Military Still Able to Respond to New Crisis
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: March 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, March 1 — The decision to send up to 2,000 marines to Haiti to help stabilize the country shows that the United States military can still intervene in crises large and small, even at a time when so many ground troops are already called upon for major missions.

But it also is one more unexpected military commitment that the Bush administration is not eager to embrace, especially in an election year, and underscores how far-flung the American military's missions have become.

Sending the marines to Haiti is not especially complicated. A battalion of about 1,000 marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., is always on alert to fly to an emergency. The first 200 or so marines landed in Port-au-Prince overnight Sunday, and more were expected to flow in this week with trucks and Humvees equipped with heavy machine guns.

That does not unduly tax a Marine Corps that is in the midst of sending 25,000 troops to Iraq, and preparing to move another 25,000 there later this year. "This isn't the straw that will break the camel's back," said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington group that studies the military.

But it will put more strain on a system already under stress. About 110,000 soldiers and marines are now replacing 130,000 soldiers in Iraq in the largest two-way movement of American troops since World War II. There are 11,000 American troops in Afghanistan and about 3,000 in Bosnia and Kosovo. Overall, nearly 183,000 National Guard and Reserve forces are on active duty at home and abroad.