Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Obama’s military strategy lean, with eye on new perils
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama outlined a broad new military strategy for the United States on Thursday, one that refocuses the armed forces on threats in Asia and the Pacific region, continues a strong presence in the Middle East but makes clear that American ground forces will no longer be large enough to conduct prolonged, large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an appearance in the Pentagon briefing room, Obama put his mark on a military strategy that moves away from the wars he inherited from the Bush administration and relies more on naval and air power in the Pacific and the Strait of Hormuz as a counterbalance to China and Iran.
“Now, we’re turning the page on a decade of war,” Obama said in his prepared remarks.
He called it “a moment of transition” that allowed him to look ahead and determine the kind of force — a smaller one, he said — that the nation needs in the future.
Obama’s strategy embraces hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the military.
In a letter accompanying the new strategy, the president wrote, “We must put our fiscal house in order here at home and renew our long-term economic strength.”
To that end, the president wrote, his administration will continue to invest in counterterrorism, intelligence gathering, cyber-warfare and countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The “Defense Strategic Review” outlined Thursday calls for investments in cyber-security to defeat electronic attacks, in expanded space-based intelligence platforms and for “developing a new stealth bomber.” At the same time, it raises the possibility that U.S. “deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force” and says the U.S. presence in Europe “must evolve,” without providing specifics.
Obama arrived at the Pentagon early Thursday to describe the new strategy with his defense secretary, Leon Panetta, and with Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Officials said it was the first time in history that a president had held a news conference at the Pentagon.
He said the country needed to remain prepared. “We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past — after World War II, after Vietnam — when our military was left ill-prepared for the future,” he said. “So, yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know: The United States is going to maintain our military superiority.”
Panetta has concluded that the Army has to shrink even below current targets, dropping to 490,000 soldiers over the next decade, but that the United States should not cut any of its 11 aircraft carriers, according to Pentagon officials and military analysts briefed on the secretary’s budget proposals.
The new military strategy is driven by at least $450 billion in Pentagon budget cuts over the next decade, including about $261 billion through 2017, as called for in a budget deal with Congress last summer. An additional $500 billion in cuts could be ordered if Congress follows through on plans for deeper reductions.
The $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.
The Pentagon strategy says “terrorist access to simple nuclear devices poses the prospect of devastating consequences for the United States. Accordingly, the Department of Defense will continue to enhance its capabilities, acting with an array of domestic and foreign partners, to conduct effective operations to counter the proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction by nations such as Iran and North Korea.
Also, Panetta is expected to propose cuts in coming weeks to next-generation weapons, including delays in purchases of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, one of the most expensive weapons programs in history. Delaying the F-35 would leave its factories open, giving the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, a chance to work out continuing problems in developing the plane while freeing up money that otherwise would be devoted to buying it in the next year or two.
PLAN DRAWS CRITICS
Republican lawmakers, in e-mailed statements, criticized the strategy from different angles — as cutting too much, doing too little to root out waste or putting the U.S. nuclear deterrent at risk.
Rep. Howard “Buck” Mckeon of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Obama has packaged “a retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy.”
Sen. John Mccain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon and lawmakers must act to end cost overruns and “the waste, inefficiency, and ineffective programs that result from an overly consolidated military-industrial-congressional complex.”
Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, chairman of the House Armed Services panel on strategic forces, said the strategy would lead to cuts in U.S. nuclear forces “at the same time Russia and China are modernizing and growing their forces and Iran and North Korea’s illegal programs continue to develop unchecked.”
Dempsey praised the strategy and the work of crafting it, calling it inclusive and comprehensive.
“It’s not perfect,” the general said. “There will be people who think it goes too far. Others will say it doesn’t go nearly far enough. That probably makes it about right. It gives us what we need.”
Under his plan, Obama said, the U.S. will still have a defense budget larger than those of the next 10 countries combined.
“Some will no doubt say the spending reductions are too big, others will say they’re too small,” Obama said. “But I would encourage all of us to remember what President Eisenhower once said, that each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration — the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.”
TROOP REDUCTIONS
In the past few days, senior aides to Panetta and Dempsey said few specific details on Pentagon budget cuts would be released before the final budget proposal is finished later this month. But a number of Pentagon officials, military officers and military budget specialists briefed on Panetta’s plans discussed specific programs on the chopping block on condition of anonymity.
The defense secretary has made clear that troop reductions should be carried out carefully, and over several years, so that combat veterans are not flooding into a tough employment market and military families do not feel that the government is breaking trust after a decade of sacrifice, officials said.
A smaller Army would be a clear sign that the Pentagon does not anticipate conducting another expensive, troop intensive counterinsurgency campaign, like those waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor would the military be able to carry out two sustained ground wars at one time, as was required under past national military strategies.
Instead, the military would be required to fight and win one war, spoil the military aspirations of another adversary in a different region of the world, and all the while be able to conduct humanitarian relief operations and other contingencies, like continuing counterterrorism missions and enforcing a no-fly zone.
The size of the Marine Corps is also expected to be reduced, although it would be expected to benefit from a renewed focus on the AsiaPacific region, with Marines deployed aboard ships as well as at bases west of Hawaii.
Panetta is also examining personnel costs, with cuts to future retirement benefits and fees for health care offered to Defense Department retirees on the table.
Some areas of Pentagon spending will be protected. The defense secretary will not advocate cuts in financing for defense and offense in cyberspace, for special-operations forces or for the broad area of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Information for this article was contributed by Elisabeth Bumiller and Thomas Shanker of The New
York Times; by Christi Parsons of Tribune Washington Bureau; by Tony Capaccio, Roxana Tiron, Roger Runningen and Brendan Mcgarry of Bloomberg News and by Robert Burns, Ben Feller and Pauline Jelinek of The Associated Press.