By Alexander B. Gray
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
When it comes to our national-defense priorities,
constrained budgets inevitably encourage strategic myopia and the use of axes
over scalpels to make cuts. But no military service is more accustomed to the
blow of the budget gnomes’ battle ax than the U.S. Marine Corps, which is
forced to justify its existence whenever conflicts end or the nation faces
tough economic times. As the Obama administration frantically seeks to wind
down America’s commitments in Afghanistan and the Defense Department finds itself
disproportionately targeted for spending cuts, the Marines are once again in
danger.
The Obama administration’s original $487 billion in
Pentagon cuts will eventually reduce the Marines’ strength by 20,000 men.
Sequestration, set to take effect on March 1, will force another $40 billion in
cuts this year alone. Add to this the very real possibility that Congress will
again fund the government through a continuing resolution, extending the
previous year’s insufficient funding levels, rather than passing a new budget.
While all the military services will be seriously damaged by this perfect storm
of poor policy, the Marines will be especially damaged. More than a decade of
grueling, constant conflict in unforgiving mountains and deserts has left the
Corps with over 60 percent of its equipment requiring substantial repair and
reconstitution. Sequestration is poised to cut $854 million, or about 9
percent, from the Marines’ maintenance accounts, with a new continuing
resolution further squeezing the Corps.
The Marines’ current predicament has been played out
often throughout their 237-year history. Originally employed on Navy warships
as military policemen and snipers, the Marines quickly found their niche in
amphibious landing. From their first landing on the island of New Providence in
the Bahamas during the American Revolution to the Pacific “island hopping”
campaigns of World War II, the Marines have played a unique role in projecting
American land power in otherwise maritime environments. But the very qualities
that have given them a special place in the American popular imagination —
ferocity in battle, unquestionable loyalty to mission and country — leave them
open to attack from Washington bean-counters and self-interested bureaucrats.
In conflicts from World War I to Vietnam, and from the First Gulf War to the
current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marines have found themselves
prized for their fighting qualities but employed as a “second land Army”
pursuing decidedly non-amphibious operations. While they’ve been among the most
successful practitioners of counterinsurgency, their apparent
interchangeability with the Army has left them vulnerable to those seeking
savings from the defense budget.
The Marines’ critics have relied on the same lines of
attack for years. After World War II, Louis Johnson, President Truman’s defense
secretary, argued that the Army had actually conducted a larger share of
amphibious landings in the Pacific than the Marines had and that, in any event,
the future of warfare made the Marines’ principal mission outdated. Therefore,
Johnson (working for the avowedly anti-Marine Truman) concluded that
eliminating the Corps entirely would have no serious consequences for U.S.
security. Just five years later, Marines under Douglas MacArthur’s command
executed one of the most extraordinary amphibious landings of all time at
Inchon. But the enduring necessity of an amphibiously oriented specialist force
has always seemed to escape policymakers dealing with tough economic times or
eager for a “peace dividend.” The
anti-Marine faction is a persistent presence across American military history:
On surprisingly numerous occasions it has proposed abolishing the Marines
entirely, and at other times it has simply tried to starve the Corps of resources.
The sad irony is that the Marines’ amphibious
capabilities are becoming more important, not less. The much-needed “pivot” to
Asia that President Obama seems determined to attempt with a hollowed-out
military will require the Marines to return to their amphibious roots; the vast
island chains and millions of square miles of ocean of the Asia-Pacific region
dictate as much. Furthermore, the Pentagon’s newest doctrine, “Air-Sea Battle,”
while seen primarily as a Navy and Air Force strategy, will still require the
physical control of territory that only the Marines can provide. This control
will most likely be achieved in the same way it has been since the Corps was
created nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago: by sending Marines ashore from
Navy ships.
But like so many elements of our military, the Navy’s
physical capacity to support the Marines’ expeditionary mission has been
allowed to atrophy. While the Navy has long maintained that 38 amphibious ships
were necessary to support the Marines’ expeditionary mission, it now says they
need only 33, and the force currently fields 30. The various auxiliary ships
required to support amphibious operations, from mobile-landing platforms to the
pre-positioning ships that store the logistical supplies of a Marine
expeditionary unit, have also been subject to lowered requirements that remain
unmet. In an increasingly Pacific-centric security environment, the Navy and
Marine Corps are fielding woefully inadequate amphibious capabilities for the
challenges ahead.
Those who would solve our fiscal problems at the expense
of our military should remember that politicians have an abysmal track record
of anticipating the future of warfare and preparing for it. Harry Truman and
Louis Johnson failed to see that the Marines’ amphibious niche would remain
essential in the new Cold War era, and today’s Marine antagonists fail to see
the importance of this core mission in our current security environment. Our
political leaders would do well to learn from the misjudgments of their
predecessors and remember that a strong America requires a robust expeditionary
capability. It requires the U.S. Marine Corps.
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