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The Bush administration has announced its decision to increase the end-strength of the US Army and US Marine Corps by 92,000 troops over the next five years. That number would include and make permanent the previously authorised temporary increases of 30,000 and 5,000 personnel respectively, and would add another 35,000 soldiers to the active army and 22,000 to the active marine corps. Adding 7,000 and 5,000 soldiers to their ranks in each of the next five years, the two services would reach totals of 547,000 and 202,000, respectively, by 2012. However, it is a matter for debate whether the army, in particular, can reach the given end-strength figure, and, if it can, what cost this will incur both in terms of achieving the target and then paying for a larger force.
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The principal objective of the US Navy’s new National Maritime Strategy, scheduled for release in June 2007, will be to make a strong case for preserving the navy’s share of the defence budget. It will have to show convincingly how the navy will address present and emerging strategic challenges in a cost effective way. Doing so will require clear-cut demonstrations of what maritime interests will be critical in the coming decades, how they may be jeopardised, and how distinctively naval capabilities can minimise risks to those interests. At present, the US Navy appears to be viewed by many observers as resting in the category of ‘strategic reserve’.
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The risk is not that there is a new war in Bosnia, but that, politically gridlocked, the country simply stagnates. Given Bosnia’s peculiar constitutional circumstances and the fact that, since the Ottoman conquest of 1462, its main peoples have in the last instance always been ruled by an overlord from outside, the country faces a major challenge in finding a way to adapt to the modern world or, in the long run, drifting into an indistinct future.
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Since August 2006, Philippine government forces have achieved significant successes against the relatively small but highly aggressive, criminally-inclined insurgent–terrorist band known as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). However, while such victories are heartening for the beleaguered administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, it seems unlikely that the ASG can be defeated fully without not only continuing support from US armed forces and civil agencies, but also more determined efforts to resolve the wider political issue of Moro (southern Philippine Muslim) separatism.
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Characterisations of Chinese policy goals and actions often seem largely formulaic, designed to obscure as much as to reveal. Beijing’s inept explanation of the destruction of one of its weather satellites by a medium-range Chinese missile attests to inadequate coordination and information sharing within the policy process, reinforcing external concerns about China’s longer-term military goals. The anti-satellite (ASAT) test underscored that Chinese policy making is far from monolithic. The longer-term implications of Chinese military development are again on the policy radar screen, but the fuller consequences, especially for US-China relations, remain as uncertain as they are important.
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