Army_Reserve_in_Wartime

“One weekend a month, two weeks a year, my a**!” was the way the cardboard sign read on the side of truck I saw traveling through Iraq sometime in the summer of 2004 while deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is just one example of a Reserve Soldier who may not understand how the military (including Reserves) will continue to be heavily engaged in operations around the world supporting both combat and civil support missions. Mr. Thomas P.M Barnett, is a War College professor who spent many years in the “five sided puzzle palace” briefing his strategic view of the future of the military and foreign policy. Much of his philosophy is summarized in his 2002 article: “The Pentagon’s New Map, It explains Why We Are Going to War and Why We’ll Keep Going to War“. In this paper I will discuss Mr. Barnett’s theory and how it increases my potential for mobilization and deployment as an Army Reservist myself, for years to come. Mr. Barnett theory takes the world map and divides it into two main parts: The fist part is "the functioning core" which consists of “economically advanced or growing countries that are linked to the global economy and bound to the rule-sets of international trade” like the United States. The second is called the “non-integrating gap” and includes all of the countries and nations that do not conform to any of the rules of international trade and are basically outside the global economy, and “led by dictators and tyrants that support terrorists” like (the former) Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Barnett, predicting we would go to war in Iraq the second time, said the U.S. will take “ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization”. He suggests we must continue to engage with countries like Iraq that are still in the gap and create military and foreign policy to "shrink the gap". The United States will continue to maximize its use of Military forces, including Army Reserve, to keep the “gap” countries in check. Military leaders have been converting Army Reserve forces from strategic reserves into operational forces to relieve the stress on Active Duty. LTG Jack C. Stultz, Chief of the Army Reserve said this: “The Army Reserve is an operational force; it’s not a strategic force anymore – not only by desire, but by demand…. The Army has to have us as an operational force because of the combat service support, and civil affairs skills we have”. The civil affairs and combat service support units resident in Army Reserve will continue to be used extensively in third world countries to help them come out of the gap and/or squelch the extremists who keep these nations in the gap. Mr. Barnett’s recommendation on how transform the Military will increase reserve requirements. Barnett recommends building two types of military forces to deal with today’s threats. One force he calls “leviathan” which is a smaller group of high speed combat warriors that augment Special Forces. An example of their role is doing what we did in Iraq in early 2003 turning a quick victory with a low casualty rate. The other he calls a system administrators (Sys Admin) force that consists of “civil affairs-oriented and network-centric” forces that are “an always-on, always-nearby, always-approachable resource for allies and friends in need”. These forces would do missions like the ones we are doing today in Iraq and will depend heavily on the civil support capabilities resident in the Reserve. In this paper, I briefly examined Mr. Barnett’s theory of why we will continue to be at war and how we will use our military forces, to include the Army Reserve, to meet the increasing mission requirements. There are many countries and nations still in the gap. Many of these countries do not want to conform to a set of “westernized globalization” rules. These are the countries we will be fighting for a long time. Other nations want out of the gap and these are the countries we will be providing civil support and humanitarian aid requiring frequent deployments of forces from of all of our Military Components.