signal to american s enemies. national correspondent jennifer given is live with us now. reporter: every war since world war ii presidents have tried to cut the army and favor air power. what military historians will tell you is that projection of weakness is often misinterpreted by adversaries and leads to the next war. buck mckeon is very concerned. time after time after time we found that that was the wrong strategy starting world war ii we had been going across africa with inadequate equipment, inadequate training, inadequate leadership and it cost us lots of lives. reporter: after world war ii truman cut the army from 8 million to 500,000, that lead to the korean war some say. eisenhower tried to rely on b5 # bombers and nukes after the korean war.