Missile material: land-to-air missiles in Tokyo, April 2012. (Toru Hani / Courtesy Reuters)
Traditionally, the core purpose of the U.S. Army has been to fight and win the United States' wars. Since World War II, this has meant planning for overseas operations to defend friendly countries against invasion, seize and hold territory, and overthrow despotic regimes. But the protracted counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, like the one in Vietnam a generation earlier, marked a departure from the army's preferred way of war. Today, with U.S. forces out of Iraq and leaving Afghanistan, an intense debate is under way about what kind of army the United States needs.
The answer, according to most analysts, is a smaller and lighter one. The Obama administration's "pivot" toward Asia, a region traditionally dominated by air and naval forces, suggests a lesser role for the army in carrying out U.S. strategy. So does
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