美国空军。 2012年2月。
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120201-027.pdf

雷切尔格柏。 政策备忘录 ，斯坦利基金会，2012年2月1日。
http://defensealt.org/AymAmo

摘录：

斯坦利基金会，2012年1月18日，在纽约卡内基公司和麦克阿瑟基金会合作，召开了数字保护的原则，以评估当前状态，并考虑不断变化的关键责任的历史和当代的演变全球将框架，推动，在未来几年的挑战政策发展的动态。

安东尼H.科德斯曼与布拉德利Bosserman。 战略与国际问题研究中心，2012年1月30日。
http://defensealt.org/xpBqhn

摘录：

美国必须从根本上重新考虑其做法，以“可选的战争。”这是很不明朗，它可以赢得伊拉克战争，而不是赋予伊朗，没有一个强大的军事和援助存在。 它果断地将失去在阿富汗和巴基斯坦的冲突，如果不迅速发展的军事和外交机构的计划，并帮助，以帮助阿富汗过渡依赖于外国的军事和经济支出在2012至2020年。 美军的削减是没有一个过渡计划，并撤回重点是为失败的配方。

中说，美国不能，也不应该重蹈覆辙，它在伊拉克和阿富汗的干预。 它必须处理与非传统威胁与全球，区域和国家战略，在中东，南亚和中亚地区，并在全球基础上的恐怖主义和不稳定的动荡等问题，可以处理与更好和更实惠的组合。 它必须依赖于协助友好国家，威慑，遏制和干预更为有限，而且成本更低的形式。

从国防替代品，2012年1月26日工程

未来几年五角大楼基预算计划由局长帕内塔于2012年1月26日发布的预测，滚动开支到2008年的水平，通货膨胀得到纠正。 支出预算的非战争的一部分，在未来五年（2013-2017年）将降低4％左右，比过去五年（2008-2012年）的实质。 真正的（即“通胀纠正”）从2012年的变化将减少3.2％

以下图表纠正通货膨胀呈现在2012美元的所有款项。 这表明，基预算支出跃升55％后，1998年和2010年间的通货膨胀率。 新的预算计划将在2013支出为525亿美元，其中46％以上是1998年的水平。

新的预算计划-绿色趋势线代表-代表下的预算控制法“的规定封存的规定（红色趋势线代表）减少形成鲜明对比。 封存将推出五角大楼基预算支出回到2004年的水平，这将仍然是31％，高于1998年的水平（通货膨胀修正）。 新的预算计划和封存有一个共同点：都将保持为冷战时期的五角大楼上述通货膨胀因素调整后的平均消费水平虚线表示。

克里斯托弗·普雷布尔和查尔斯·奈特。 赫芬顿邮报 ，20于2012年1月。
http://defensealt.org/ysCbHQ

摘录：

平衡取决于你站在什么。 与我们的人身安全方面，美国与大陆的和平与一个强大的敌人，缺乏得天独厚。 我们的军队是最好的训练，最好的主导，和世界上最好的装备。 这是我们的不稳定的财政和我们的经济不景气，使我们脆弱到绊。

不幸的是，新战略并不完全理解我们的优势，也没有完全解决我们的弱点。 最后，它并没有实现艾森豪威尔的吹嘘平衡。

__________________________________________________

马修·罗森伯格。“ 纽约时报”，2012年1月20日。
http://pulse.me/s/5a33j

摘录：

美国和其他国家的联军在这里被杀害，在越来越多的阿富汗士兵，他们并肩作战和训练，攻击出于根深蒂固据说盟军之间的敌意的，根据美国和阿富汗官员和广告联盟报告。

编辑点评：

似乎是非常有力的证据，美军已逾期居留的欢迎！

安德鲁·泰勒。 美联社 ，2012年1月20日。
http://defensealt.org/xN9mYD

摘录：

白宫的计划，可能再发生新的税和费的建议，与国会共和党人的nonstarters，将关闭整个9年，美元跨越，称为板的支出削减，1.2万亿美元“封存”。“

“我们有一个死骨从现在不到一年，除非国会的行为，说：”政府高级官员。 “我们打算要求​​国会现在要做什么，我们认为美国国会应该有十二月，这是制定削减赤字超过1.2万亿美元，关闭，封存和维护（支出帽）。”

DefenseTracker.com，2012年1月18日。
http://defensetracker.com/web/?p=1681

摘录：

国防部长帕内塔和他的同志在预算战争，丛蔓延的“大限机制”歇斯底里的一部分。 巴克麦克科恩，一直对面的板切割自动化，封存的国防预算将明年一月中可能出现的事件，“跛脚鸭”国会和它的后继者都将是明年红失调施加蓝色蠕虫我们现在。 （歇斯底里的另一部分是“恐怖”返回到2007年基本预算国防开支水平。）

看来，总统现有的法定权力，修改封存的机制，而不是所需的削减量。

菲利普·陶布曼。 纽约时报“，2012年01月08日。
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/reducing-the-nuclear-arsenal.html

摘录：

如果总统推回反对的五角大楼，并在核神职人员其他堡垒的旧秩序的维护者，他可以维护美国的安全，同时使美国1今天的最关键的问题之一更可信的领导者 - 含有核蔓延武器。 像一个链要求别人放弃香烟的吸烟者，其臃肿的军火库，美国，听起来很虚伪的，当它把对其他国家的压力，削减武器和停止生产武器级高浓缩铀...

相关新闻：

国防战略回顾 核辩论

卡尔Conetta。 项目国防部简报备注＃53，2012年01月05日。
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1201bm53.pdf

摘录：

充分参与每间办公室和五角大楼计划中的开支计划和预算实际削减回滚。 这使得一个有争议的辩论，以及党派政治的饲料负荷。 这将有助于如果我们能保持清醒的东西。 我们今天面临的削减远远低于冷战后的戏剧性。 在1991年至1996年总预算的权力是近20％，以实质计算，低于1987至1990年-下降五倍当局今天提出什么更大 。 鉴于目前我们国家的经济直道，五角大楼的主张实际上应该呼吸了一口气。

国防部。 2012年01月05日。
http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf

温斯洛惠勒。 时间Battleland，2011年12月13日。

摘录：

没有战争开支，根据“大限机制”国防部基地列入预算不再是达到或接近后二战高，但它也没有任何历史低点附近。 事实上，它是在冷战期间大约为38亿元以上每年开支...

斯蒂芬·M·沃尔特。 外交政策 ，01年12月，2011年。
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/a_bandwagon_for_offshore_balancing~~V

摘录：

...离岸平衡是正确的策略，甚至当我们的库房满，规定，没有同行竞争对手的威胁占主导地位的关键战略地区。 即使在好的时候，它是没有意义的，采取不必要的负担，或让山姆大叔的傲慢愿望盟国搭便车“不可或缺的国家”，是在世界上几乎每一个角落。 换句话说，离岸平衡不只是一个艰难时期的战略，它也提供了最好的战略的世界里，美国是最强的力量，容易引发不必要的对立，容易被拖入不必要的战争。

萨拉Sorcher 国家报“，2011年11月29日。

摘录：

奥巴马总统最近宣布的措施，以加强与美国外交政策架构，包括计划部署2500名部队在澳大利亚所有的，而基地坚持，在任何削减美国的国防开支不会来牺牲的太平洋上的新重点在亚太地区的优先事项。 甚至许多在华盛顿警惕的眼睛中国迅速现代化的军队和扩大海军在太平洋地区的存在，39％的业内人士说，下一步的行动是为了改善与北京的美国的参与，同时避免任何与军事有关的步骤。

保G。特霍西尔CNN，2011年11月23日。
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/opinion/thornhill-defense-cuts/index.html

摘录：

国家的领导需要一个B计划，使英雄的假设 - 或希望 - 关于未来战争的可能性不大，不会因疏忽而导致的战略灾难。 这是比它似乎更难。 B计划将允许更多的灵活性，以满足什么可以去的战略环境中的错误，而不是仅仅使预算削减。

编辑点评：

B计划是保持良好的战略储备。“ 作为新保守派想指出美国花在军事上其国内生产总值只有4.5％。 如果捏新的威胁，美国可以很容易地增加开支和从事其仍有相当大的工业和知识基础。 这个国家与重组战略面临的问题是缺乏政治意愿。 文职领导人的厌恶问美国人民的牺牲。 一个强大的国民警卫队和预备役部队，不滥用不必要的战争和社会的期望，在国家紧急时期支付附加税的频繁部署了这个国家，同时保持小立平时力战略需要准备的基础。 有了这样一个战略计划，美国可以置备的任何威胁。

