The military has an important role in engagement-helping to shape the international environment in appropriate ways to bring about a more peaceful and stable world. The purpose of our Armed Forces, however, is to deter and defeat threats of organized violence to our country and its interests. While fighting and winning two near simultaneous wars remains the foremost task we must also respond to a wide variety of other potential crises.
-GEN John M. Shalikashvili1
The Soviet Union's sudden collapse sent many analysts scrambling to come up with new post-Cold War security assessments and strategies. While there was no consensus as to the greatest threat facing US interests, it was evident the US must become a leader in promoting peace and preventing regional conflict.
One new concept that emerged was engagement, which shapes the international environment by promoting regional stability and the peaceful resolution of problems. A recent National Security Strategy document states, "Today's complex security environment demands that all of our instruments of national power be effectively integrated to achieve our security objectives. . . . American leadership and engagement in the world are vital for our security, and our nation and the world are safer and more prosperous as a result."2
The new concept led to a revised national military strategy that centered on the terms Shape, Respond and Prepare Now. General John M. Shalikashvili says, "The National Military Strategy is based on these concepts. It builds on the premise that the United States will remain globally engaged to Shape the international environment and create conditions favorable to US interests and global security. It emphasizes that our Armed Forces must Respond to the full spectrum of crises in order to protect our national interests. It further states that as we pursue shaping and responding activities, we must also take steps to Prepare Now for an uncertain future."3
As the Army struggled with promulgating and implementing the new engagement strategy, it was also completing a major downsizing initiative slated to reduce the active Army by 300,000 (from 795,000 to 495,000) and the number of divisions from 18 to 10. What, in effect, happened was the introduction of a new engagement strategy that required increased operational force deployments, but with less force structure with which to execute the new strategy.
Ironically, "the Department of Defense's Bottom-Up Review (BUR) in 1993 based its operational requirements on fielding forces sufficient to win two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts (MRCs) and to provide overseas presence. In determining force requirements, the BUR assumed small-scale contingencies (SSCs) could be handled as lesser cases by forces earmarked for MRCs, without any negative effect on their capabilities for the primary mission. Since 1989, however, the number of small-scale conflicts, humanitarian emergencies and other similar contingencies has grown from 16 during the Cold War period to 45 from 1989 to 1997."4 Army leaders did not foresee the Army's increased participation in, and the long duration of, SSCs and the resultant high operational tempo (OPTEMPO). Nor did they foresee their impact on Army readiness.
The Army determined that general-purpose forces would be used to accomplish engagement activities and fight major theater wars (MTWs). According to the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), "US forces must be multimission capable and ... able to transition to fighting [MTWs] from a posture of global engagement-that is, from substantial levels of peacetime engagement overseas as well as multiple concurrent smaller scale contingencies."5 However, the Army is structured for warfighting-not SSCs-and must tailor forces substantially for most contingency operations.
Because Army forces train predominately on conventional warfighting tasks, units identified for most contingency operations require specialized training before deployment. …
