Cost-Cutting at the Pentagon

The U.S. announced provisional budget cuts on Monday so deep as to reduce the number of troops to a level unseen since 1940.

Financially and morally depleted by 13 years of war, Obama’s United States is continuing its military disengagement from world affairs. Having already withdrawn from Iraq and in the process of doing so from Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced provisional budget cuts on Monday so deep that they would reduce the number of troops to a level unseen since 1940. The current 520,000 men would become 440,000 or 450,000 by 2019, within a budget of $496 billion planned for 2015, which takes into account savings of $1 trillion hoped for over 10 years. “You [will] have fewer troops, fewer ships, fewer planes,” preached Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who is putting into practice the presidential desire to “move off a permanent war footing,” as Barack Obama put it in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28.

Seemingly now running on empty, in the face of colossal public debt and with its GIs’ morale worn to breaking point, this significantly reduced American war machine will necessitate a strategic repositioning of the U.S. on the global scene; the Democratic administration has been saying this now for five years. No more costly territorial offensives; an increase in vocal attacks on the burgeoning Chinese military threat in the Asia-Pacific theater, especially with regard to cyberwar; and a heavier reliance on targeted operations by special forces to “deal with” the phantom Islamist menace.

As such, Navy Seals and other elite forces will see their ranks swelled by 3,000 new recruits, an increase of 6 percent, whereas the U.S. Air Force will be forced to do without its venerable U2 spy planes and its A-10 Warthog air-to-ground attack jets, the beasts of burden of recent wars and much appreciated by the GIs for their devastating back-up fire. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, will have to sacrifice some of its long-awaited new class of coastal combat ships. Finally, the National Guard units will, from now on, see their missions mostly focusing on helping civilians struck by natural disaster.

Collateral Damage

All of these measures must first, however, get the green light from Congress, and this is far from certain to happen. Republicans strongly opposed to Hagel’s plans will be set on dismantling his money-saving measures point by point. Those lining up against Hagel include representatives affected by the closures of military bases, elements of the defense industry that stand to lose from the cancellation of certain programs, and the influential veterans’ associations, who firmly oppose any reduction in the pensions of former combatants.

“This budget is absolutely dangerous,” thundered Dick Cheney, former vice-president under George W Bush, “and these cuts will do enormous long-term damage to our military.” The collateral damage will affect the training of National Guard units, and new recruits to traditional regiments will suffer from the increased scarcity of resources, in the event of an urgent overseas deployment. As a consequence, noted Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, “the risks grow and the options we can provide the nation dramatically shrink.”

“The Army won’t say, ‘You haven’t given us any money to train these guys.’ They’ll send them anyway, and then more of them are going to die,” opines Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst Maren Reed. “This is a budget that recognizes the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges,” replies Chuck Hagel, concluding with Roosevelt’s Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s truism: “We must act in the world as it is, and not in the world as we wish it were.”