马修莱泽曼。 彭博政府 ，2011年11月21日。
http://defensealt.org/veAUPs

安东尼H. Cordesman和：布拉德利Bosserman。 战略与国际研究中心 ，2011年11月17日。
http://csis.org/files/publication/111511_Defense_Resources_Threats.pdf

迈克尔·E·奥汉隆。 纽约时报“，2011年11月14日。
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/1114_defense_budget_ohanlon.aspx

摘录：

国外几年保持船舶和两个船员船只，以及在家里的训练舰，海军可以提高到40％每艘部署效率，完成约三，半船什么的份额，平均而言，可能需要五。 针对海军的大型表面战斗，巡洋舰和驱逐舰，这种方法可在理论上使大约60船（略小于部署在同一时间在国外，其中一半），以保持在全球的存在，美国海军说，它需要，而不是94它目前正在攻读的船只。

二洛伦·汤普森。 列克星敦研究所 ，2011年11月11日。
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/gen-odierno-breaks-the-code-on-why-weapons-cost-so-much?a=1&c=1171

摘录：

将军奥迪耶诺11月2日的言论表明，他意识到它不仅是承包商哄抬方案的成本。 成本超支往往出炉开始由采集系统，对开发商施加的巴洛克式的需求。 这些要求在长的工期延误，无法负担的单位成本，以及武器的特点，不能满足appropriators的期望的结果。 更重要的是，他们提供更好的作战系统，以减缓战士。

保罗·罗杰斯。 开放民主 ，2011年11月11日。
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/israel-vs-iran-regional-blowback

摘录：

附近的不可回避的现实是，伊朗将很快获得有限的核武库，对抗了。 这是因为即使是有限的轰炸伊朗将创建一个新的动态，在伊朗的攻击后地区的中心是，将有几个新的选项强加给它的对手的成本;和全速会去为自己的威慑力。

凯尔西Hartigan。 民主阿森纳 ，2011年11月10日。
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2011/11/if-you-want-peace-stop-clamoring-for-war.html

摘录：

如果罗姆尼认为，他可以到白宫椭圆形办公室的华尔兹，给一些粗糙和强硬的讲话，突然，伊朗将国际原子能机构的核查人员敞开大门，他如梦初醒。

好斗的言辞不会解决与伊朗的情况。 事实上，大多数专家都会告诉你，这将会使情况变得更糟。 到伊朗的强硬派手中......如果美国的军事存在是要说服伊朗合作，我会想到它会发生现在的军事行动的威胁，或更糟的是，实际的军事行动，只会玩。

布赖恩·菲利普斯。AntiWar.com，2011年11月9日。
http://original.antiwar.com/bphillips/2011/11/08/10-factors-that-may-lead-to-war-with-iran/~~V

卡尔Conetta。 PDA 简报备忘录 ，2011年10月25日＃52。
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm52.pdf

摘录：

在五角大楼的基预算自1998年以来的实质（46％）的急剧上升，实质上是由于战略选择，而不是安全要求， 本身 。 它反映了拒绝订定优先次序，以及此举更为雄心勃勃的两端：威胁预防，公地的命令，和全球安全环境的转变，从传统的军事威慑，遏制和国防目标。 美国常规军事活动的地理范围也不断扩大。

姊妹篇： 五角大楼的新使命集：一个可持续的选择由卡尔Conetta，？ 更新和扩大从美国，2011年8月的一个统一的安全预算（USB）的专责小组报告的摘录。 http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/111024Pentagon-missions.pdf

查尔斯·奈特。 项目国防替代简报备忘录＃51 2011年10月25日，。
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm51.pdf

摘录：

适度的变化......在未来十年实施的美国军事战略和全局的姿态，可以可靠地提供从五角大楼的预算从每年73亿美元，以每年1180亿美元不等的赤字减少储蓄。

为了实现储蓄，只需要实现战略目标的不同手段的应用。 这恰恰是什么条件发生变化时，任何好的策略。

阿布巴卡尔·西迪基。 自由欧洲广播电台 ，2011年10月25日。

摘录：

经验告诉我们，外国势力不能使阿富汗实现和平。 我们将删除[阿富汗]人之间的冲突的根源时，我们的和平，“抗议活动组织者] Mozhdah说。 “在这里战斗的关键原因之一是，我们不信任彼此。 我们需要坐下来，互相沟通，以获得对方信任。

丹·吕克。 法新社电 ，2011年10月19日。
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=SEA&s=TOP&i=8003142

摘录：

“亚洲将是明确的一个优先事项，我们会相应地调整我们的业务，”海军作战部长，海军上将乔纳森·格林纳特，告诉在一个电话会议。

他说，现在的海军不断保持航空母舰 - 小鹰“乔治·华盛顿 - 在太平洋地区，10年前相比时，承运人只有70％的时间。

阿布Muqawama。 2011年10月13日，新美国安全中心。
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/10/looking-trim-defense-budget-start-qdr.html

摘录：

昨日宣布，国防部将形成一个“战略选择小组”，确定优先事项和风险，未来潜在削减450亿美元的预算，是毫无价值的“四年防务审查（QDR）的最新例子。 战略文件一定会确定风险和优先事项，但以来，既不四年防务评估报告，国防部建立一个全新的工作组来做到这一点。

另见： 是“四年防务评估报告”公关特技“或真诚的努力调和的姿态与战略预算？

安德鲁Tilghman。 防务新闻网 2011年10月12日。
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=LAN&s=TOP&i=7935114

摘录：

帕内塔说，军队应该指望储备的组成部分部队，是未来的力量的重要组成部分。

“当我们从这些战争，我们需要保持民警卫队和后备运作和积累经验。 这是我们在过去10年取得的最好的投资，“他说。 “我们需要继续能够保持作为一笔宝贵的财富，因为后备力量发挥作用的力量，使国家的战略纵深，在危机事件，获得独特的平民可能是有用的技能有一个特殊的在现代冲突和军队的桥梁，更广泛的平民。“

卡尔Conetta。 项目国防替代简报备忘录 50号，2011年10月11日。
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm50.pdf

摘录：

是什么让封存不切实际（和它标志着作为一个吓唬人的策略）是险峻的方式，其中将实施削减。 循序渐进的方式可以完成
相当于节约没有可比性中断。 作为制定，条文是
激励，而不是减轻，收入增加和削减福利项目。

伊拉克重建特别监察长。 2011年10月。
http://www.sigir.mil/publications/quarterlyreports/October2011.html

伊桑·波拉克， 经济政策研究所的博客 ，2011年9月20日。 http://www.epi.org/blog/militaristic-foreign-policy-saves-money/

奥巴马总统的财政计划的持续批评之一是它重要的战争为节省开支减少。 基本上，国会预算办公室的计算部分，以最近期的战争补充（技术上称为海外应急行动，或OCO挂单）和假设，通胀将每年花费在可预见的地平线量调整其国防基线。 这就增加了超过10年约为1.73万亿。 主席的建议，但是，只包括在OCO挂单支出为1.1万亿美元左右，节省了超过10年的653亿美元，。

Some critics, however, allege that these savings cannot be counted because the CBO OCO baseline itself isn't realistic, therefore the savings are not “real.” For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) argues that counting these savings is a “budget gimmick” that the president uses to “inflate his savings.” According to this critique, another baseline for OCO expenditures should be used—either the president's budget request or the CBO's drawdown policy option—which would lower the baseline and make it practically impossible to generate budget savings from reducing war spending.

All due respect to CRFB and the other critics, but this criticism is silly. The CBO OCO baseline isn't “unrealistic”—rather, it represents the costs of President Bush's aggressive invasion-centered approach to foreign policy extended into perpetuity. President Obama is, thankfully, in the process of trying to change America's approach to foreign policy, drawing down troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and moving toward a more multilateral, patient, diplomatic, and most importantly, less expensive approach. Furthermore, the fiscal plan proposes to cap OCO spending, thereby making sure those savings are realized.

President Obama's foreign policy approach costs less money than President Bush's, and the budget outlook should reflect those savings.

Editor's Comment:

It must be a sign of just how bad things are for progressives that EPI now celebrates a big puff of smoke from the Obama administration sent to divert attention from real budget reductions and, in particular, to protect the Pentagon from further cuts in the fiscal battles. Ethan Pollack has worked for OMB, so he surely understands the accounting distortion built into the CBO baseline projections based on current law. Not one person in the world (including those at CBO who prepare the baseline) believes that OCO expenditures will continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same level as 2011. That's why the CBO did a “draw down policy option” – to estimate likely OCO costs. That latter exercise is not “silly”, nor the suggestions that such estimates be the basis for considering budget reduction plans.

