Come Partly Home, America: How to Downsize U.S. Deployments Abroad

During last year's presidential campaign, then Texas Governor George W. Bush pilloried the Clinton administration for its supposed mishandling of the nation's armed forces. Alleging that U.S. troops were no longer ready to respond to major conflicts, in August Bush listed his complaints about the status quo: "Lack of equipment and material. Undermanning of units. Overdeployment. Not enough time for family. Soldiers who are on food stamps, and soldiers who are poorly housed."

To help solve these problems, Bush proposed slightly higher defense spending. He also argued for cutting back on overseas military deployments -- particularly those involved in peacekeeping. As incoming National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told The New York Times in October, "The United States is the only power that can handle a showdown in the [Persian] Gulf, mount the kind of force that is needed to protect Saudi Arabia, and deter a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. And extended peacekeeping detracts from our readiness for these kinds of global missions." Incoming Secretary of State Colin Powell has also weighed in, stating that "our plan is to undertake a review right after the president is inaugurated and take a look not only at our deployments in Bosnia but in Kosovo and many other places around the world, and make sure those deployments are proper. Our armed forces are stretched rather thin, and there is a limit to how many of these deployments we can sustain."

Many of the Bush team's criticisms of Clinton's military legacy went too far. For example, although overall readiness is indeed down from its early-1990s peak, by most measures -- training rates, the condition of equipment, the experience and aptitude of troops -- it remains comparable to Reagan-era levels, when there was still a Cold War to fight. Meanwhile, the charge that the Clinton administration wantonly deployed forces around the world for peace operations was also greatly exaggerated. Today, as a decade ago, the vast majority of American military personnel deployed abroad are not participating in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans or anywhere else. Rather, they are protecting the United States' core interests and allies on long-standing and eminently sensible missions.