In outlining his new defense strategy yesterday, President Obama became the first commander-in-chief to speak from the Pentagon’s pressroom. Unfortunately, he used the occasion to introduce nearly $500 billion in cuts that are likely to weaken the national security of the United States.
The president’s remarks, as well those of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, contained much vague talk of a “smarter,” more “agile” military that would “evolve” to find new ways to meet its existing commitments in Europe and the Middle East, along with a reaffirmation — all but offered as consolation — that we will be enlarging our footprint in Asia. But behind the euphemistic vocabulary and the strategic veneer is a simple truth: This is a retreat.
Advertisement
The problem with America’s warriors is not that they aren’t technologically sophisticated enough, but that there are too few of them. And yet the president’s plan would reduce the size of the Army and Marine Corps by a combined 10–15 percent, taking force levels back to roughly where they were at the end of the Clinton administration. The president calls this retrenchment “turning the page on a decade of war,” and he says more than he knows. For the move is proof that the administration has learned nothing from the 9/11 decade.
Our combat mission in Iraq may be over, but the peace is fragile and violence continues. In Afghanistan an accelerated withdrawal and negotiated peace with the Taliban is likely to create more national-security threats than it dispatches. The Arab world remains one giant powder keg, and the potential for new threats from a destabilized North Korea, a radicalized Pakistan, a nuclear Iran, and even a suddenly unpredictable Russia are too manifold — and too fearsome — to contemplate. So while our part in the fighting may be drawing down for the moment, the volatile mix of geopolitical conditions that made that fighting necessary remains.
At its Cold War peak, U.S. military strategy called for the peacetime ability to simultaneously fight and win two major theater wars and a “brushfire” conflict. The years after the Soviet collapse saw that capability pared down in the name of the “peace dividend,” just in time for the 9/11 decade to deliver . . . two major theater wars and a series of “brushfire” conflicts, from counterterror ops in Yemen to air support in Libya, that stretched our forces thin even as we increased them.
But the president draws precisely the wrong conclusion from the challenges of those conflicts. Faced with our struggle to fight up to our own standards, he has elected to lower the bar. The new strategy calls for a military that can defeat one adversary while merely disrupting another, a move from a “win-win” plan to a “win-spoil” plan.
This will have consequences. Reducing our war-fighting capabilities can only be interpreted as an aggregate disengagement of U.S. power, or the potential use of power, that will cause global actors to think and decide differently — starting not next decade or next year, but today. It will change the way we think and decide as well. Since a nation with decreased capability tends to change its behavior to match that capability, the next few years could see a United States acting less muscularly simply because it has less muscle — regardless of what the right policies might be. Imagine a “win-spoil” American military engaged in a land war while the next Saddam invades Kuwait, or while the Chinese make a dash across the Formosa Strait. Strength creates options. Weakness limits them.
And all this in the name of what, exactly? Fiscal rectitude? In his remarks today, Secretary Panetta was absolutely right to note that debt is a national-security issue. And to be sure, in any bureaucracy as large as the Pentagon, there is room for cuts. But a bank looking to reduce overhead does not often start by firing guards and cutting corners on vaults. Nor should national defense be cannibalized in the name of itself.
Worse still, in a move that is cynical if not outright dishonest, neither the president’s strategy nor his expected FY2013 budget takes into account the additional $500 billion in automatic defense sequestrations and spending caps wired into the infamous “trigger” in last year’s debt deal. As is his wont, the president is punting to Congress on the business of avoiding or undoing these cuts, which Panetta himself knows are unconscionable. But sequestration remains the law of the land, and if nothing is done, Obama’s cuts will become gashes.
After the president left the podium and the Pentagon yesterday, it fell to Panetta and General Dempsey to do the yeoman’s work of fielding press questions from the tiny corner into which the White House plan had just backed them. Unable to explain how the United States would be able to carry on as the world’s great power with a military incommensurate with its commitments, General Dempsey was at one point reduced to merely asserting it. “This is not the strategy of a military in decline,” Dempsey said.
Well, it's easy to see why The One was so eager to get GEN Dempsey into the job of Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. No danger of any pushback against the Prez's disarmament plans from this general! "This is not the strategy of a military in decline," he said. Oh really? It doesn't sound like a strategy at all, frankly--more like a wish or a hope. I wonder if those other guys, e.g., the Chinese, the Russians, or the North Koreans, will make similar cuts. Somehow, I doubt it.