Mr. Pollack must also know that President Obama's FY12 budget submission to Congress contains only $50 billion a year for OCO for future years. Which is it? $118 billion forever or $50 billion forever? You can't have it both ways.

CBO's draw down option is surely better for budget (and deficit
reduction) planning that either the unrealistic “placeholder” (which
is simply irresponsible budgeting) or the CBO baseline artifact of
$118 billion forever.

If President Obama wishes to announce a plan to save meaningful
amounts from OCO he would need to announce more rapid withdrawals from Afghanistan… but then no one really believes he is leaving
Afghanistan in 2014. So this is all smoke and mirrors…and progressives should feel terrible about it, not celebrate.

It is disingenuous to claim that the CBO's baseline OCO is somehow a Bush responsibility. It is simply a methodological artifact of how CBO does its baseline.

President Obama has been in charge for nearly three years and has not brought all the troops home from Iraq and has hardly begun a draw down in Afghanistan. The current year OCO of $118 billion is his responsibility as is the phoney-ness of projecting it forward ten years and then claiming savings from spending “$653 billion…over ten years.” If he was really willing to end the war in Afghanistan soon he might be able to cut that OCO in half and offer $325 billion from reduced future war costs to deficit reduction.

And until this year's budget imbroglio in Congress forced his hand he
has continued to feed the Pentagon with higher and higher base budgets every year. There is no evidence that President Obama's “approach to foreign policy…[is] less expensive”… not as far as the largesse offered up to the Pentagon is concerned.

We must not base progressive policy on smoke and mirrors. Such
politics only hurts us in the long run.

Another critique of this budget gimmick can be found at: http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/gordon-adams/2369/how-about-those-defense-savings .

___________________________________________________________

The White House. September 2011.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66998459/WH-Report-on-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan-September-2011

W. Andrew Terrill. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2 August 2011.

Matthew Leatherman. The Will and the Wallet , 26 July 2011.
http://thewillandthewallet.squarespace.com/blog/2011/7/26/dods-64b-question-where-is-that-64b.html

摘录：

“CBO has long said that DoD underestimates program costs including, most recently, its report on the Long-Term Implications of the 2012 Future Years Defense Program. That study concluded that “the difference between the CBO projection and DOD's estimates for the FYDP is about 2%, or about $64 billion, over the five-year period.” “

David E. Mosher, assistant director for national security, Congressional Budget Office. Testimony before the Committee on the Budget, US House of Representatives, 7 July 2011.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12162/07-07-FYDP_Testimony.pdf

2011年6月30日， 波士顿环球报“的社论。

当莱昂帕内塔国防部掌舵的明天，他将面临困难的抉择有关美军在阿富汗，伊拉克和利比亚的努力。 但问题同样迫切的 - 可能更棘手 - 是五角大楼的预算和支出。 即将离任的局长罗伯特·盖茨是口惠而实不至需要控制支出;他指出，最近，“美国应该把钱花在国防尽可能必要的，但没有一分钱''但该部门的基线预算已上升。每年都因为盖茨接任 - 450亿美元至5500亿美元以上四年后。 仅今年，五角大楼正在寻求从2010年的预算增加3.4％。

它不只是战争，他们代表五角大楼的庞大预算要求低于30％。 在其他政府开支的情况下，五角大楼是一个庞然大物。 为每政府可支配支出100元，30元以上非战争的国防支出。 范围是压倒性的;以上的头痛医头，脚痛医脚削减失败的系统的需要是迫切的。

盖茨最近声称，五角大楼已经削减了300亿美元，但数学，否则建议。 这些钱来自已经排定，将被终止的程序。 储蓄只是投入其他军事优先事项。 盖茨指出，海军的11个航母战斗群过量后，拒绝消除单一。

帕内塔将需要采取在预算纪律和系统性的外观。 有没有可持续国防部专责小组的报告 ，代表巴尼弗兰克召开的一个跨党派小组的意见有影响力的智囊团和独立的研究，包括去年的短缺。 他们建议将削减为960亿美元，2011年和2020年之间，如果只有五角大楼对他们采取行动。

切割部署核武器的一半 - 到1000枚弹头 - 强调减少对核战争和核军控倡导者的努力是一致的。 仅此举将节省超过1000亿美元，超过10年。 减少50,000常规部队，它仍然会留下10万人员部署在欧洲和亚洲，是比较现实的力量结构。 取消只是一个既不符合成本效益也不重要的几个系统会节省更多。 的MV-22“鱼鹰”远征战车长的麻烦，能力。 此外，美国国会预算办公室和政府问责局提出的变化，如维修，供应和基础设施的扶持力度，在未来十年内，可节省1000亿美元。

这一切都可以做到不损害国家安全。 帕内塔需要推动的政治势力，声称任何削减使脆弱的国家，以各种不同的敌人。 赤字是一个更大的安全风险。

不幸的是，五角大楼仍然是最大的联邦机构，根本无法通过一个独立的审计师测试时，受到正常的簿记程序，它不能准确，跟踪消费，欺诈，浪费，或裁员。 它给了自己2017年9月的最后期限为审计“的准备。这不是很快。 帕内塔，谁管理和预算办公室的前负责人，有一个严格的财政纪律战斗机的声誉。 他需要得到五角大楼的房子，以便在第一天。

专责小组在一个统一的安全预算政策研究所 ，2011年7月。
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/Unified_Security_Budget_FY2012.pdf

梅尔文·古德曼。 巴尔的摩太阳报“，2011年6月29日。

摘录：

In his recent lectures, Mr. Gates warned against any freeze in defense spending, leaving Mr. Panetta to deal with weapons systems and military missions that the United States can no longer afford. As the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Panetta presumably understands that the United States, with less than 25 percent of the world's economic output and more than 50 percent of the world's military expenditures, will have to curtail certain weapons and missions. The defense budget has grown more than 50 percent in the past 10 years and now exceeds the pace of spending of the Cold War era, including the wars in Korea and Vietnam as well as the peacetime buildup of President Ronald Reagan.

A reexamination of current troop deployments must include the tens of thousands of troops in Europe and Asia more than six decades after the end of World War II; hundreds of bases and facilities the world over; and the excessive willingness to project power in areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where vital national interests are not at stake.

The White House, 29 June 2011.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/29/fact-sheet-national-strategy-counterterrorism

White House Fact Sheet National Strategy for Counterterrorism

白宫
2011年6月29日，

“As a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done.”

–President Barack Obama
2011年5月1日，

The National Strategy for Counterterrorism, found here, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/counterterrorism_strategy.pdf formalizes the approach that President Obama and his Administration have been pursuing and adapting for the past two and half years to prevent terrorist attacks and to deliver devastating blows against al-Qa'ida, including the successful mission to kill Usama bin Laden.

Rather than defining our entire national security policy, this counterterrorism strategy is one part of President Obama's larger National Security Strategy, which seeks to advance our enduring national security interests, including our security, prosperity, respect for universal values and global cooperation to meet global challenges.

This Strategy builds upon the progress we have made in the decade since 9/11, in partnership with Congress, to build our counterterrorism and homeland security capacity as a nation. It neither represents a wholesale overhaul—nor a wholesale retention—of previous policies and strategies.

Threat —This Strategy recognizes there are numerous nations and groups that support terrorism to oppose US interests, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and HAMAS, and we will use the full range of our foreign policy tools to protect the United States against these threats.

However, the principal focus of this counterterrorism strategy is the network that poses the most direct and significant threat to the United States—al-Qa'ida, its affiliates and its adherents.

Al-Qa'ida has murdered thousands of our citizens, including on 9/11.

Al-Qa'ida affiliates—groups that have aligned with al-Qa'ida—have attempted to attack us, such as Yemen-based al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25, 2009.

Al-Qa'ida adherents—individuals, sometimes American citizens, who cooperate with or are inspired by al-Qa'ida—have engaged in terrorism, including the tragic slaughter of our service members at Fort Hood in 2009.

Our Ultimate Objective —This Strategy is clear and precise in our ultimate objective: we will disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al-Qa'ida—its leadership core in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, its affiliates and adherents to ensure the security of our citizens and interests.

Our Posture —We are at war. We are waging a broad, sustained, integrated and relentless campaign that harnesses every element of American power to defeat al-Qa'ida.

