bush have if, say sometime next spring, North Korea's Kim Jong Il decided to test the resilience of the relatively small "trip-wire" force of 37,000 American troops in South Korea? Where would the Pentagon turn if it had to rush additional combat troops to the 38th parallel? Might a lack of ready reinforcements force Washington to consider using nuclear weapons to save South Korea from defeat?

This is what strategic planning looks like in the world after 9/11. The military is extended to its limits as the U.S. invades lands that are--or might be--bases for terrorists or suppliers of unconventional arms, and then sticks around until certain they aren't. Even without new missions, the armed services are straining to handle the ones they have. The U.S. military proved in its 21-day march to Baghdad that its infantrymen, tankers and artillerymen can be brilliantly efficient when called upon to conquer a country. But America lacks the cleanup crews--the military police, the civil-affairs experts, the engineering units and all the other street-by-street peacekeepers--needed to occupy whole countries for months if not years, particularly if gratitude is not always the local custom.

And so, rather suddenly and for the first time in 35 years, U.S. military leaders are talking about increasing troop strength, not so much to fight wars as to do mop-up. To some politicians and commentators, the bombing of the lightly guarded U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last week was an argument for increasing not only the U.S. presence in Iraq but the overall size of the military too. Officially, the Pentagon insisted that neither was necessary. But the Bush Administration tacitly conceded that the U.S. needed help when, after the bombing, it renewed efforts to win support for a U.N. resolution that could pave the way for India, Pakistan and Turkey to send troops to Iraq.

As for the idea of expanding the Army generally, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is opposed. "The Joint Chiefs do tabletop exercises--they have done two or three recently," Rumsfeld said in an interview with TIME last week. "The analysis thus far says that we have sufficient forces to do the assigned missions." At the same time, Rumsfeld is considering a series of reforms that would effectively enlarge the fighting forces. One key change would turn many soldiers who are doing administrative and technical jobs in the Army into real fighters and replace them with civilians. That would keep the Army's head count flat but beef up the U.S. war machine.