When you “turn the page on a decade of war” by intentionally weakening your military, you just invite more war in the next chapter. Obama has not intentionally damaged the US economy, but the same cannot be said for National Defense and a foreign policy based round appeasement and impotence. It was apparent to anyone who cared to do their due diligence that a left wing academic community organizer who was involved in the nuclear freeze movement during the 80s would attempt to weaken the US Military if elected, and so he has. Elections have consequences; remember that in 2012, even if the guy we nominate doesn’t share all of your views.
The amount of taxpayers money spent on the military will still be more than the next 10 largest countries in the world COMBINED.
I don't think there's any danger of the US losing its global military dominance and the increase in defence spending over the last 10 years can not be sustained.
Seriously, who are we arming against? The Chinese? If the Chinese attacked the US we'd both be in big trouble. Soft politics is where the game is now.
Do we need a big stick? Absolutely. Do we need 12 baseball bats, 8 night clubs, and 9 jousting lances to go into a fight where the other guy only has a twig?
Then again you really don't need that big of a military if you're going to have the TSA and various government agencies oppress the American people.
We have a Constitution and it's a pity we don't use it. The TSA thugs get off on searching Grandpa and making sure Granny does not have plastique stuffed in with her depends. We get this made up garbage by the SCOTUS that the 4th Amendment gives us a right to privacy. However, the US government is now requiring most air travelers to have nude pictures taken of their bodies with a machine that most European governments have banned for high radiation.
Just what do we have a military for? Is it to keep some tin-pot dictator in line in some god-forsaken land in the middle of Africa? Why? Signing defense treaties to defend every scrap of land all over the planet makes no sense when the nation is $15 trillion in debt and will be $16 trillion in debt by mid-October of 2012. By fiscal 2016 we will be $20 trillion in debt.
What do you think is a bigger threat to the USA in the future? Will it be a Treasury bill bubble or a fleet of Iranian air craft carriers?
The biggest threat to the freedom of Americans is our own government. I have not read of check points on our interstates run by a foreign power. However, I have seen an out of control government running over the Constitution on a regular basis since the 1990s.
"In Afghanistan an accelerated withdrawal and negotiated peace with the Taliban is likely to create more national-security threats than it dispatches."
No. Wrong. Think. Figure it out. The nation-building exercise in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the reason we sent troops there to begin with. It is not necessary in order to conduct counterterrorism against al Qaida. Even if there were success in propping up the Karzai regime in Afghanistan, it would not significantly affect the ability of al Qaida to carry out attacks against Western targets. It has no discernible positive effect in Pakistan.
"...too manifold — and too fearsome — to contemplate."
Please. The horrible horribleness was overstatingly overstated...blah blah blah.
"...which Panetta himself knows are unconscionable."
I doubt he knows much of anything. He just takes up space. And a cabinet position.
Future cuts will be much deeper. Eventually it will be impossible to sustain much of a military at all...once the dollar gets so weak you might as well wallpaper with it. But I suppose that's years away. When it gets here, though, stuff like this will be nothing by comparison. I remember when I was a kid something about a goose and golden eggs.
This is a sham argument. It takes the numbers reported by foreign governments with hostile designs on us and our allies at face value. How about the money raked in by PLA-owned businesses in China, which are myriad, that use that money for weapons development, training, etc? How about the counterfeit US currency North Korea prints or the hard drugs they produce and trade all over the world? Do you really think the oil and gas Iran trades to China and North Korea for weaponry is factored into either countries' "defense spending"?
Well, no, it isn't a sham argument. It holds up using published figures; it holds up using SIPRI estimates; and it holds up using DoD's own estimates. And you should probably take into account that it holds up based on our programmed defense budget, without taking into account supplementals for the wars, the DoE money spent on nukes, DHS security spending, etc, which pushes our total to well over a trillion.
China's reported budget was ~$91 billion; SIPRI uses an estimate of about $100 billion; and DoD reported to Congress that it estimated the total was likely about $150 billion. Even DoD's worst-case estimate puts China's military spending at a piddling fraction of our own, and the original comparison remains valid.
The plain fact is this country can no longer afford to have another Iraq or Afghanistan. This plan will still allow us to play power politics at the most elite level with the Chinas of the world, but it acknowledges that in the days of multi-trillion dollar budget deficits the days of decade long multi-trillion dollar wars are over. As for counter-terrorism the future is drones, special forces/covert action, and the NSA. That can be done relatively cheaply.
We are broke and on an unsustainable path. This is a good start, but next up is massive cuts and restructuring of the health care, along with much more severe military cuts. This is just the scalpel breaking the skin. When in just a few years the interest payment on the debt will exceed the entire military budget, there is just no alternative. That's a fact.