Our Goals –To defeat al-Qa'ida, we are pursuing specific counterterrorism goals, including:

Protecting our homeland by constantly reducing our vulnerabilities and adapting and updating our defenses.

Disrupting, degrading, dismantling and defeating al-Qa'ida wherever it takes root.

Preventing terrorists from acquiring or developing weapons of mass destruction.

Eliminating the safehavens al-Qa'ida needs to train, plot and launch attacks against us.

Degrading links between al-Qa'ida, its affiliates and adherents.

Countering al-Qa'ida ideology and its attempts to justify violence.

Depriving al-Qa'ida and its affiliates of their enabling means, including illicit financing, logistical support, and online communications.

Our Principles —Our pursuit of these goals is guided by several key principles, including:

Upholding core American values, including rule of law and the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of all Americans;

Harnessing every tool at our disposal, including intelligence, military, homeland security and law enforcement, and maximizing cooperation between communities;

Building partnerships to with international institutions and partners so that nations can take the fight to al-Qa'ida, its affiliates and adherents in their own countries;

Applying tools appropriately, recognizing that different threats in different regions demand different tools;

Building a culture of preparedness and resilience at home to prevent terrorist attacks and ensure we can quickly recover should an attack occur.

Devastating Blows Against Al-Qa'ida—guided by this Strategy, we have achieved significant progress against al-Qa'ida over the past two and a half years.

We have put al-Qa'ida under more pressure than at any time since 9/11, affecting its ability to attract new recruits and making it harder for al-Qa'ida to train and plot attacks.

Al-Qa'ida's leadership ranks have been decimated, with more key leaders eliminated in rapid succession than at any time since 9/11.

Virtually every major al-Qa'ida affiliate has lost its key leader or operational commander.

More than half of al-Qa'ida's leadership has been eliminated, including Usama bin Laden.

“On a Path to Defeat” —As President Obama stated in his June 22 remarks on our way forward in Afghanistan, “we have put al Qaeda on a path to defeat, and we will not relent until the job is done.”

Information seized from his compound reveals bin Laden's concerns about al-Qa'ida's long-term viability.

Bin Laden clearly saw that al-Qa'ida is losing the larger battle for hearts and minds.

Bin Laden knew that he had failed to portray America as being at war with Islam.

He knew that al-Qa'ida's murder of so many innocent civilians, most of them Muslims, had deeply and perhaps permanently tarnished al-Qa'ida's image in the world.

Editor's Comment:

In terms of military means of countering terrorism it has been reported that this Counterterrorism Strategy signals the shift away from large-scale ground interventions in foreign countries and consequently will reduce the requirement for counter-insurgency capabilities in the armed forces. Instead it relies more on special forces assisted by drones to target principals in terrorist organizations.

Time will tell whether COIN is on the way out.

William Hartung. Huffington Post , 28 June 2011.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-hartung/afghanistan-for-real-savi_b_886241.html

摘录：

There won't be large scale savings from the winding down of the Afghan war until virtually all US forces are withdrawn. Even then there are still likely to be ongoing costs for training, equipping and possibly even paying Afghan security forces, which could cost up to $10 billion or more per year if current rates are maintained. But the vast bulk of the $120 billion per year now being spent on the war will be freed up for other purposes: deficit reduction, or public investments, or some combination of the two.

An end to the Afghan and Iraq wars may also open the way to a more comprehensive public debate on the Pentagon's $550 billion-plus annual base budget — a sum over four times as large as what we spend on the wars. Politically, making real cuts in Pentagon spending during a time of war is a tough sell, even given our current budgetary predicament. But an end to the wars combined with the pressure from the deficit could lead to real cuts in the Pentagon's base budget as well, especially if we adopt a new strategy that forswears major wars of occupation or large-scale insurgency campaigns of the kind our nation has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we cut the war spending and bring the Pentagon's larger budget into line with reality, then we'll be talking real money.

Jeff Jacoby. Boston Globe , 22 June 2011.

摘录：

…with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.

Our world needs a policeman. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.

Editor's Comment:

When three-quarters of Americans reject a role of global policeman for the US perhaps they understand something fundamental about policing that Jeff Jacoby doesn't. A police force without oversight by a judiciary and a guiding body of law is surely a formula for tyranny .

Jacoby would never endorse tyranny, but the avocation to be global policemen by White House occupants who are elected by and responsible to only 10% of the world's people is a decision to be a vigilante on the global stage. Consider that Americans would be up in arms if China or Russia took it upon themselves to be global vigilantes.

For the leaders of the US to so gladly to take up this role only serves to delay the day when we have capable international judicial and policing institutions. If our leaders attempt to think even a few years into the future it should be clear to them that the practice of vigilantism does not serve American interests.

[A version of this comment was published as a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe , 28 June 2011.]

Sandra Erwin. National Defense , 10 June 2011.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=441

摘录：

Not only are there internal disagreements within the Pentagon and the Obama administration over what the military services will be doing in the future, but factions within Congress also will be pushing individual agendas. “In Congress, you have 535 individuals and every one of them thinks they're in charge,” O'Keefe said. “If you don't have some benchmark to work with to start the discussion,” the Pentagon will lose control over what gets cut in future budgets.

“If there is no strategic framework, that is what will happen: The process takes over,” said O'Keefe. Defense leaders should come up with a reasonable strategic framework as early as possible that they can sell to Congress, he said. “Absent that, it is going to be the programmers and bean counters driving the train to meet a number.”

A coherent message from the Defense Department is “missing right now,” said John J. Hamre, president of CSIS and former deputy defense secretary.

“What are we really trying to plan for, as a Defense Department, that is good for 20 years?” he asked. “Are we going to get the hell out of these wars and never fight them again? What are we preparing for?” he added. “That, I think, is the work for the next six months.”

There has to be a sense of urgency about articulating a plan for the future of the US military, because increasingly the American public is losing patience with seemingly endless wars and gridlock over how to move forward, Hamre said

Steps Toward Defense Budget Discipline , a Hill briefing sponsored by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Defense Alternatives, 7 June 2011, video by the Stimson Center . Featuring: Amy Belasco, Carl Conetta, Benjamin Friedman, Matthew Leatherman, Laura Peterson and Winslow Wheeler.

Carlton Meyer. G2mil.com, June 2011.
http://www.g2mil.com/OBCL.htm

摘录：

Here is a list of outdated US military bases overseas that can be promptly closed to save billions of dollars each year…

Close Outdated US Military Bases in Japan – Futenma & Atsugi

Pull Aircraft and Airmen Out of Osan – now in a kill zone

Cut Army Fat in Korea – 8th Army and Daegu

Vacate Two Army Bases in Germany – as once planned

Close Torii Station – a US Army base on Okinawa?

Vacate RAF Lakenheath – the Russians aren't coming

Close Gitmo, the Entire Base – it has no purpose

Close Chinhae Tomorrow – it commands nothing

[There is more argumentation about each of these at the source.]

Winslow Wheeler. Guest Post, 24 May 2011.

The National Defense Authorization bill, HR 1540, will be debated by the House of Representatives this week. The bill is the work product of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), Chaired by Congressman Buck McKeon, R. – Calif..

The Operation and Maintenance section (Title XLIII) of the bill is one of its largest and most important. “O&M” deals with the support, logistics, maintenance, training and much else needed to enable our armed forces to function effectively. $170.8 billion was requested by President Obama; the committee increased that by $361 million to $171.1 billion. However, to get there the Committee took some detours.

Sprinkled throughout the O&M title the HASC added various earmarks (one minor example: $4.0 million for “Simulation Training Systems for the Army” [p. 430 of the Committee Report]). All of these came to a lot more than the $361 million net add to the bill. The Committee and its staff had to find offsets to help pay for these earmark goodies and other additions.

In past years, the HASC (and the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Defense Subcommittees of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees) has listed strange sounding reductions in the O&M sections of their bills – “unobligated balances.” These should be technical alterations for money previously appropriated to the various military services for various programs; they become “unobligated” when the planned expenditure does not occur, and they presumably become available for offsets for new spending, or – if the Committee were to be more forthcoming to the taxpayer – return to the Treasury.

For example, on p. 432 of the HASC Committee Report, the tables for Army O&M show a reduction of $384.6 million labeled “Army unobligated balances estimate.” That amount happens to be 1.1% of the president's request for total Army O&M ($34.735 billion).

The Navy section on O&M in the HASC bill shows a $435.9 million reduction for “Navy unobligated balances estimate.” For some strange reason, that amount also calculates to 1.1% of the President's request for Navy O&M ($39.365 billion).

