In Support of the Common Defense: A Homeland Defense and Security Journal. Volume 2

摘要

When members of the United States Army War College s class of 2012 began their Strategic Research Projects (the dreaded SRP s), few, if any of them were cognizant or concerned over what has led us to the edge of a fiscal cliff, seemingly destined to tumble into sequestration. Most, however, would be predicting a continued drawdown in Afghanistan, which would accompany actions already having taken place in Iraq. Those predictions, of course, would lead to pervasive discussions over cuts in resources including, for the Army, that most precious and measurable resource manpower. That inevitability looms exponentially over the military with the specter of sequestration. Even without the additional impetus, there is no doubt that what we hopefully see as the waning hours of two wars will deliver the kinds of cutbacks that have historically come at the ends of our conflicts. Those historic reductions, however, have not always proven to be the wisest. Consider, for instance, the massive cuts in the National Guard that heralded the peace dividend at the end of the 20th Century just in time for the unprecedented increases in operational tempo for these same National Guard units that began steady play through Bosnia- Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Cuts, of course, were not borne solely by the Guard; but given that the focus of this volume is Homeland Defense and Civil Support, it is appropriate that we spotlight those reductions in anticipation of the vulnerabilities a new set of reductions will engender.