America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taxed the nation’s armed forces. In a discussion at Brookings, General George William Casey, Jr., Chief of Staff of the United States Army, examined the challenges the U.S. Army is facing in these theaters, around the globe and into the twenty-first century. He offered his vision for maintaining excellence in the army through recruiting, training and retention during and beyond the service’s longest deployment since the Vietnam War.
Back to the event page
Transcript
"There’s no question that the army is stretched as a result of more than six years of war. And as a result of that stretch, the force and particularly the families are stretched. And I wrestled very hard to find the right word to describe the condition of the army that was stretched and stressed. And the term I came up with was "out of balance." That the army today is out of balance. We’re consumed by the demands of the current operations and as a result, we’re not able to do the things to prepare for the future and to sustain the all volunteer force. ...
"We’re deploying at unsustainable rates. Several months ago, we increased our deployment--“our boots on the ground time" we call it--to 15 months. We needed to do that to support the requirements of our commanders, to give our soldiers and families some predictability and mostly to ensure that the soldiers that were deploying had at least 12 months at home so that they could properly prepare to go. Now, we did that with the full understanding that it was temporary. We can’t sustain that, we have to come off of that and we’re working that very hard and I think you can understand that when we decide to come off it, we going to be darn sure that we don’t have to go back. And so I expect an announcement on that here in the next three or four months as we watch the situation there on the ground. ...
"We are entering a period here that I would call “persistent conflict.” It may not seem to you day-to-day but we are at war against a global extremist’s network that is out to attack and destroy our way of life. Read their writings. This is not a foe that’s going to quit and go home easily. They’re going to have to be defeated and it’s a long-term, ideological struggle. ...
"Competition for water, resources, food is going to increase the international friction. Estimates are that energy supplies are not going to equal demand even if you count in what people are trying to do in the interim to increase it or look for alternative sources. Climate change [and] natural disasters create friction, create tensions and population movements and pandemics. And the two that worry me the most: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their use by terrorist organizations …people ask me what keeps me up at night that‘s what it is. ...
"My personal view is, in the near term, the likelihood of major state-on-state conflict is very low, that’s my personal view. But let’s talk a little bit about future conflict…think back to that definition of protracted conflict. We’re going to be dealing with, I think, more non-state and individual actors than we are with state actors. That creates a degree of complexity all itself. They’re not deterrable. And, if you figured out a way to deter a non-state actor that doesn’t have anything to hold hostage, I’m happy to listen to you. They don’t operate by the laws of war, they don’t operate by international conventions. It makes our job combating that much, much more difficult."