Stranger even, the Marine Corps O&M reduction for unobligated balances as also 1.1% ($66 million of a $5.960 billion request).

Same thing for the Air Force; the same 1.1% ($400.8 million from a $36.195 billion request).

None of these are discussed or explained in the text of the committee report; the only “explanation” we get is that they are “Army [or Navy, or Air Force, etc.] unobligated balances estimate.”

That all of these “estimates,” which should be technical in their nature, come to 1.1% reeks of gaming the system. Two relevant questions: Who did it? And Why?

First, I seriously question if these conveniently similar estimates did indeed come from the military services. That would require a rather strange (and specious) amount of coordination by them all to all come to 1.1% of their respective O&M budget requests.

Secondly, why are there no “unobligated balances” in the procurement and R&D titles, which are heavy with the kind of spending that can end up “unobligated”?

Third, why isn't this money being returned to the Treasury, from whence it came and now belongs if indeed the money is no longer needed by the Defense Department?

There are lots of other questions, but hopefully you get my drift. The offsets the HASC took, calling them “unobligated balances,” are nothing but across the board whacks at one of the most importance accounts in the DOD budget – the one that makes for a well trained and supported military. Why is the HASC doing these across the board cuts, and why are they doing it in O&M?

There are some other “unobligated balance” issues in the bill. The defense wide part of O&M also took a $456.8 million hit from a request of $30.940 billion. This comes to 1.47%. Why does the part that supports the special forces and others take a bigger proportional hit than the other military services?

Also, the Defense Health Program takes a $225 million hit which is “explained” as a “GAO estimate,” but no GAO analysis or other explanation is offered.

The Military Personnel budget that pays military salaries takes a $693 million hit from a $142.828 billion request (.48%). I found no explanation.

Finally, section 2107 permits the Secretary of the Army to use $115 million in previously “unobligated” spending to fund a water treatment facility at Fort Irwin California. Perhaps the House representative from the Fort Irwin area can explain how all this works and how he or she got to fund some spending in the district from these ubiquitous funds.

In my judgment, the HASC, which is charged with oversight of DOD, could use a little oversight itself.

Pentagon's Phantom Savings: $330B Claim Erodes as Programs Reappear
Marcus Weisgerber. Defense News , 16 May 2011.
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2011/05/pentagons-phantom-savings-330b-claim.html

摘录：

Nearly 40 percent of that sum [$330 billion] is going straight back into US military programs that replicate the canceled ones, and it's unclear where another 10 percent came from at all, according to a Defense News analysis and to several analysts.

…many of the military services' capability requirements remained in place. More than $130 billion is back on the books, or will be soon, for follow-on or replacement programs. Of the programs canceled in 2010, at least five have already been relaunched, or are in the planning stages to begin again.

Editor's Comment:

When President Obama addressed the nation about the Federal deficit on April 13th he said, “Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.” A number of us military budget analysts looked at each other and said, “Huh, did we miss something?” We hadn't notice any significant cuts in Pentagon spending that could count toward reducing the Federal deficit. Where did the President get that big number?

Of course, we had taken notice when Defense Secretary Gates had announced $78 billion in budget cuts for the FY12 five year defense plan. We noted that the DoD budget would still continue to grow, that some of these cuts were fairly soft (dependent on assumptions about future inflation rates) and most savings would be generated in the out-years. (See: Pentagon Resists Deficit Reduction )

And we had noted that Secretary Gates had cancelled a number of programs in 2009. But we also noted that many of the cancelled programs were being replaced by others substantially reducing the putative savings (see Gordon Adams, Defense Budgets: Still Need to Get it Right! )

In the days following the President's speech we commented on how there was much less real savings than the President attributed to Secretary Gates' “courageous” efforts. I pointed out that $68 billion of the January $78 billion in savings had been consumed when 2012 war costs appeared in the budget released in February, replacing small placeholder numbers.

Benjamin Friedman observed that “current 'savings' consist entirely of spending that the Pentagon reprogrammed and kept, and the future 'savings' come by reducing planned spending growth, rather than reducing actual spending.”

Carl Conetta reviewed the history of these supposed cuts going back to 2009 and compared successive Obama budgets, 2010 through 2012, finding no more than $233 billion in “maybe” DoD reductions in projected out years.

The collective skepticism of independent analysts about the $400 billion no doubt reached the attention of the editors of Defense News , the leading defense industry weekly, where Marcus Weisgerber sought to justify Secretary Gates' claim of $330 billion in savings from the 2009 program cancellations. When DoD officials refused a request to give a program-by-program breakdown of the figure Defense News “used budget justification documents, DoD officials' public statements, annual acquisition reports and Government Accountability Office estimates to project program costs. For classified and far-term programs not on the books – but factored into DoD's projections – think tank and analysts' estimates were used.” The Weisgerber article title, “ Pentagon's Phantom Savings “, sums up the results of Defense News' effort to justify Secretary Gates' claim of savings.

Defense News editorial, 16 May 2011.
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-defense-budget-get-real-pentagon.html

摘录：

There is an old Washington saying that no money is less real than out-year money. This means that anything that is beyond the immediate spending bill is purely notional.

Requirement control is a popular method of limiting the costs of new weapons, but it's equally important to control the growing number of missions.

The first step should be to ensure the roles-and-missions review ordered by Obama slashes unnecessary and costly redundancies in capabilities.

Second, the Pentagon must avoid doing what it did – portraying soft numbers as hard ones that do little other than expose it to criticism.

Lastly, to make wise cuts, the Pentagon must improve its internal financial management processes to pinpoint what it's spending and how. Without hard data, it's hard to come up with hard savings.

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Note , 12 May 2011.

Word is that two principals in the production of 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will be charged with producing the “fundamental” defense review President Obama ordered in his April 13th speech on the deficit. They are Kathleen Hicks , Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning, who was the lead 2010 QDR author and David Ochmanek , Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development, who headed the “analysis and integration cell” which pulled together all the analytical aspects of the last QDR.

Update

Defense News reports (23 May 2011) that “The missions and capabilities review will be led by Christine Fox , director of cost assessment and program evaluations [and formerly the President of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)]; Michele Flournoy , defense undersecretary for policy [and the Pentagon official in charge of the 2010 QDR]; and Adm. Michael Mullen , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Editor's Comment:

Putting the same people who did the 2010 review in charge of producing the new review raises an obvious question of whether we should expect anything much “new” or “fundamental” from this review. QDRs in the past have certainly failed to be “fundamental” in any meaningful sense of the word.

One suspects that the foregone sub-text of what Ms. Hicks writes into the new review will be, “We got this pretty much right when we did it last year. Now, of course, if you are willing to take greater security risks you can cut some pieces out of the force posture, but that is a political decision…”

If the new review makes such a smug presentation it will serve the President and the nation poorly. The 2010 QDR did not make any real effort to set clear priorities among the many military requirements it listed, failing one of the principles of strategy development which is to set a practical path within resource constraints. A new fundamental review must present a variety of low-risk options that can be achieved at various resource investment levels. Its authors should not be allowed to simply push the matter of security risk into the political domain.

President Obama would be smart to solicit ideas from a wide variety of sources, reaching far beyond the Pentagon's strategy, policy and force planning staff. If a fundamental review is needed, it is wise to hear and consider diverse voices.

温斯洛惠勒。 Center for Defense Information, May 2011.
http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/GreenbookInflationMay11.pdf

摘录：

The comparison of DOD's prediction of inflation for itself compared to the commonly accepted GDP measure looms as a major consideration when one considers the time frame that President Obama and Congress are contemplating in the context of deficit reduction. The President's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform assumed a budget window of 10 years from 2011 to 2020. In his April 13 speech on deficit reduction the president addressed a budget window going out to 2023, when he implied, but did not explain, a reduction in the planned “security” budget of $400 billion in the 2012 -2023 time frame.