And even if would could afford it, which we can't, this country would never stand for massive cuts to social security and medicare while the pentagon budget keeps growing every year. When the debt ceiling deal happened where were all the cuts? Defense. As hard as it is to cut defense it is multitude times harder to cut entitlements. At some point (probably not until we have a Greece-like crisis) the ax will fall on both of them.
I'll admit, math is not my strongest subject, but I fail to see how cutting $100B from a $1.5T dollar budget deficit reduces a multi-trillion dollar deficit to a non-multi-trillion dollar one. At best you've reduced it to a slightly smaller multi-trillion dollar deficit.
I feel so much better about Obama now. If he were on a communist path, he would be building up the military, a la China or N. Korea.
And Obama himself has the mentality of a drone;
Oblivious to the world around him. As long as his Secret Service detail is manned sufficiently, what else is needed?
No matter what any President of the United States in office does, the opposition will always blast him (her). Even if Obama had built the forces up he would probably have been criticized for not enough. Whatever he does is wrong in the eyes of those who oppose him and his administration. Nothing new here. Logically speaking, the budget of the Armed Forces of the United States of America is huge, and there is no reason why it should not have to be cut just like other things. The role of our Armed Forces in the world needs to be reassessed. How much longer can we afford to be the policemen and "saviors" of the world? What is neccessary to protect the United States? That's all up for furious debate of course. But another truth is that the previous administration has exhausted our forces (especially the Army) by being in involved in two wars that we have not really won. This was a reaction to a terrorist attack on the United States by a militant Muslim oganization. Instead of beefing up Homeland Security that great naval expert and military genius G.W.B. and his sidekick the draft deferred D.C. got it in their brilliant minds that the solution to preventing future terrorist attacks against the United States was to invade two countries. Their propaganda machine went into overdrive in order to justify this, All we have ended up with are thousands upon thousands of maimed Americans (not to mention innocent bystanders women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan). The overworked VA Hospitals are overflowing with these people on a level far exceeding the Vietnam debacle - another worthless war. Sorry folks, but until our collective national military mentality gets off our Pearl Harbor Syndrome and our Rambo complex we are not going to be any safer than we were before 9/11. Better prepare for the next terrorist attack by strengthening Homeland Security to the max. The only other alternative is to reinstate the draft. And that would probably go over like a pregnant pole vaulter. But hey!! Maybe our next President (if he is a Republican) will convince the American Public that we have to increase our forces, regardless of the cost and overlooking the fact that we are broke. Iran is certainly a good candidate for that. Nothing like another war somewhere. Get the body bags ready!!!
It is just that the neocons, which have come to control this web site, want us to invade any country that they don't like. Smaller army means we will not be invading Iraq any time soon and they are horrified by that. There are hundreds of nuclear war heads in former Soviet republics that are much more accessible to terrorist that anything Iran could ever build - but the thread from nuclear Iran is not that Iran would attack the USA or Israel - but that the USA and Israel would not be able to attack a nuclear Iran whenever they feel like it.
Weren't we JUST dealing with a military SO SHRUNKEN that members were being forced to make 3 or 4 deployments, with only a few short months rest? A heightened suicide rate due to the combat stress of said mulitple deployments? Obama doesn't care. On the contrary, this IS his design. Make war fighting less and less possible. I don't see this as liberalsim gone mad as much as I see it as POLICY OF SPITE from a man who is a well known politician of revenge, knowing that his end is near. The past three days' Obama headlines have been sickening. This is him sticking his finger in our eyes.
All of Obama's actions are driven by an ideological construct. He has no personal commitment to protecting and defending his native land. This is a man who, until he sought the presidency, could not defend this nation with words. How is it possible that he now burns to defend it with bombs and bullets? No, this is about unilateral disarmament. It is about "puncturing the bubble of American supremacy," as Soros put it, neutering America's power to project force and bringing about a new order, one dominated by non-European, non-white, non-christian, and undemocratic forces. This is what Obama promised to do, and he is doing it.
Is NR implicitly calling for $1 trillion more in defense spending over 10 years than Obama wants? If so, two questions: 1) Why? What strategy requires that sum? 2) Where will it come from? New taxes? More borrowing? Increased tax revenue from reformed tax code and economic revival sparked thereby? Deeper cuts in nondefense spending?
To be credible, NR must not merely point with alarm at things Obama proposes, but choose among painful alternatives.
If NR wants simply to bash Obama, a worthy goal, let it point out the asymmetry between his specific plans to cut defense spending and his state of denial or actual chicanery about cutting the growth of nondefense spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid).
It would be the worst of many bad scenarios to hollow out the military in order to keep the welfare state speedboat headed for the waterfall at top speed a little longer.
