Double or nothing.

• Author: Michta, Andrew A.
• Position: Future Force - Critical essay

THE UNITED States cannot afford to maintain its current strategy, planning for both traditional war and the entire spectrum of stability operations, without making it a top priority to double the current size of its armed forces. Since such an expansion of our military is unlikely, the incoming administration and Congress must seek to reduce the scope of our global commitments, redefine the War on Terror, and give the country a strategy that it can pay for and that its armed forces can implement at sustainable force levels.

Until the creeping democracy agenda of the Clinton years and the outright universalism of the neoconservative program, generations of American leaders implicitly recognized that the key to national security is regional stability, and that it rests not so much on shared democratic values but on legitimate regimes, regardless of whether they are based on democratic franchise, historical accident or simply sufficient strength to impose order.

The crucial step on the road to redefining the core requirements for the U.S. military must be rethinking the assumptions that have informed U.S. post-Cold War strategy under both Democratic and Republican administrations. We should not view American values as the immediate driver of policy. The promotion of democratic universalism in the past two decades--especially the upsurge in the regime-change strategy of the "neoconservative moment"--has put an unsustainable strain on the U.S. military.

Now, somewhere between this democratic idealism and our strained military capabilities lies a realist alternative to almost two decades of strategic meandering. This requires that we rethink the scope of our existing security commitments so that current military resources are credibly matched to strategy. Prioritizing regime legitimacy instead of democratic universalism would allow the United States to ease the burden on its military by encouraging enduring regional stability. A security policy focused on regime legitimacy would return the military back to its traditional deterrent and defensive roles, and allow it to train for a clearly defined mission.

A Mismatched Strategy

THE UNITED States is now confronted by a rise in asymmetric threats. Needing to provide post-conflict security and reconstruction, the military finds itself in urban environments where its technological advantage is quickly forfeited. Operations often require saturating the area with the maximum number of "boots on the ground." The argument that the highly trained and superbly equipped modern Western professional warrior will compensate for the paucity of numbers is being challenged daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lessons of Operation Enduring Freedom and the 2003 Iraq campaign have confirmed that the U.S. military has the ability to quickly destroy any conventional military force in its path. The problem is that in full-spectrum stability operations, traditional combat is but the initial phase in a process...