October 2013 � ARMY 17

Not long ago, I received a note from a civilianaide, one of a small number of local leaderswho serve without compensation to betterconnect the Army with states and communi-ties across the country. She wrote to me about

a recent conversation with a “lieutenant colonel in[the National] Guard currently in Afghanistan whoworries if he will have a job when he gets home.” Shealso told me about a gathering attended by a smallgroup of people from a local university. Those pre-sent debated whether there will be opportunities in

the Army for those “whoare now of high schoolage,” if young men andwomen will “seek theArmy not only to servebut to improve theircharacter and hone lead-ership skills,” and if therewill still be a “place for

Lessons of the Past MustGuide the Army’s Future

By John M. McHughSecretary of the Army

the best and the brightest.” They wondered, too, overlunch, why “the defense of our nation was included in se-questration.”

None of the questions werenew, but what most struck meabout her note was that it in-dicated that many of the sameconversations we’ve been hav-ing at the Pentagon this pastyear are resonating at lunchcounters and dinner tablesacross America. It’s fair to saythat it will be a major part of what we talk about at thisyear’s Association of the U.S.Army Annual Meeting and Ex-position.While the shrinking federal

budget—and its impact on endstrength, modernization andreadiness—may have providedfodder for academic debate, ithas, importantly, dominated thedefense agenda. Indeed, whilelast year I wrote in part aboutbuilding the Army of 2020,

this year I’m equally concerned about what the Army willlook like in October or the months that follow.For years now, we’ve been preparing for a shrinking bud-

get and fewer resources. With the completion of our missionin Iraq and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, wewere advised to begin planning and were promised thetime to get it right. Then sequestration took effect, some-thing then-Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta said wasdesigned to be so bad that “no one in their right mindwould let it happen.”

The across-the-board budget cuts mandated by seques-tration have had an impact on virtually every aspect ofthe U.S. Army, from equipment to quality of life. Wehave had to cancel combat training rotations and flighthours for helicopter pilots. Hundreds of thousands of

civilian workers across the Army and DoD were subjectedto mandatory furloughs and lost 20 percent of their pay forsix weeks. We cut tuition assistance for soldiers and de-ferred reset programs. Little was left untouched, and we seelittle hope for relief as these deep, indiscriminate andmandatory budget cuts remain the law of the land.As Army Chief of Staff GEN Raymond T. Odierno and I

recently informed Army commanders, “The money is gone;our mission now is to determine how best to allocate thesecuts while maintaining readiness.” Even if sequestration isreversed, we have to take this opportunity to reshape theArmy or we will be doomed to repeat mistakes of the past.When GEN George C. Marshall was MAJ George C.

Marshall, serving as aide-de-camp to GEN John J. Persh-ing after World War I, he addressed a group of schoolheadmasters gathered in Boston. He spoke of a dangerouscycle in war planning and the repeated failure to learnfrom past mistakes.

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John M. McHugh was sworn in as the21st Secretary of the Army on September21, 2009. Previously, he was a member ofCongress representing Northern and Cen-tral New York. He served as the rankingmember of the House Armed ServicesCommittee with responsibility to overseethe policies and programs for DoD andeach of the armed forces. He also served as

chairman of the Morale, Welfare and Recreation Panel and aschairman, later ranking member, of the House Armed ServicesCommittee’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel. He served asa senior member of the House Committee on Oversight and Gov-ernment Reform, and for six years he was the chairman of theSubcommittee on the Postal Service. From 1997–2004, he was amember of the House International Relations Committee, andfrom 2005–09, he served on the House Permanent Select Com-mittee on Intelligence. He was also a 14-year member of the U.S.Military Academy Board of Visitors. Before becoming Secretaryof the Army, McHugh was cochair of the House Army Caucus, abipartisan organization that works to educate fellow House ofRepresentatives members and their staffs about Army issues andprograms. He began his public service career in 1971 as an assis-tant to the city manager of Watertown, N.Y. In 1976, he joinedthe staff of New York state Senator H. Douglas Barclay. Heearned an MPA from the State University of New York’s NelsonA. Rockefeller Graduate School of Public Affairs in 1977. Suc-ceeding Senator Barclay in 1984, McHugh served four terms inthe legislature’s upper house before his election to the U.S. Houseof Representatives in 1992.

Australian Army/WO2 Andrew Hetherington

“Immediately following the termination of war,” Mar-shall said in 1923, “comes a new thought dominating allminds: the war debt, high taxes and their reduction. Econ-omy is demanded by public opinion … and a reduction ofthe military establishment is the easiest” solution. Marshall warned of the impact of such thinking on what

we today call readiness. He pointed to breakdowns in or-ganization and preparedness caused by a lack of planningand funding that occurred throughout American history.He pointed to GEN George Washington’s ContinentalArmy, the young nation’s land forces during the War of1812 and the early Union Army of the Civil War.“History is filled [with]—in fact, it almost consists of—re-

markable repetitions,” he said. When he delivered hisspeech, our nation was still grieving its losses from WorldWar I. The military faced massive cuts in funding and man-power, leading Marshall to observe, “The cycle is completeand we are moving today into the same predicament inwhich war has always found us.”Nine months after Marshall’s speech, Adolf Hitler would

be arrested in Munich following a failed attempt—the BeerHall Putsch—to overthrow the German government; and notlong after victory in Europe and the Pacific, the cycle was tobegin anew.But it doesn’t have to be that way.

