Well, I don't want to be too obtuse. My points are simple:
1. The constitution specifies very different duties to congress for raising and funding Armies vice sustaining a Navy. I don't see where that distinction is given much notice in modern debates.
2. Our Ends-Ways-Means of national strategy are IMO way off base in each of those categories and need to be reined back in to be less ideological, less controlling, less militarized.
3. Power has shifted over the years from the Congress to the Executive, most notably in terms of the modern Cold War and post Cold War conflicts that the existence of a large peacetime standing army has enabled.
4. Historically our peacetime Army has been very small and the US has never suffered due to that. Yes, "first fights" have often been difficult, but the US has never been seriously threatened by an armed foe. On the other hand, by having a large army on the shelf ready to go it has allowed the US to dive into all manner of wars of choice, from Vietnam to Iraq. The President can launch the force and then put huge pressure on the Congress to "support the troops" in combat to keep funding what the President started.
This disrupts our historic balance where a President was required to go to Congress and ask for the Congress to fund and raise an Army in order to go on such an adventure. This allows time for a national debate to occur, for emotions to stabilize, and for more appropriate COAs of full DIME to be developed and employed.
Yes, the US needs a small peacetime Regular force. This was a force that varied from 25,000 to 28,000 during the period from the Civil War to the Spanish American War. Of note, the Indian tribes fought on the frontier were a far greater threat, conducting far more egregious atrocities against American citizens and interests than anything AQ has been able to muster. The Comanche (corrected from Cheyenne) alone make AQ look like a bunch of Girl Scouts.
As I recall this number bumped up to closer to 90,000 during the next peace time era leading up to WWI. Britain with their vast Empire is better model for the US today, with around 225,000. France and Germany were well over 500,000, and Russia was something like 6 million (probably including reserves).
Bottom line is that regardless of what the final number is for the Army in peace, lets get the mission right, lets be in synch with Constitution, lets re-empower Congress and let's get serious about coming to a more appropriate overall strategy for the world as it exists today. We exaggerate VEOs and "rogue states" and are falling quickly into new era of Containment with China that completely ignores their own sphere of influence and clearly stated Red Lines.
We have 60 years of inertia pushing us on a crash course with reality, and the sooner we seek to regain control over that the better.
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