Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 6/5/2007
No good reason to boost Army, Marine Corps end strength
January 2007
Project on Defense Alternatives
Abstract
1. A new direction or more shoulders to the wheel?
President Bush’s request to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 personnel follows on the heels of similar proposals by Congress members of both parties. Despite the bipartisan appeal of this idea, it is not at all clear what problem it is intended to solve or how it is supposed to solve it. Advocates may believe that America’s troubles in Iraq provide reason enough to “grow” the Army and Marine Corps. But this view misconstrues both the lessons of that war and America’s true security needs.
Certainly, boosting the Army and Marine Corps has a political utility for the President and his opponents, alike. Most immediately: the President needs to sustain Pentagon support for investing more bodies in the Iraqi cauldron. Both parties hope to curry favor with military constituencies and to convey an impression of hard-nosed realism (albeit belatedly in the case of the White House).
