It will probably take more time to dismantle Operation Desert Storm than it took to set it up. Working at breakneck speed, the Navy spent a little over three months transporting the first four Army and Marine divisions to Saudi Arabia. Starting in November, it took another three months to transport, by air and sea, an additional three divisions. To save wear and tear, the Navy and the Air Force will not want to speed out 520,000 troops within six months. “There will have to be a phased drawdown,” says this senior Pentagon officer.
Senior Army officers are expecting a clamor to bring home the more than 75,000 reservists serving in the Persian Gulf. Civilian employers, impatient to have their workers back on the job, could pressure for early withdrawal. And the reservists and their families - many of whom have had to make financial sacrifices - may not always be willing to wait quietly. But the military command will want the reservists to be the last to leave. In the gulf, reservists perform many critical combat-support functions, such as supply and transportation. And in the normal flow of units out of a theater of war, it’s always the truck drivers and quartermaster troops who help the combat units get off first.
Diplomacy and politics could also slow the removal of American troops. Pentagon officials, who have been brainstorming how an Iraqi Army withdrawal from Kuwait might be implemented, say that a mutual drawdown of force will probably have to be set up. Ironing out the details of that drawdown could take time. But American forces will likely leave the region as the Iraqi regime demobilizes parts of its Army. Pentagon officials would like to see the Iraqi Army reduced from 1 million to about 200,000 to 300,000 men - or at about the level it was before the Iran-Iraq War. For that reason, the longer it takes Iraq to scale down its forces the longer a sizable contingent of American troops will have to stay.
Ultimately, a small American force, along the lines of the 29,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, may be stationed in the gulf. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait toppled the flimsy security structure the gulf nations had erected. Before Aug. 2, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other emirates bought their protection from Iraq, Syria and Egypt in exchange for petrodollars in foreign aid. Saddam shattered that arrangement. Since the invasion of Kuwait, the Saudis have expressed concern about the idea of a continuing American military presence in the region. But the gulf nations will have to find new ways to hold their defenses in place - and only American forces may be able to provide the glue for years to come.