There are multiple caveats and uncertainties in the defense related reductions the president appears to have been talking about; these should be identified before identifying how the inflation issue impacts any contemplated savings. They are the following:

• The manner in which the president addressed past and future “savings” made it unclear the extent to which he was addressing actual reductions in spending, or “savings” as efficiencies (ie internal transfers inside the DOD budget as Secretary of Defense Gates has for the most part been conducting);

• No DOD budget figures exist for some of the years the president addressed; available DOD figures go out to only 2016; available OMB figures for defense spending go out to 2021, but the amounts for 2022-2023 are unknown; it is also notable that in recent budget history, most deficit reduction plans have spanned either five or ten years, not twelve; the latter spreads out the annual amount required to be saved, and – more importantly – moving savings out to years as far as ten or twelve years away literally moves them to never-never land;

• No figures were released for any reductions in any year, whether the pre-existing annual budget was known or unknown;

• The target for these $400 billion in “savings” is the “security” budget, not just the Defense Department's budget. The security category includes not just DOD but the State Department/International Affairs budget function, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, and other miscellaneous programs and agencies; the Defense Department's proposed share of the $400 billion “savings” is unknown, and

• Materials released by the White House at the time of the speech asserted that the new plan had a “goal” to hold DOD spending “below” the rate of inflation. While DOD's preferred rates of inflation will – as always – be used for the DOD budget, the differences between the DOD and GDP inflation indices for the years beyond 2016 have also not been made available.

… if the Department of Defense is held to the rate of inflation – or just “below” – as calculated by the DOD inflation indices, it is clear from the above analysis that it will be quite possible for the Pentagon to enjoy “real” growth – under the more generally accepted GDP indices.

卡尔Conetta。 Project on Defense Alternatives Note , 30 April 2011.

Why is our defense spending so high and apparently out of control? Plenty of ink has been spilled addressing this question, including my own short, The Pentagon's Runaway Budget .

Andy Bacevich may get closer to the key political dynamics in Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable .

There is no better example of the dysfunctional political dynamic governing the Pentagon budget than President Obama's affirmation (April 13, 2011) of the claim that Secretary of Defense Gates has “already saved” the nation $400 billion in defense expenditure. And there is no better illustration of the poverty of our discourse on this subject than the fact that the claim goes largely unchallenged.

Most of the $400 billion in earlier DoD “savings” that President Obama has attributed to Secretary Gates are not “savings” in the ordinary sense of the word. They do not show up as reductions in DoD budget plans from one year to the next, as shown below. At best, they represent DoD marginally adjusting its programs and aspirations to marginally deal with spiraling cost growth.

Rough analogy: Having said it would deliver a “fully-loaded” Cadillac for a specified price X, and having discovered that this estimated price is entirely unrealistic, a car dealer trims back some of the features and delivers something less for the full promised price. Most consumers would call this a gyp, not a savings.

The alternative would be for DoD to further boost subsequent budget requests to fully reflect cost growth, and let Congress and the Executive reconsider what they wanted to buy. I suppose one could say that DoD has “saved” these authorities from the headache of making this decision. Fully confronting a realistic pricing of current programs might lead to a thorough-going rethink of our defense posture and modernization efforts. But that's too much to consider.

Now, let's try to find those $400 billion in “savings”….

THE $400 BILLION

1。 Much of the $400 billion that Secretary Gates is claimed to have saved derives from his April 2009 announcement of program cuts. Gates claims that the systems and programs he cut in 2009 would have eventually cost more than $300 billion. However, at least some of this was immediately reprogrammed, meaning: DoD used the savings to buy other things.

April 2009 Gates Defense Budget Recommendation Statement

2。 In August 2010 and January 2011, Secretary Gates outlined additional “cuts” and “savings” totaling $178 billion. Of this, $100 billion was immediately reprogrammed to purchase other things or cover other costs. The remaining $78 billion was supposed to be released from the Pentagon orbit to help pay down the deficit. In the August 2010 statement, we find Gates' claiming that his earlier 2009 effort has already saved more than $300 billion.

August 2010 Gates Statement on Department Efficiencies Initiative

Jan 2011 Gates Statement on Department Budget and Efficiencies

PDA summary chart re: the $178 billion

3。 How much (if any) of the earlier “more than $300 billion” in savings was similarly given over for deficit reduction? Looking at actual budget plans, what do we see? The first $300 billion was announced in April 2009 and it might reasonably have shown up as difference between the last Bush budget plan (FY09) and the first Obama budget plan (FY10).

Comparison between these two budget plans is easy for the years 2010-2013:
- Bush FY09 planned total spending for 2010-2013 = 2.155 trillion
- Obama FY10 planned total spending for 2010-2013 = 2.183 trillion

An increase is not a reduction, therefore: no savings apparent in the near years.

4。 Obama's next budget plan (FY11) foresaw a significant increase over his first. So, no savings apparent there either.

5。 Only in the next plan – the FY12 plan – do we see a reduction in planned spending between FY12 and FY11 plans. In the nine years that overlap between the FY11 and FY12 plans, we see a reduction of about $233 billion.

But the FY12 plan follows Gates' second announcement of cuts and savings (summarized in #2 above). So, at least, $78 billion derives from that and not the earlier cuts. Indeed, when we compare the FY12 plan with the FY11 plan for the years 2012-2016, there is a reduction in planned spending of $76 billion. Still no apparent impact from the April 2009 “cuts,” however.

6。 Well, as noted above, the total difference between the FY11 and FY12 plan for the years 2012-2020 is $233 billion. 233 minus 78 = 155. This additional planning rollback of $155 billion shows up for the years after 2016. So maybe we've found at least $155 billion of the earlier supposed cut? Maybe it just took 2 years to register? 也许吧。

“Maybe” because the Obama FY12 budget rolls back planned spending almost exactly to the levels foreseen in the Obama FY10 budget …being the budget that was larger than the final Bush budget and being the budget that showed no impact from Gates' April 2009 offer. To put it another way: Obama's FY12 budget simply rolls back the future spending plan he produced in FY11 to the level he had proposed in FY10. The FY12 plan simply disappears the increase proposed in FY11.

7。 The other possible (likely) reading of all this is that: (i) None of the original $300 billion “saved” ever left the Pentagon,
(ii) The $78 billion that Gates offered up to deficit reduction is the only “savings” really specified so far to actually show up as a reduction in planned spending, and (iii) The other $155 billion that the FY12 plan subtracts from the FY11 plan involves as yet unspecified cuts and efficiencies.

Project on Defense Alternatives Budget Brief , 28 April 2011.

The Obama Administration to date has made three successive Pentagon budget requests: FY10, FY11, and FY12. Each has looked ten years into the future.

On 13 April, the President offered a new proposal and framework — a revision to achieve greater deficit reduction. It looks forward 12 years. How do all these compare?

In order to compare the President's successive plans, we must stretch the earlier ones out to the new horizon set in his April 13 speech, which is 2023. Reviewing the budget requests shows that in each case the projections for the “out years” — the tail-end years — have been generated by the application of a simple inflator. We can adopt these inflators to stretch all the requests out to 2023. Of course, the result must be regarded as only an estimate of the administration's intent.

The difference between the FY11 and FY12 plans for the 10-year period 2012-2021 is around $240 billion. Stretch it out two more years and the difference grows to about $400 billion. This shows that the differences among the plans (when measured in “then year” dollars) really begin to accumulate as we go further and further into the future.

Keeping in mind that Congress must consider and pass the budget year by year, any series of budget projections going out twelve years, spanning three Presidential terms and differing economic conditions, must be judged distinctly uncertain.

Below are the total budget figures (in “then year” dollars) for the President's successive plans. Each plan is also weighed as a percentage of the earliest one (ie FY10):

FY10 plan for 2012-2023: 7543 billion = 100%

FY11 plan for 2012-2023: 7947 billion = 105%

FY12 plan for 2012-2023: 7512 billion = 99%

New (April 13) proposal for 2012-23: 7112 billion = 94%

The most consequential years for national policy are the next five: 2012-2016, which constitute the FYDP. The President's successive requests for these years are more firm and we needn't do any estimating to derive them. All the Administration budget requests have been explicit about these years. And reviewing the successive requests for 2012-2016 shows that the difference among them is not as substantial:

FY10 plan for 2012-2016: 2878 billion = 100%

FY11 plan for 2012-2016: 2995 billion = 104%

FY12 plan for 2012-2016: 2919 billion = 101%

We don't yet know what the President's April 13 proposal will imply for the 2012-2016 period. It's a fair bet, though, that he will want to reinstate his earlier request to DoD that $150 billion be “saved” in the near future and not just the $78 billion pledged earlier this year by Secretary Gates. That would produce the following:

New plan for 2012-2016: 2845 billion = 99%

If this proves true, the rollback in planned spending for the five years that matter most will be modest, verging on insignificant.

