To be maintained "always at a high state of combat readiness ... ready to suppress or contain international disturbances short of war. ... To be the most ready when the nation ... is least ready."

That is the mandate Congress gave the Marine Corps in 1952 to ensure that at least one of the nation's armed services would be immediately ready for combat in the event of another surprise attack such as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950. Never again, Congress was saying: The United States needs a defense insurance policy in the form of armed services that, even in times of peace, would be kept much more ready for combat than ever before in our nation's history.

Congress fully realized at the time, it should be emphasized, that conventional insurance policies "pay off," so to speak, only when they fail--i.e., when a fire starts, or there is major flooding, or someone dies early. But maintaining a strong national defense pays off not only by having forces ready at the start of conflict, but also--and in a much more important way--by deterring conflict. Fire-insurance policies don't stop fires, but defense-insurance policies can sometimes stop wars.

Because it keeps itself always combat-ready, Congress knew, the Marine Corps would continue to be the "first to fight" in times of war--and would also be the key to containing those "international disturbances short of war" that, like Sarajevo, can so easily escalate into global conflicts.

Despite Congress's clear intent, and despite the alleged "lessons learned" in both World Wars, and again in Korea, the United States--the American people, in other words, as well as the executive and legislative branches of government--lapsed into complacency once again not long after the Korean War. We were taken by surprise time and again during the Cold War--by the Soviet suppression of Hungary, by the building of the Berlin Wall, and by Khrushchev's attempt to ship nuclear missiles into Cuba. Also, in a kinder, gentler way, by the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the breakup of the Soviet Union itself.

The end of the Cold War precipitated a new wave of public and political apathy. The Gulf War provided another surprise--and another warning. But the expeditious way in which that war was won confirmed the now almost religious conviction that major wars between nations, or blocs of nations, were a thing of the past. Even worse, it led to a belief that this nation's advanced technology would all but guarantee U.S. victory--quick, relatively low-cost, and probably casualty-free as well--in future conflicts of almost any size. One result of this wishful thinking was a precipitous decline in defense spending that started immediately after Desert Storm and continued throughout the 1990s.

The extent of that decline, and its impact on the nation's armed services, can be measured in several ways. Perhaps the most credible numbers were provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats for its accuracy and nonpartisanship. In a report released in late September 2000 the CBO pointed out that: (1) For the last several years the United States has been spending only about 3.0 percent, or less, of its gross domestic product on national defense, vs. the Cold War average of 8.0 percent; and (2) From fiscal year 1989 to FY 1999 U.S. defense spending declined by 24 percent (in constant FY 2000 dollars), with funding for defense procurement taking the biggest hit--a free-fall drop of approximately 47 percent.

The CBO figures were loudly, although belatedly, validated in the long-awaited report (released on 30 September) of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which calls for major new increases in defense spending, including as much as $100 to $110 billion per year for procurement (vs. the current $60 billion).
The QDR report also, and most appropriately, places much greater emphasis on combined-arms/joint-service operations, with special focus "on homeland defense, on surprise, on preparing for asymmetric threats, [and] on the need to develop new concepts of deterrence."

The QDR report is covered in greater detail elsewhere in this issue, which also includes a special report on the political, economic, and diplomatic initiatives the President has ordered as part of the war against terrorism. Another article discusses the key roles played by the sea services immediately after the 11 September attacks and in the retaliatory strikes against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the Marine Corps, which celebrates its birthday this month--and which has never forgotten the "most ready" mandate bestowed on it by Congress almost 50 years ago--continues to set the pace for the other services. It has, for example, been a versatile, mobile, and extremely lethal combined-arms force of its own making since the early days of World War II, operating on land, on the sea, and in the air with equal ease and effectiveness. Of greater importance, perhaps, it has in recent years, when the nation as a whole was "least ready," been the most forward-looking and innovative of all the services in its emphasis on antiterrorism training and in its ability to provide an immediate response to chemical or biological "incidents."

The Marine Corps, and its sister services, will be severely tested in the weeks, months, and years ahead in the war against terrorism. So will we as a nation--and our allies as well. This time, though, we must not let down our guard at the cessation of hostilities. We have fooled ourselves far too often in the past into thinking that "peace in our time" has been achieved--and that it would last forever. We must never again make that suicidal mistake.