Introduction

America's military reserves face unprecedented strains. These vital components of our national security, consisting of citizen soldiers who deploy for crises ranging from domestic natural disasters to overseas combat, have been misused and overstretched by an administration that failed to plan adequately for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the National Guard and Reserve are increasingly unable to carry out their core missions.

The overuse of these resources in Iraq and Afghanistan has created a great strategic risk for the United States, with consequences that can be felt from Kandahar to Kansas. Simply put, we have nothing left in reserve -- nothing with which to respond abroad to threats from our enemies, and only exhausted and ill-equipped troops at home for governors to call upon during state-level emergencies like this year's tornadoes and wildfires.

More than 500,000 reservists have been mobilized and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, costing billions of dollars and resulting in depletion of personnel, including recruitment and retention problems. Equipment has been taken from reserve units and sent overseas, leaving stateside units without the gear they need to carry out their varied responsibilities.

Every National Guard combat brigade has deployed at least once. Many specialty units -- such as military police, civil affairs and medical units -- have deployed multiple times since Sept. 11, 2001. Other reserve units have been shattered entirely, their members allocated to other units. If mobilized today and asked to deploy on a moment's notice to Korea or some domestic contingency, America's reserves could not answer the call.

The overstretch of the reserves -- and particularly of the National Guard -- raises profound questions about whether our military can continue its operations in Iraq and meet its most basic function of providing for America's common defense. In broad-brush terms, President Bush's wars have made America less safe by spending our strategic reserve -- leaving the cupboard bare for contingencies such as North Korea, Iran, Darfur, or homeland-security response at home.

Between December 2005 and November 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a major study of National Guard readiness in four states -- California, Florida, New Jersey, and West Virginia -- to gauge how current operations were affecting the Guard's readiness to execute its domestic mission. The GAO study assessed readiness holistically, looking at objective manpower and equipment statistics, as well as subjective measures of readiness like commanders' evaluations of their units. According to the GAO, 20 states and territories said they had an "inadequate capability" to execute 10 core domestic-security missions. The states' largest area of concern was their readiness to respond to a chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological or high-yield explosive device.

America cannot wait until the next terrorist attack or natural disaster, nor the next major war, to respond to this crisis. We must act now. The mishandling of the reserves represents a breach of faith and a misallocation of crucial strategic assets, including military manpower and equipment. The next administration must restore the National Guard and Reserve to their proper place in the American military, and this paper offers four broad policy prescriptions to do just that.