Size has always been a poor characteristic to define wars by, as it offers few clues as to what type of conflict it is, and thereby what types of approaches or forces are most likely to achieve the desired effects.
We need a force designed for the world we live in today, and one designed also to deter the types of threats we see in the future. This is why we sustained a war fighting army through the peace of the Cold War. With the adoption of a containment strategy we also adopted the geo-strategic reality of our allies - which means we surrendered the geo-strategic advantages of our own. We need to understand that. We need to think about what type of decisions that drove, why it drove them, and what, if any, of that thinking is still valid to our situation today.
Nuclear forces and capabilities exist not to be used. Their function is purely that of deterrence of other nuclear states, and so need to be kept to the minimum amount necessary to perform that function. I suspect we could find additional savings there.
Land forces are to seize and hold ground. They do not offer much of a deterrent effect, IMO. Nations like those of the Eurasian landmass have a geo-strategic challenge that the US does not. Good fences make good neighbors, and in many cases no such "fences" exist. Said another way, the US possesses a geo-strategic advantage that others do not. Geo-strategy has become a neglected art. Some, like George Friedman, are notable exceptions, but by in large the US today looks at the world as if we were still defined by the geostrategic realities of our Cold War mission, allies and opponents.
I don't think we need a USMC sized, trained organized and equipped to re-fight the battle of Iwo Jima. Nor do I think we need a US Army sized, trained organized and equipped to re-fight Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom (both conflicts of choice, not necessity).
We need to stop building forces and arguments on invalid arguments and assumptions. We need to do our strategic homework free of the inertia and bias that dominates our "strategic" thinking today.
But DC is a land of inertia. DC is a land of bias. Good Cold Warriors dominate the scene, though they now vie for space with those who see "terrorism" in every national movement or non-state organization that dares to challenge our interpretation of what "right" looks like. QDR is certainly not an unbiased assessment. It is a competition of service advocacy framed by a crossfire of formal and informal policy advocacy advancing some line of inertia and bias or another.
That dynamic is unlikely to change much. But we can lay a better strategic foundation to build upon. That is within our power to do, yet no one is doing it. Not at Defense. Not at State. Not at any of the many think tanks (so far as I have seen). Everything needs to be on the table as we look at who we are, who we want to be, and the world we will do that within. Sacred cows will be slaughtered and new ones will emerge.
Personally, I think we can do very well with a much smaller Army. I think that much of our peacetime expeditionary work can be done by SOF and USMC forces tailored for that role. I don't think there is a large demand signal for "building partner capacity" or "counterterrorism" either one. Some demand to be sure, but it is one that is best seen as narrowly defined and limited to avoid the dangers associated with excesses on either line of operation. We don't need a navy designed to patrol the brown water of the world, nor to go head to head with China of their coast. Similarly our tactical air power needs to be designed for the tactical air missions we live with, not the ones Air Force general fantasize about. But first we need to wipe the strategic slate clean, roll up our strategic sleeves, and do our strategic homework.
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