Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-351- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
9.5—RECONSTITUTION
On August 2, 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration outlined a post-Cold War
military strategy for the United States that included cadre forces. A key component of the
new strategy was maintaining the ability to generate new forces. In a speech at the Aspen
Institute, Bush expressed this goal: “Our strategy will guard against a major reversal in Soviet
intentions by incorporating into our planning the concept of reconstitution of our forces. By
the mid-nineties the time it would take the Soviets to return to the levels of confrontation
that marked the depths of the Cold War will be sufficient to allow us to rely not solely on
existing forces but to generate wholly new forces. The readiness to rebuild, made explicit in
our defense policy, will be an important element in our ability to deter aggression.” 285
Although he did not explicitly refer to cadre units in his speech, they were a component of
the reconstitution strategy. 286
On the same day as the President’s speech, the New York Times published an article
outlining the administration’s new military strategy, which included new “Army reserve”
(cadre) divisions. 287 Gordon writes that the new strategy would “take advantage of the longer
warning time of a possible Soviet attack on Europe by creating new Army reserve divisions
that could be brought up to full strength only if needed for a prolonged crisis. These
‘reconstitutable’ units would be partly manned and their equipment would be held in
storage.” 288 The article goes on to say that the “new ‘reconstitutable’ Army reserve divisions
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285 Bush (1990), emphasis added.
286 A 1992 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report explains that cadre units are a key component of
reconstitution: “reconstitution has three major programmatic components,” the first of which is a “reliance on
cadre units and stored equipment.” [Goldich (1992), Summary]
287 Gordon (1990). Gordon refers to cadre divisions as Army reserve divisions. It is important to note that
these are different from the full-manned Army Reserves that existed at the time.
288 Gordon (1990)