Obama Unveils New Military Strategy

Focus on the Pacific and Middle East: Budgetary constraints to mean smaller but more agile forces.

The United States plans to respond to changing threats, and growing pressure on its budget, with smaller but more agile armed forces, shifting its geographical focus toward the Asia-Pacific region.

In an unexpected appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Barack Obama outlined a new military strategy for the U.S. in response to changing threats and ever-increasing budgetary constraints. Flanked by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, Obama announced that the U.S., under his personal leadership, would be turning its strategic attention toward the Pacific, with the Middle East as another focal point. The president’s statement came as a clear signal that Europe, on the other hand, will have to rely more on its own merits in the future. Obama went on to add that collaboration with allies and partners would be stepped up in line with these new aims.

Smaller Ground Forces

Obama stressed that both Iraq and Afghanistan, the two long, manpower-intensive stabilization missions of the past decade, were either already over or winding down. The U.S. intends to tackle the new challenges with smaller but more agile ground forces, while flexibly deployable water-, air- and space-based forces, as well as resources for electronic warfare, are to be strengthened. The president placed particular emphasis on obtaining information and monitoring, announcing plans to step up the use of unmanned weapons systems.

Secretary of Defense Panetta admitted that the U.S. would inevitably have to scale back its military capabilities due to dwindling finances. He claimed that, by cutting the army on the ground and shifting the focus onto specialized units and forces that can be mobilized and deployed more quickly, national security could still be guaranteed despite an agreed cost savings of $450 billion over 10 years. Panetta warned, however, that the threatened reduction of the budget by a further $500 billion on a straight-line basis over 10 years, a plan that was floated in Congress as a compromise measure after the debt ceiling was raised back in August, would render this impossible.

Panetta also made clear that the U.S. would still retain its global military superiority despite the new circumstances, highlighting the country’s technological advantages over other powers. The secretary of defense announced that more details on the new strategy would be published in the next few weeks. As early as next month, the White House is set to disclose its military budget for the next fiscal year, which will take account of the new strategic outlook.

Warmongering Downsized

Based on information from sources at the Pentagon, the U.S. media had already reported that the country was no longer going to claim to be able to wage and win two large-scale wars in different parts of the world at the same time (“win and win”). In the future, the armed forces only need to be able to win in one theater of war and prevent their enemy from gaining the upper hand in another (“win and hold”).

The downsizing is likely to target ground forces and Cold War-era infrastructure in particular, with the U.S. Army set to be reduced from around 570,000 at present to around 490,000. Further cutbacks will probably hit the Marine Corps. The reports from the Pentagon suggest that President Obama rejected its original proposal to reduce the fleet of aircraft carriers from 11 to 10, which would have enabled significant savings to be made.