Who Needs the Marines?

By BRUCE VAN VOORST

They are the nation's oldest fighting unit. Their stirring anthem and brave slogan -- "Semper Fidelis," always faithful -- have lifted patriotic hearts for 122 years. They have won some of the most revered battles in military history: Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Inchon. Their nicknames are synonyms for fierce fighting men: Jarheads, Leathernecks, Devil Dogs.

But now the U.S. Marine Corps is battling its most awesome and implacable enemy: the defense budget squeeze. Says Marine Commandant General Alfred Gray: "The coming budget climate creates the most difficult times for the Marines since World War II."

The corps's problem is to find a mission that would justify its continued existence. In what defense specialist Edward Luttwak calls a "geopolitical meltdown," the collapse of the Warsaw Pact has forced the Pentagon to reassess what sorts of war the U.S. may have to fight in the future. Rather than a huge tank-and-artillery Armageddon on the central front of Europe, the most likely outbreaks will be "low-intensity conflicts" such as the American invasions of Grenada and Panama. Although these are precisely the sort of assignment for which the Marines were created, they played no central role in either of them. Their absence bolstered the arguments of those who want to dismantle the corps.

^ In their attempt to define a new role, the Marines have reoriented themselves toward becoming a contingency force for low-intensity conflicts. What unnerves the Marines is that, as Grenada and Panama demonstrated, other armed services are grabbing the action. Acting on its post-Vietnam review, the Army has added five light divisions to two legendary units of its own, the 82nd paratroopers and the 101st Airborne Division. The Army now has seven light divisions, so called because they are highly mobile forces boasting most of the same fighting capabilities as the Marines. On top of that, the Pentagon has developed the 38,000-troop Special Operations Forces which include the Navy's sea, air and land SEAL forces; the Air Force's First Special Operations Wing; and the Army's highly trained Ranger force, for use against terrorists and in guerrilla warfare.

In a nation that maintains four air forces (the real one plus one in each of the other services), it should come as no surprise that taxpayers are supporting more low-intensity warfare units than they need. But the budget squeeze has sparked a debate about whether the U.S. can afford three military forces designed to do the same job. "We just can't maintain all these forces in this budget climate," says defense expert Steven Canby.

Earlier this month General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted that the Pentagon budget would be slashed 25% to $218 billion in five years. For the Army, that would mean a one-third cut in personnel, to 500 million. For the Marines, a proportional reduction would mean losing 60,000 of its 195,000 Marines.

On the record, Marine and Army officials insist that their units do not overlap. Behind the scenes, however, Army officers charge that the Marines may be fine for assaulting enemy shorelines but "can't engage beyond the beaches." Marine Brigadier General John Sheehan counterattacked last fall by claiming that an Army light division, which has less firepower than a comparable Marine unit, "is light enough to get there, but just light enough to get itself into trouble. You don't need the Army building toward another Marine Corps." When Powell heard that senior Marine and Army officers would testify before Congress, he insisted on appearing with them to head off any public sniping. "The need for flexibility," he declared, "dictates that we maintain both Marine and Army ground forces."

Powell has a point in saying that the three forces do not exactly duplicate one another. The Marines, prepositioned in three expeditionary forces for power projection overseas, have the capacity to come ashore and sustain themselves for 30 days without further help. Their units come equipped with their own close air support, while the Army has to depend on the Air Force. The Army's mobile divisions, on the other hand, can drop on targets from aircraft. But to gain such mobility, they must travel with less artillery and heavy armor. The lightly armed Special Operations Forces are equipped to make lightning raids behind enemy front lines. Still, there is enormous overlap between the three separate forces. Taken together, they are simply too much of a good thing.

In an analysis of the Pentagon, defense specialist Richard Halloran argues that the best way to eliminate the glut of low-intensity forces would be to meld the Marines into the Army. Although many experts agree with Halloran, any move in that direction would encounter huge political land mines. Harry Truman once tried to slash the Marines on the grounds that the Navy did not need its own army, but he was beaten by what he described as a Leatherneck "propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's." Aside from the clout of ten Senators and 21 Representatives in the current Congress who served in the Marines, the corps exudes such a mystical aura that it is unassailable.

As the budget battle rages, the Marines will take heavy hits, but they seem sure to prevail once again, a testament to their political firepower.

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