Project on Defense Alternatives, Briefing Memo #49, 25 April 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1104bm49.pdf

There is good reason to welcome a strategic review, as promised by President Obama on 13 April. For nearly 14 years, US defense policy has been guided by the “QDR consensus” – a set of axioms and imperatives that won adherence among defense planners in the course of four Quadrennial Defense Reviews, beginning in 1997. In retrospect, this consensus has produced a syndrome of profligate and desultory military activism. It has fed the dysfunctions of our military procurement system and helped drive the Pentagon's base budget to unsustainable heights. Certainly, it is time for a fresh start. But will the promised review deliver?

Will the review be more open and critical than the QDRs it aims to rectify? How deep will it dig? Will it even aim to “rectify?” Or will it serve a more narrow purpose: a revised bargain among the Commander-in-Chief, his defense secretary, and the chiefs of the armed services to exchange modest new constraints on budget growth for a strong rationale, a bulwark, against any further cuts.

What the President seeks is only $400 billion in savings over 12 years – about 6.5% of planned base budget expenditures. Last year, the President's Fiscal Commission and other independent task forces identified more than twice as much in potential defense savings over a period of just ten years. And it is unclear whether the President intends to extract the $400 billion from the Pentagon's budget alone or from the larger “security basket,” which includes International Affairs, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

Also, it is not encouraging that the President applauded Defense Security Gates for having “already saved” $400 billion in previous years, when most of those “savings” never left the Pentagon's coffers, nor dented the government's deficits. What the nation needs now are “savings” in the colloquial sense of an actual decrease in defense spending.

A serious strategic review should enable considerably more than a 6.5% retraction in planned future expenditures. It should do more than limit future growth. And maybe it will. But we should recognize at the start that what the President has proposed is not itself substantial enough to actually necessitate a strategic review. Yes, we need one – but not because the President hopes to modestly dampen Pentagon growth.

To be meaningful, such a review must look well beyond $400 billion in savings, and even beyond what the Fiscal Commission and other task forces have proposed. Of course, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen disagree. They have already publicly derided any substantial new constraints on their spending as putting the nation and its armed services at risk. The strategic review should be more than a conciliatory concession to their concerns, which are tendentious.

We can gain needed perspective by comparing recent budget submissions and proposals in historical context. This table prepared by PDA converts recent plans and proposals into average annual Pentagon base budgets, expressed in 2010 dollars. It shows that the President's requests and proposals, including his recent one, would produce average annual budgets that occupy a narrow band of spending. They are all close cousins.

Even the more ambitious proposal by the Sustainable Defense Task Force does not go far afield.

All of the President's requests and proposals produce average annual budgets that, in real terms, exceed previous spending, exceed Reagan-era levels of spending, and substantially exceed average spending during the entire Cold War period. (And, notably, the budget average for the Cold War years includes war spending, while the more recent averages do not.)

We should gladly accept the opportunity for a review of defense planning and work to make it worthwhile. But we need not and should not accept the idea that modest revisions in budget planning give good reason to hit the “strategy panic” button.

Sebastian Sprenger writing in Inside Defense on 21 April 2011 reports that the QDR Red Team headed by Gen. James Mattis (USMC) and Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessment, raised concerns in 2009 about the fiscal restraint effects of the deep recession on military plans to be represented in the QDR.

The Red Team report was not made public. When the QDR was published in early 2010 it did not include a presentation of the effects of fiscal constraints.

Last week, a little more than a year later, President Obama asked Secretary Gates to find $400 billion in additional security budget cuts over a twelve year period and called for a new review of military roles and missions.

The effect of this development will be an update of the 2010 QDR which will likely now heed the concerns of the 2009 Red Team concerning fiscal constraints.

On Wednesday April 13th 2001, President Obama announced an initiative to roll back planned security spending by $400 billion over the next 12 years. The nature of these “savings” is not yet clear. Nor is it clear how much will be subtracted from the Pentagon's spending plans.

Nonetheless, Secretary Gates and the Chiefs are not pleased and have begun to make noise about risks to security. Apparently, they were not briefed on the proposal until Tuesday.

Part of the initiative is to begin a “fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world.” What and how much is subtracted from the Pentagon will depend on this review. Notably, the United States just completed a Quadrennial Defense Review last year. What the President proposes is some sort of “second look.” The President, Secretary Gates, and the service chiefs will be the prime movers of this process. How deep their “second look” will go is unclear. And it seems battle lines are already being drawn.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell said the review would likely affect the 2013 budget. It will not be ready by June, when congressional debate of the 2012 budget commences.

How open will the review process be? We don't yet know. But the experience of recent defense reviews is not encouraging. Still we should welcome this first step and strive to open up the process. The need for a rethinking our defense strategy and posture was emphasized in the 2010 report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force :

[I]n order to ensure significant savings, we must change how we produce military power and the ways in which we put it to use. Significant savings may depend on our willingness to:

Rethink our national security commitments and goals to ensure they focus clearly on what concerns us the most;

Reset our national security strategy so that it reflects a cost-effective balance among the security instruments at our disposal and uses those instruments in cost-effective ways; and

Reform our system of producing defense assets so it.

News links on President Obama's proposed rollback in planned security spending, his call for a strategic review, and the Pentagon's reaction:

DOD: Finding More Savings In Defense Budget Means Nixing Missions . Christopher J. Castelli. Inside Defense , 13 April 2011.

Obama Calls for Sweeping Review of US Military Strategy . Sandra Erwin. National Defense , 13 April 2011.

Pentagon warns on big defense cuts . Missy Ryan and Jim Wolf. Reuters , 13 April 2011.

Defence chief warns against planned cuts . Daniel Dombey and James Politi. Financial Times , 14 April 2011.

Events frequently overtake long-term Pentagon planning . Megan Scully. Government Executive, 14 April 2011.

Editor's Commentary

13 April 2011 (revised and updated 16 April 2011)

In President Obama's April 13th “deficit speech” he says:

Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.

What might “do that again” mean?

Actually contribute $400 billion from projected Pentagon budgets to deficit reduction?

That would require the Pentagon to take in and spend $400 billion less. But it is very difficult to identify much actual contribution to deficit reduction in the first $400 billion in Pentagon savings President Obama refers to and believes can be repeated.

Let's take a quick look at the components of that first $400 billion working backward through time.

This past January Secretary Gates announced $78 billion in cuts over five years. In February when the President's FY12 budget appeared all but $70 billion of this as regards deficit reduction evaporated. $68 billion was consumed by the special Overseas Contingency Operations (war) budgeting as the FY11 projected placeholder of $50 billion was replaced by the FY12 real OCO budget of $118 billion. Another $2 billion in the savings appears to have simply vanished in the five year budget projections, perhaps due to those pesky “rounding errors” that plague Pentagon budgets.

In 2010 Secretary Gates announced $100 billion in “efficiency” savings. He was quite forthright at the time, saying that he was keeping all the savings within the Pentagon to pay for other requirements. So we can't legitimately count those toward deficit reduction, and presumably the President did not count those toward the $400 billion that has been saved.

So that leaves about $322 billion in Pentagon savings the White House needs to account for.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 17 February 2011 Secretary Gates said:

…over the last two defense budgets submitted by President Obama, we have curtailed or canceled troubled or excess programs that would have cost more than $330 billion if seen through to completion.

Connecting this to President Obama's speech Defense News reports (13 April 2011) that:

Of the $400 billion already saved, $330 billion is supposed to come from Gates' cuts to weapons programs – for example the cancellation of the Army's Future Combat Systems program and the Air Force's Next-Generation Bomber, both of which Gates terminated in the 2010 budget. However, those two programs have been replaced: The Army is developing the Ground Combat Vehicle, and the Air Force has launched a scaled-back bomber program.

“Supposed” and “However” are the key words in the preceding paragraph. To be real savings that contribute in any meaningful way to deficit reduction the the program cancellations would have to lead to a declining Pentagon budget topline… and not be replaced by some other expenditure.

Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center assesses the $330 billion savings claim in a 5 November 2010 post this way:

Gates has not cut $330 billion from defense. When he announced hardware cuts, he said the out-year savings were estimated at $330 billion, but he didn't cut a nickel from the projected defense budgets; he wants, as he has clearly said, to use those savings for other investments, not give them back to the taxpayer. And the figure is way too big, anyway, because he terminated the F-22 and the C-17 cargo plane when neither one of them was in the long-term budget (he has been trying to let both programs arrive at a normal death, as planned, and Congress keeps getting in the way.) It is even more too big because his savings figure did not net out the alternative investments he proposed for the same missions, like replacing the terminated Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicle with a new Army vehicle R&D program. So a big kerfuffle over a non-number, but no big cut in defense here.

