Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Preventing Proactive Moves

By Mark Mazzetti

The Los Angeles Times: Monday 02 May 2005

    In a sober assessment of the Pentagon's ability to deal with global threats, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers concluded that the American military is at greater risk this year than last year of being unable to properly execute the missions for which it must prepare around the globe.

    The assessment stated that the military is at "significant risk" of being unable to prevail against enemies abroad in the manner that Pentagon war plans mandate.

    Pentagon officials said that the analysis - the latest assessment of military risk that the Pentagon sends each year to Congress - concluded that the United States military would still be able to win any war the president asked it to fight. It would just be more difficult to win in the time frame and with the number of troops detailed in the Pentagon's myriad contingency plans.

    "The assessment is that we would succeed, but there would be higher casualties and more collateral damage," said one senior Defense official. "We would have to win uglier."

    The analysis reflects at a strategic level the strains on manpower, equipment and other capabilities that have been highly visible during the continuing struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The new assessment, which comes amid rising tensions with Iran and North Korea over the advances both countries have made in developing nuclear weapons, does not conclude that the military is at a greater risk of being unable to carry out its missions to protect U.S. soil. That risk, Defense officials said, is assessed as "moderate."

    Military and civilian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing details about a classified document. And they stressed that America's enemies should not take solace in the new analysis, nor think that the United States is somehow more vulnerable than it was last year.

    Yet Myers' report, the "Military Risk Assessment and Threat Mitigation Plan," is a concession to the military realities of the past three years.

    Just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon issued a sweeping defense strategy detailing a new vision for winning swift wars against global terrorist networks and outlaw regimes. One year later, the White House unveiled its "National Security Strategy," which discussed using the U.S. military to launch preemptive wars and snuff out threats before they materialized - a strategy that would later be known as "The Bush Doctrine."

    Now, with nearly 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq two years after the fall of Baghdad, along with commitments in Afghanistan and for the global war on terrorism, many Pentagon officials admit that the bloody insurgency in Iraq has tempered that vision of what the U.S. military can and cannot do.

    "The activities we have taken on are at least as great as what we anticipated that we would be able to," said a second senior Defense official, adding that additional tasks would be "impacted" by the current U.S. deployments abroad.

    Another reason for the new assessment, officials said, is that the Pentagon has rewritten every major war plan over the past few years - using advances in technology to plan faster wars with fewer U.S. troops.

    The new standards are more difficult to meet, and thus Myers believes the military is at greater risk of being unable to hit specific targets for planning and executing missions.

    "The performance targets that we've set for operational force - we've raised those," said the second senior Defense official.

    And one chart included in the report stated that while the risk is assessed to be higher this year, it is "trending lower" over the next two years as the Pentagon hopes to reduce the number of troops stationed in Iraq.