Footprint: The Impact of Troop Numbers
Charles W. King
President Trump has recently transferred responsibility for the number of American troops deployed to Afghanistan to the Pentagon, precipitating a likely increase in the number of American soldiers there. This dismays those who would like to see the United States draw down its presence in Afghanistan, which has cost the US a tremendous amount of blood and treasure since the invasion in 2001, but it is worth examining why American commanders in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been so insistent on the need for large deployments of American troops to those conflicts.
Historically, the United States has relied on quality instead of quantity as for its armed forces. The US Navy was founded on the backbone of six innovative and expensive frigates. Even during World War Two when the US instituted conscription American GIs had more training than their Allied counterparts and vastly more tons of war materiel per soldier than any other belligerent. Supplying American soldiers with excellent training and inexhaustible supplies of rations, rifles, tanks, destroyers, and planes increased the combat effectiveness American forces many times over. This contrasts with the Soviet Red Army during the early years of the war, which possessed legions of able fighting men, but scant resources with which to equip them. Since World War Two the US has only increased the amount of investment, in training and materiel, per soldier. It is estimated to cost nearly $10 million to train an American Special Forces soldier.
At first glance the quality of each American soldier is the obvious reason why American commanders constantly requested more of them during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are, after all, limits on the effect a single soldier can have, regardless of how much training and equipment they have. However this ignores the nature of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without front lines and traditional engagements they had less in common with like World War Two, the Korean War, or even Vietnam than they did with peacekeeping operations. The most successful peacekeeping operations in American history are the NATO operations in the Balkans in the 1990’s. They also have the highest ratio of troops to population of any peacekeeping operation.
Different of military operations have different requirements and increase or decrease the effect of different factors. Covert infiltrations are best performed by small groups of highly trained soldiers with extensive surveillance support. Fighting the Soviet Union in Europe would have required a great deal of anti-armor capabilities. Peacekeeping requires boots on the ground. This is because peacekeeping has more in common with policing than it does soldiering much of the time. American police chiefs have long understood that an increased visible presence reduces crime, while not necessarily affecting the arrest rate. This is because this visible presence has a deterrent effect. The same is true in peacekeeping operations. The more peacekeepers there are, the more deterrent value they have, and the less they have to engage in combat actions.
This is borne out not only by NATO operations in the Balkans, but also in the effects of past surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. The question American policy-makers are asking should not be whether or not to deploy more troops. More troops will increase the likelihood of achieving strategic objectives and reduce the rate of casualties. The question should be whether the United States is willing to spend the blood and treasure required to achieve the results it desires.