"We Do Have Adequate Forces"

By MARK THOMPSON

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talked to TIME's Mark Thompson last week about his campaign to wring more fighting power out of the U.S. military without increasing troop size. He said he had proposed some 40 ways to do so in an 11-page memo now being circulated among senior Pentagon officials. Rumsfeld spoke by phone while on a plane headed to an undisclosed location. Excerpts:

--On force strength

We can afford whatever military force that this country needs. The fact that other people are saying it ought to be reviewed is a fair comment because the force has been used at a higher level during this spike in activity in Iraq. We think that the current stress on the force is a spike--that is to say it is not a permanent condition. We hope that's the case. I can assure you that I will recommend to the President whatever it is we think we need. At the current time, every bit of analysis supports just the opposite--that we do have adequate forces. Now that could change, and if it changes, we'll change.

--On adding troops

It takes time to hire people and recruit them and train them and get value out of them. The personnel experts say it would be probably a couple of years. There's no quick fix. We feel an obligation before recommending an increase in end strength to be respectful of the taxpayers and make darn sure that when we do it and commit to that long-term cost, we're right.

--On cutting troops

I can't imagine cutting. Now it may be that a service would come to me and say, "Look, I've got hard choices, and I'd like to reduce my end strength because the opportunity cost is too great and I'm not investing in what I need in terms of a platform, in terms of something else." I'm not going to rule it out, but I have trouble imagining it in the nature of the world we live in. We've got one service that has talked something about that, but I'm not recommending it, and I doubt it. It wasn't formally [requested]; it was informal.

--On which service it was

We've set that aside. That's not for you to know.

--On reservists

Some decades back, they made a conscious decision to put into the reserves--and almost only the reserves--certain skill sets so that if the country was ever tempted to do something militarily, they'd have to call the reserves, which means that it would have to be supported broadly. The problem with that is, it turns out that those skill sets are the ones we keep calling up, and they happen to be the ones that are badly needed in the world we're living in--civil affairs and the like, military police. All the services are currently coming up with proposals as to what skills they think ought to be on active duty so that we don't have to be so disrespectful of the circumstances of the reservists that we call them up every year.

--On Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker's statement that he "intuitively" thought "we need more people"

He has read my memo and had an opportunity to edit it and tweak it and has said that he's very much in agreement with that approach, that it needs to be studied, which is exactly what he said [originally]. And you don't do things of this type based on intuition--that take years to have a benefit, that cost a great deal of money and that take money from something else that you may need equally or greater. The idea that I've gotten him to change his mind is just wrong. This is a very fine, talented fellow.

--On his ambitions for reform

We have an industrial-age system, and by golly, we're going to move it into the 21st century.