The U.S. Marine Corps on Tuesday announced an "involuntary callup" of 1,200 Marine reservists to support operations in the war on terror, primarily in Iraq. The numbers behind the news are small, but the significance is large: It's further evidence that America needs more ground forces. And the Bush administration's consistent refusal to address the problem is placing huge burdens on our soldiers and Marines and undermining national security.

Resident Scholar Fred Kagan

The current U.S. military took shape in the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War brought demands for a "peace dividend." Between 1990 and 1995, the active Army fell from 780,000 to 480,000 soldiers. By the end of the decade, personnel problems topped the armed forces' list of concerns. Deployments of a few thousand soldiers to Bosnia and Kosovo seemed hard to sustain.

The Bush administration took office promising the military that "help was on the way." And yes, the defense budget has increased dramatically in recent years. But the Marines have not grown in numbers, and a temporary increase in Army numbers authorized by Congress (to 500,000) is about to expire and will not be renewed.

In short, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's preference for air power has triumphed--leaving no help on the horizon for our ground forces.

Yet wherever American soldiers or Marines are deployed, they need more troops. The modest recent increase of American soldiers in Baghdad required committing the entire theater's reserve and shifting troops from other violent areas to the capital. Inadequate troop levels in Afghanistan have allowed the Taliban to reemerge as an insurgent force. The obvious lack of any strategic ground forces reserve has emboldened Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and precluded any efforts to participate in an urgently needed international peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

As for the troops that are in the field, they are badly strained. The Army of the 1990s sent soldiers to combat zones for six months at a time. Now, they go for a year. Most units have been to Iraq or Afghanistan twice; many have gone three times. It's little surprise recruitment for both the Army and Marines has dropped dangerously.

All this leads to one unavoidable conclusion: Unless we move to increase the size of the Army and the Marines, the U.S. military will be far weaker when President Bush leaves office than it was when he took power--despite having acquired a mammoth new mission called the war on terror.

The solution? Congress must increase the strength of the services and improve economic incentives for enlistment. At the very same time, the entire Bush administration must launch a major push to encourage volunteers to enlist--something that, shamefully, it has yet to do. The President keeps saying that we are at war, and he is right. Now we must reinforce our warriors.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.