As
Billmon and
Atrios both link to this
USA Today article that states the Pentagon has stopped the rotation of 24,000 US soldiers from Kuwait back to garrison bases in the US and Europe in order to maintain a strategic reserve for Iraq, I have a question; what other crisis points are they uncovering. What is the opportunity cost of this action?
According to the
Global Security US Order of Battle as of March 25, 2004, the two major units which are in the process of
rotating right now are the 4th Infantry Division which is responsible for the central northeastern part of the country, and the 82cd Airborne Division which was responsible until two weeks ago for the western central part of the country. The 4th Infantry has handed off completely to the 1st Infantry Division while the 82cd Airborne has handed off to the 1st Marine Divsion.
Both the two withdrawing divisions that are now on hold have been in the theatre for eleven to thirteen months, and elements of the 82cd Airborne have deployed to Iraq, fought, withdrawn and then been redeployed and withdrawing back to Kuwait. I would wager that the 82cd Airborne is the more likely unit to be sent back into Iraq because they are a light infantry formation which is used to conducting patrols on foot. The 4th Mech Infantry is tied to its tanks and Bradleys by nature although they must have improvised their operational patterns in the past year. We must remember that these are tired troops who expect to see their families soon and whose families are expecting to see them.
So if we are to assume that this is more than a smart piece of contigency planning that goes into the circular file next week, what are the opportunity costs of sending elements of one or both divisions back into combat? First, it means that the reconstitution of the US Army will be further delayed. Right now the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Air Assault are combat ineffective as they are spending time recuperating from being in Iraq. Elements of these units are short personal, equipment and training. It will take the 3rd Infantry another month or two to be ready. The 101st Air Assault needs another four to six months at the very least until it can be 100% effective as a divisional unit. The original Army plan was to get the 4th Infantry and the 82cd Airborne home in the next two weeks and have them spend the next eight months recuperating. So the first order effect will be a one for one delay in reachieving a strategic reserve.
Secondly, these are troops who have been in theatre and combat for 12 months now for some elements of the 82cd Airborne and 11 months for the rest. They are tired, they are stressed out, and they most likely have a strong desire to see their families again. The 3rd Infantry was pissed and morale was extremely low when their deployment kept on getting extended, so it is safe to assume that the two holdover divisions will not be happy campers if it is a long holdover. Unhappy campers in anything that looks like a quasi-decent job market do not reenlist in sufficiently high numbers which then increases total costs and decreases combat effectiveness of the entire Army. This is the cost side of the equation.
The second order problem is opportunity costs. The US military is overextended and it can not cover its responsibilities nor effectively respond to even minor crisis without throwing major monkey wrenches into everything else that they are doing. Right now Afganistan is waiting for a Marine Expeditionary Unit to arrive on scene to reinforce the conventional forces on the ground, but that battalion may be sent to Iraq. The 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy, recently returned from Iraq and is not capable of projecting signficant combat power into Kosovo if need be. The two divisions in Kuwait and their reconstitution will provide some more flexibility as there are effectively no readily available reinforcements in the Pacific theatre for South Korea right now, nor is there any rapidly deployable forces that could jump into Sudan to prevent another genocide.
The two divisions being held in Kuwait do not give the US any flexibility tomorrow morning if they are sent back to Ft. Bragg and Ft. Hood. However they give the US some immediate flexibility as the window of vulnerability would start to close again instead of staying constantly open.
Finally, if the two divisions are not sufficient, then there really is not many US combat forces in the world that are both combat effective and deployable. There are two brigades in Korea which can not move. The 2cd Marine Division might be able to deploy in 60 days while a weak brigade of the 10th Mountain might be able to move faster than that. After that, the cupboard is completely bare for at least another four months.
Cross-post and further analysis at Fester's Place