We are prepared to deputize former members of the Iraqi army and give them labor-intensive jobs, like keeping order in the streets and preventing damage to the oil pipelines. We are concealing the shortage of troop reserves by prolonging the stay of soldiers already there. We are maintaining the 148,000-man armed force by prolonging tours of duty. This is not thought, by the administration, a propitious time to say to Congress and to the American people: We need more money, and a larger army.
The challenge, then, is to choreograph what we have got, consistent with responsibilities we can't shake. Iraq is one of these, Liberia is not. But the quandary has to shake out in the next general election.
The catchiest approach to the problem is, of course, U.S. money. We have disbursed it widely, since 9/ll, to maintain support for the war on terror. We spend as much on our military ($400 billion) as the 20 next top-spending nations combined. Russia has the second-largest armed force, but we contribute $150 million, and, of course, great fortunes to Israel and Egypt, and $527 million to Colombia.
The money is spread around, but the terrorists -- whether in the disciplined sense of the al-Qaida agent who takes English lessons and studies flying so that he can efficiently increase the ratio between his suicide and the number of dead Americans, or in the factionalist sense of people who want to kill the other tribesman in order to enhance the tribe's estate -- are all, tangentially, a problem for the organized military. And if it is a Pakistani who engages in peacekeeping activity, that's one less American who is doing it; but they will want us to pay for it, minimum wage.
The great shakeout that will come in 2004 has to confront the questions: (1) Is the United States prepared to intervene in such theaters as Liberia? (2) What is the contingent military cost of waging that peace/protection/benevolence? and (3) How can we share the great-power burden, while husbanding that great-power responsibility we can't shed, and don't want to?