http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-menon16jul16.storyFitting the Military to Reality (368,900 U.S. troops in 120 countries)
By Rajan Menon, Rajan Menon, a New America Foundation fellow, is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University.
At a congressional hearing July 7, the Army's new vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard A. Cody, answered the rhetorical question of whether U.S. military forces were stretched too thin with a resounding "absolutely."
It doesn't take the genius of Clausewitz to figure out what's obvious: With 135,000 troops assigned to the war in Iraq, 17,000 in Afghanistan, 37,500 in South Korea, 47,000 in Japan and 100,000 in Europe, saying that we are overstretched is putting it mildly. In all, there are 368,900 U.S. troops in 120 countries. <snip>
Nearly 40% of the available National Guard and Reserve forces have been tapped for missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. So-called stop-loss policies have been implemented to prevent soldiers from leaving units that have received orders to deploy. The Pentagon has called up 5,600 soldiers from post-active duty "retirement." And policy wonks have brought up reinstituting the draft, though, for political reasons, this effort is unlikely to gain footing.
All of our problems in Iraq cannot be blamed on insufficient forces — the reliance on 135,000 troops to wage a counterinsurgency in a country of 25 million people and an area larger than California. It doesn't help that as yet no Iraqi troops with the numerical strength and training to serve as true partners have emerged. As American casualties in Iraq mount, it will be harder to get people to enlist or reenlist. And for those already engaged in combat, insufficient numbers make the inherent risks of war greater still.<snip>