War limbo: impact on the military machine

If there's to be war with Iraq, US officials would like to start soon and finish quickly.

But what if politics and diplomacy - wrangling over UN resolutions, delayed inspection reports, massive war protests - continue to intervene?

What if the 150,000 American troops and five aircraft carrier battle groups now crowded menacingly around Iraq are still sitting there next summer, or next year?

Readiness and morale could start to flag, say experienced combat unit officers and other military experts. Equipment could begin to deteriorate.

Normal rotations to new assignments, service schools, and retirement - all on hold - could falter throughout the services. Homeland security could be impacted as national guard and reserve units - made up largely of first-responders back home - see their deployments increasing and extended. Other military commands around the world will also be impacted.

"The military was designed to be a rotating expeditionary force, not the modern-day equivalent of the Roman legion," says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense-consulting firm in Arlington, Va. "When rotations stop to accommodate static concentrations, the whole system begins to back up and bog down. The consequences can take years to fully resolve."

Military officials worry that this could be the case, even if any war with Iraq is over quickly, since a high-level US military role will continue there long after the fighting has stopped.

The concern comes at a time when US military forces - operating at an overall force level that is significantly lower than it was during the first Gulf War - face unusual circumstances in other parts of the world. Some 37,000 American soldiers in South Korea face an increasingly belligerent North Korea threatening to build nuclear weapons. It was announced last week that 3,000 US troops are being deployed to the Philippines to hunt down Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremists. Meanwhile, thousands of US combat and support troops are likely to remain in Afghanistan for an extended period.

Because the fighting in Afghanistan and now the buildup and deployment in the Persian Gulf is estimated to be costing an extra billion dollars a month, Pentagon budgeting is likely to be impacted in ways that adversely affect the military services for years to come.

"No matter how generous Congress turns out to be, there will be some serious hits inside the personnel and maintenance accounts," says Larry Seaquist, retired US Navy warship captain and Pentagon strategist. "The service chiefs back in Washington will start to panic quietly at some point. They are going to be seeing years of catching up to get training/deployment cycles back to normal, maintenance caught up, etc. - all very expensive, all unlikely to be fully funded."

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