Despite manpower challenge, U.S. Army needs a long-term commitment to Afghanistan
Jeremy Barnicle

Because of its global obligations, the U.S. Army faces an impending manpower crisis. As the Pentagon considers possible solutions, it should start by taking any significant reductions in the Afghanistan deployment off the table. Without a sustained international military presence (with a major contribution from the United States), recent progress towards democracy and reconstruction is endangered.

A new report from the Century Foundation on the manpower crisis in the U.S. Army notes that the American military has been dealing with the most demanding set of deployments since the Vietnam era. The pace and duration of units' in-theater deployments have gone precipitously upwards, and the Pentagon has relied heavily on "stop-loss" orders that require soldiers to stay in the service after their enlistment has expired. Members of the Reserves and the National Guard have been deployed in unprecedented numbers.

As a result, the military, especially the Army, has seen a drop in morale, new recruits, and re-enlistments among current soldiers. Most military analysts agree that a crisis is on the horizon for manpower in the U.S. military.

In order to address this problem, the U.S. either must expand its force, convince allies to make greater contributions to global military operations, or reduce its existing commitments.

Of these possible solutions, the third has the strongest implications for Afghanistan, where a temporarily expanded American force contributed to largely peaceful presidential election two weeks ago.

Despite the challenges facing the U.S. military, the next administration must make a commitment to provide the Afghans with the security they need to let democracy take root. NATO is a valuable partner in providing security in Afghanistan, but its members have demonstrated that they lack the means or the political will (or both) to get the job done without a major American contribution.

Earlier this week in Ottawa, Major General Andrew Leslie, a Canadian who was second in command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, told the Washington Post, "the West and NATO are looking at a 10- to 20-year commitment in Afghanistan." Leslie has also said ISAF needs an additional 5,000 troops to provide adequate security.

Several time zones away, Lt. General David Barno, commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, told a Pentagon press conference he projected U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan-currently about 18,000-would stay constant until there was evidence of "Taliban reconciliation"—some sustained indication that the Taliban threat had diminished—which he thought would be demonstrated over the next 6-9 months.

Even if the Taliban threat subsides, the Afghans will need a sizable U.S. military footprint until local forces are more robust. Illegal opium production is booming, with profits financing private regional militias. U.N.-sponsored disarmament of those private armies is having little effect, and the indigenous Afghan security forces are small and growing slowly. Whatever power Hamid Karzai's government exerts beyond Kabul is derived from the implicit, and sometimes explicit, threat of U.S. military intervention.

There is little evidence to suggest that the Afghan National Army or police will be able to impose the rule of law, as defined by the elected central government, on warlords and narco-traffickers in the provinces any time soon. To make Afghanistan a success, the central government needs supplementary muscle—that will come in part from the U.S. Army. The question of the U.S. military's capacity for a sustained deployment in Afghanistan needs to be how, not if.

As Gen. Leslie pointed out in his talk, the situation is worse in Afghanistan than it was in Bosnia (in terms of destruction, lack of local security capacity, heavily armed factions) and that operation has gone on for almost a decade The U.S. military—looming manpower crisis notwithstanding—needs to make a comparable commitment to Kabul.