After ending operations in Iraq and a scheduled draw-down in Afghanistan, the end of America’s longestwar is in sight. Consequently, we are, like Marshall,living through “a new thought dominating all minds.”Unlike Marshall, we have the lessons of the past, re-

peated warnings to manage a smaller budget and the op-portunity to fundamentally reshape the Army. It’s an oppor-tunity we need to seize, the chance to show leadership andimagination that gives our Commander in Chief the optionshe needs, the power projection that deters our enemies, anda lethal combination of organization and agility that will al-low our Army to go anywhere, anytime, to defeat any foe.

Regardless of the size of our budget or our force, we canachieve this with an adequate, appropriate mix of man-power, training and equipment. A smaller, well-equippedand highly trained force is better able to meet contingenciesthan a large force without training, or modern equipmentwith no skills or people to use it. Such is the nature of bal-ance and our imperative to avoid creating a hollow Army.Our first and most important responsibility, however, as

we prepare for the end of more than a decade of conflict, isto continue providing our soldiers everything they need tosuccessfully execute the fight they are in. We remain a na-tion at war, and regardless of the planning we must pur-sue, we can never lose sight of our fundamental duty to

the here and now. In the near term, wealso need to meet our responsibility toour soldiers as they transition fromthe battlefield to home stationing, andwe need to do this in very importantways.First, we must provide adequate care

and support for our wounded war-riors, whether it’s tending to the visiblescars of battle or treating the invisiblewounds such as post-traumatic stressdisorder. As President Barack Obamaremarked, “For our wounded warriors,coming home doesn’t mean the fight is over. In some ways, it’s just begin-ning.”Second, we must ensure that the of-

ficers and NCOs on whom we’ve re-lied for judgment and leadership re-

October 2013 � ARMY 19

GEN George C. Marshall

main active and engaged. We’ve giventhese young men and women remark-able responsibilities over the lastdozen years, and they have performedbrilliantly. Nevertheless, when I readleadership surveys that find nearlyhalf of all soldiers and 58 percent of ju-nior NCOs believe “the Army nolonger demonstrates that it is commit-ted to me as much as it expects me tobe committed,” I am deeply concernedthat they simply don’t recognize howmuch we value them and need themto be successful for the future.

That extends to our civilian work-force as well, which works sideby side with its uniformed coun-terparts to ensure our soldiers getwhat they need when they need

it. Army civilians have demonstrated time and again theircommitment to our soldiers and their mission, and I worrythat furloughs, lack of pay increases, hiring freezes andother workforce issues are taking a very high toll.Finally, as large numbers of our forces return from

Afghanistan, we need to re-instill across the Army a funda-mental return to our core values: loyalty, duty, respect, self-less service, honor, integrity and personal courage.I sometimes remind people that with an Army of 1.1 mil-

lion soldiers—active duty, National Guard and Army Re-serve—and another 330,000 civilians, we have a population

larger than 11 states. If the Army were a city, it would bethe nation’s sixth largest. Like those cities and states, westruggle with problems inherent to a large population, suchas alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide. The root causes ofthese problems are often the same as those found in homesand cities across America. A recent example is a study pub-lished in The Journal of the American Medical Association thatfound the underlying reasons for an increase in militarysuicide were the same as those in the civilian population:mental illness, substance abuse, and financial and personalrelationship problems.

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U.S. Navy/Lt. Chad A. Dulac

24 ARMY � October 2013

We could make similar comparisons about anotherscourge on our force—sexual assault and abuse—of which we have had proportionally fewer suchcrimes and more success in prosecution than simi-larly sized populations. Not being as bad as some

isn’t good enough, however, not by a long shot. In an Armythat lives and swears by a set of values, we expect—we de-mand—character within our ranks. As an Army, we do notfollow; we lead, and we lead by our example. If we are trueto our convictions, we must be honest about our perfor-mance, and we have failed in combating sexual assaultwithin our ranks.How can we protect a nation from its enemies if we can-

not protect a soldier from the enemy within? Every com-mander, every leader, every soldier has a responsibility tohelp change the culture and create an environment of trustand respect, ensuring the safety of all soldiers—men andwomen—wherever their duty maycall them. It’s not only something weexpect; it’s something we demand.This year, we marked the 60th an-

niversary of the end of America’s For-gotten War—its Forgotten Victory—the Korean War. As we celebrated thegallant veterans who fought andserved, the President noted that Koreaholds important lessons for all of ustoday.“Korea taught us the perils when

we fail to prepare,” he said, echoingMarshall’s lament. “After the SecondWorld War, a rapid drawdown left ourtroops underequipped, so that in theearly days of Korea, their rockets liter-ally bounced off enemy tanks. Today,as we end a decade of war and reori-

ent our forces for the future, as we make hard choices athome, our allies and adversaries must know the UnitedStates of America will maintain the strongest military theworld has ever known, bar none, always.”Through creative and determined leadership, keeping

leaders who were forged in combat active and engaged,supporting soldiers and their families, and caring for thosecoming home, we can do more than learn from history. Wecan create a better Army and a more secure future.The men and women of the U.S. Army have proven time

and again that they are the greatest force for good theworld has ever known. Every decision we make must helpensure that they have what is needed for continued suc-cess—whether they are fighting on distant battlefields, re-sponding to crisis on the homeland or living their lives ingarrison. With history as our guide, that is our mission andthat is our challenge. �