North Korea, Manpower, and Training Foreign Fighters

The U.S. Army is currently setting up a special training academy and creating six entire brigades of soldiers. Dedicated to training foreign fighters in military tactics and strategy. American tactics and strategy. This is in addition to the 7 U.S. special forces groups already tasked with this mission. That’s roughly 50,000-60,000 of our soldiers whose job it is to train foreign fighters. A mission traditionally known as "foreign internal defense." At the same time, the army chief of staff is acknowledging that its manpower is insufficient to fight:  "General Milley has testified that the Army is too small for the missions it has been assigned." The army also states that these new brigades can be repurposed to serve as regular fighting units to rapidly increase the fighting strength of the army. Which is true but only good for situations of short-term emergency action. Once deployed they would provide a temporary boost to forces in the field, but after sustaining causalities and fatigue themselves. They would also become depleted. 

These brigades should be able to rapidly set up training camps much like they did in WWI all around the united states to train Americans for our military, and supplement our manpower in the event of a major war. Rather than being used to teach foreign fighters how to fight with our tactics and weaponry. The wisdom of which is questionable even in the best light. Remember we're not talking about deploying these units to train a few close allies. We are talking about 50,000+ of our soldiers training foreign fighters all over the world, and so far this concept of “foreign internal defense” has a record of failure from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let's use our forces for our own defense. Instead of using them to teach foreign civilians to guard towns in Syria and Iraq.  Why not use them to teach American civilians to guard our schools against mass shootings? Who better to train guards for our schools. Than American special forces? Or to train guards for American borders instead of building a contentious wall. Domestic internal defense would save American lives and be a far more effective and efficient use of training and advisory soldiers. While also giving us the capability of rapid manpower increases for major wars.

The President just walked away from negotiations with North Korea and what will ultimately happen with North Korea is unforeseeable, but the army chief has stated unequivocally the army is to small for its mission. At the same time, North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world and even larger reserve forces. This army could easily wipe out the American force of nearly 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea, further depleting the available manpower of U.S. forces to respond in the event of war. It's also likely that the total destruction of these American troops would be a serious objective of the North Korean army during an initial offensive.

We need the ability to rapidly increase manpower in the U.S. Army in the event of a major war, and the prospect of major war is becoming more likely. As our competitors close the gap in military capability.  Re-purposing these new brigades for domestic use is a way to achieve manpower needs and make sure the U.S. Military has the capability it needs to secure America's future.

Daniel Covany is a former American instructor at the Turkish Military Academy Kara Harp Okul (Land warfare school).