2016 Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida, from left, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, and Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc., talk on the stage next to John Kasich, governor of Ohio and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, right, at the end of the Republican presidential candidate debate sponsored by ABC News and the Independent Journal Review at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016. The candidates are battling for next weeks primary in New Hampshire after Trump, the billionaire real estate developer and reality television star, finished second in the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1, behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Each of the candidates in Saturday's presidential debate boldly asserted that if elected, he would rebuild the U.S. military and restore its flagging morale. These assertions, however, rest on the mistaken assumption that the armed forces have actually been weakened. As always happens following a war, the U.S. military is undergoing a transformation that does require down-sizing some elements while building up others. Special Forces have been increased, and research and development of new weapons continues. There is no evidence that personnel in any of the armed services suffer from low morale. Fear-mongering of this sort may make for good politics, but it is a poor basis for strategy and a formula for wasteful defense spending.

Following every war in American history the U.S. military has downsized. The most dramatic cuts occurred following the American Civil War and World War I. The Pentagon was in the process of reducing its forces following the Second World War when the Korean Conflict and the onset of the Cold War led to a reversal of that trend. The forty-year stand-off with the Soviet Union and China required maintenance of a large standing force in peace time, an unprecedented situation that became the new normal. The end of the Cold War brought a new round of defense cuts as voters demanded a peace dividend. Viewed within this historical context, current proposed reductions do not seem so dramatic.

Changes in U.S. military force structure should be viewed not simply as cuts, but as a re balancing of assets to meet contemporary threats with a leaner, more cost-effective defense establishment employing capabilities tailored to counter actual threats. The active duty army will be reduced from 490,000 to 450,000, but this reduction includes the short-term expansion required for the Iraq War surge. A reduction of 40,000 personnel does not, moreover, equate to the loss of 40,000 combat troops. The army has been working to improve its tooth-to-tail ration (the number of men and women in direct combat roles verses those in support functions). Conventional troops will be reduced, but Special Operations Forces, the personnel most likely to be deployed in today's security environment, will be increased from 66,000 to 67,900. The Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force will experience much smaller force reductions without a loss of capability. High-tech weapons systems often require fewer personnel than traditional ones. Obsolete ships and planes will be replaced by new ones, which may require fewer people to operate them.

The military strength of a nation cannot be determined simply by counting the number of men and women in uniform and the ships, planes, tanks and artillery that they operate. A qualitative assessment needs to accompany any quantitative tally, and effectiveness lies in being able to match available assets to specific threats. By that standard, the U.S. military is as prepared as it has ever been to defend the homeland and protect American interests abroad. To take a single example, the U.S. navy will retain 10 carrier battle groups, as many as all other navies combined. In every other weapons category, the U.S. military enjoys a qualitative and/or quantitative advantage. Reasonable people may disagree about defense resource allocation, but to promise across the board increases without considering how personnel and equipment will be used or if they are even needed would be fiscally irresponsible.