Large forces aren’t necessary—military strategy favors small forces

Force Size Does Not Equal Military Capability In 2012’s presidential debates, President Barack Obama addressed Governor Mitt Romney’s criticism about downsizing the Navy by challenging his metric: “Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers. . . . The question is not a game of Battleship. . . . It’s what our capabilities are.” Of course, it’s important to identify the appropriate end strength for the Army. But doing so in a way that directly correlates troop numbers and military strength is an error, much like the strategic miscalculation behind Saddam Hussein’s Gulf War hubris in promising the “mother of all battles” before his army’s defeat in a one-hundred-hour ground war by technologically superior rivals. Using troop numbers as a measurement of military strength, rather than as one of several components of it, owes much to overly general definitions of readiness, as the Cato Institute’s Benjamin Friedman laments: “The general concept of readiness often happens without a conversation about what the forces are for. [Advocates of a larger force] do not know exactly what they want to do, except that they want a bigger military.” Critics have pointed to the Army’s bias toward vast offensive maneuver forces as a strategic miscalculation, particularly dangerous as rivals refine hybrid and political warfare strategies to undermine America’s international influence, circumvent our conventional dominance, and exploit vulnerabilities within democratic societies. Operations targeting our electoral system, like Russia’s Translator Project, offer disproportionate strategic returns on investment; in 2016, just eighty people targeted millions of Americans in “purple states” on social media. While the US Army has organic information operations capabilities, a Rand Corporation review discovered US strategy tends to focus externally and neglect attacks against “zones of interior” (i.e., the US homeland) leaving our strategy “incomplete” and “of declining relevance to the likely future international strategic environment.” The global operating environment and the character of warfare are changing—and the military has a vital role to play amid rising levels of global competition. And as the Army rightly embraces new capabilities, like the security force assistance brigades and expansion of cyber operations, it may be time to reconsider the way it conceptualizes military capability, and the role that troop numbers play in that framework.