To date the Pentagon or OMB have not produced any accounting of these supposed savings from Secretary Gates' program cancellations which indicate where they come out of the topline. Meanwhile it would be wise to substantially discount their value when thinking about overall Federal spending.

What we know for sure is that Pentagon budgets continue to rise despite the “savings.” The Pentagon and the Administration might argue that the Pentagon budget would have grown faster if Secretary Gates had not made those “courageous” program cuts. Possibly. But that “would have been” is simply not the same as actually contributing to deficit reduction which requires real cuts in the topline of the Pentagon budget.

In terms of cutting the topline of the Pentagon budget, when we remove the long-awaited reductions in war costs, we can count just $8 billion that Secretary Gates has given up to deficit reduction in the five year defense plan (FYDP) through FY16.

Looking out ten years there are more savings in the President's projections. My colleague Carl Conetta finds $164 billion less Pentagon spending in the overlapping four “out years” (FY17-20) when comparing the President's FY11 and Fy12 budget submissions.

We might speculate that this is where we realize some of Secretary Gates' $330 billion in savings, but it would be only speculation…

So far no one in the Administration has demonstrated in sufficient detail how the Pentagon will contribute much of anything toward reducing the Federal deficit, rounding errors notwithstanding.

Joshua Thiel. Small Wars Journal , 12 April 2011.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/732-thiel1.pdf

摘录：

Maneuver warfare at its core is a mechanistic endeavor and fits with a corresponding necessity of top-down hierarchies. Conversely, counterinsurgency is a more ambiguous environment that varies in its complexity and context; it is the chess match of war. It is different in every locale and can cover the entire spectrum of war simultaneously. Consequently, counterinsurgency is difficult to put on a bumper sticker, to trademark as a catch phrase, or sell to a population and their representatives. In 2006 the United States (US) public's perception of success or failure of the Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy was concentrated around the concept of massing combat power in time and space, often called the “The Surge.” The term, “The Surge,” condensed a new counterinsurgency strategy into a simple and quantifiable slogan for the sound bite culture surrounding current affairs in the modern world. Unfortunately, counterinsurgency is more complex than “add more and then you win.”

Comment by Gian Gentile:

Joshua said this at the end of the piece:

“…in Afghanistan in 2011, will the victor once again write the history by touting the Afghanistan troop surge of 2010-2011 rather than the decisive operational changes.”

What evidence, I mean hard evidence (and beyond what officers who were part of the Surge recall)that there was a “decisive operational change.”? How much “decisive” operational change can there be in an area security mission where combat forces are dispersed widely and operate in a decentralized manner? This operational framework was in place in Iraq from spring of 2003 on. The answer is that there was not a decisive change in the operational framework. Oh to be sure there were some tweaks made here and there, a few more outposts here and there, but by and large it remained the same.

Unfortunately a narrative has been constructed that posits that a savior General named Petraeus came on board, reinvented his field army operationally and combined with an increase of troops was the primary cause of the lowering of violence. This is a chimera.

Yet folks, especially us in the Army who have spilled blood in these places, want to believe that what happens or doesnt happen is because of us and what we do or dont do, or because of savior generals riding onto the scene.

Yet the foreign policy elite (and many military leaders) in this country love this narrative and want it to stick because it places emphasis and criticism on the mechanics of doing these wars of intervention and state building and away from the strategy and policy that put them into place. Since success in these wars and conflicts are simply a matter of getting the right number of troops on the ground with the right tactics and with the savior general, then they can be won again and again.

As senior Army generals in Afghanistan argue “the right inputs are finally in place,” so too are we already seeing calls in certain quarters for bog in Libya.

But in Iraq it was neither the increase in troops as part of the Surge (as Joshua effectively argues) nor was it a decisive change in operational framework (as he incorrectly asserts) and instead the lowering of violence had to do with other more critical conditions (the spread of the Anbar awakening, the Shia militia stand-down, the physical seperation of Baghdad into sectarian districts) occurring.

Budget Memo by Charles Knight. 14 February 2011.

For several years now White House budget projections have included a “placeholder for outyear overseas contingency operations” most of which are accounted for by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This placeholder number has been and remains $50 billion. Every year actual OCO (overseas contingency operations) spending turns out to be several times that number. FY11′s OCO is $159 billion and FY12′s is $118 billion .

Adjusting for the effect of the new OCO for FY12, the $68 billion budgeted above the placeholder of $50 billion eats up most of the $78 billion in Pentagon cuts that Secretary Gates offered up in January to fiscal responsibility (only $76 billion actually shows up in the 14 February budget release.) The remaining $8 billion (and much more) will go to the war budgets when reality collides with placeholder projections.

On 14 February Pentagon Comptroller Hale confirmed that the $50 billion placeholders for FY13 and beyond was the “best we can do.” Others make an attempt to be more realistic. The high tech industry association called Tech America annually projects DoD budgets for ten years out. In their 2010 projection they estimate that OCO spending will be $102 billion in FY13 , $69 billion in FY14 and $57billion in FY15 . When we subtract the $50 billion placeholder for each of those years and total the remainder we find that the Pentagon is likely to spend $78 billion more in the years FY13 through FY15 than in the White House budget projections.

In sum, not only does the President's FY12 budget plan give an exemption to the Pentagon from contributing anything substantial to deficit reduction, but the likely cost of the war in Afghanistan will push up the national debt substantially higher than the White House budget projections.

Decoding the Defense Budget by Winslow Wheeler, from The Pentagon Labyrinth , 09 February 2011.

摘录：

What Is the Defense Budget?

Each year in early February, the Pentagon releases what is invariably called the “defense budget” in press articles. The numbers presented do not address all forms of defense spending; they do not even address all forms of Pentagon spending.

For example, a table included in the Pentagon's press materials for the 2011 budget shows the “base” (non-Iraq or -Afghanistan war) budget request at $549.8 billion. The materials presented by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are more complete. The 2011 budget request for “base” (non-war) Pentagon spending was $554.1 billion. The additional $4.3 billion was for “mandatory” spending (also known as “entitlement” spending) mostly for personnel programs. The number the Pentagon released was for the “discretionary” (new annual appropriations) spending. The difference may be a minor one in this case, but it can be significant; in past years Congress has added scores of billions in new mandatory spending for military healthcare, and retirement and survivors' benefits.

The more complete exposition of DOD budgets in the OMB materials is not easy to find; it is usually buried in the “Supplemental Materials” to a volume called “Analytical Perspectives” that is released each year the same day the Pentagon releases its version of its budget. Unfortunately, the DOD press corps roundly ignores the more complete OMB materials. To be better informed in future years, track it down.

The same OMB table yields other important information: the additional DOD spending requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not just for the budget year but also for succeeding “out-years,” and the non-DOD spending for what OMB calls the “National Defense Budget Function,” which includes nuclear weapons, the Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile of minerals and commodities, and more. The total for 2011 comes to $738.7 billion in “total” (discretionary plus mandatory) spending.

The same table also yields the budget amounts for the departments of Homeland (domestic) Security, State (for economic and weapons aid and other national security programs) and Veterans Affairs (for what might be called the human cost of wars). Each is clearly related to national security or “defense,” writ broadly. Finally, if you know where to look near the bottom of this long OMB table, you can find some additional spending in the Treasury Department for military retirement and healthcare, and finally the data needed to make a calculation of how much of the 2011 payment for interest on the national debt can fairly be attributed to the Pentagon.

The results of this more complete compilation of the president's 2011 budget request for “defense” is summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Defense Related Budget Requests for 2011.
(President's 2011 Budget Request – in $ billions)

“Base” DOD Budget (Discretionary only) 548.9

DOD (Mandatory only) 4.3

DOD War Spending 159.1

DOD Total 712.3

DOE (Defense) 18.8

Miscellaneous Defense-Related Agencies 7.6

National Defense Budget Function Total 738.7

Homeland Security (DHS) 43.6

Veterans Affairs (DVA) 122.0

International Affairs 65.3

Treasury Dept. Military Retirement Payments 25.9

Interest on DOD Retiree Health Care Fund 5.7

19% of Interest on Debt (DOD Proportional Share) 47.7

Grand Total $1,048,900,000,000.

The next time someone tries to tell you that the numbers DOD throws at you in its press releases are what you should use to understand monies spent for national security, give him a polite smile; then, go to that obscure table in the Supplementary Materials in OMB's “Analytical Perspectives.” It is published online the same day as the Pentagon press release. A few minutes of checking can give you a more complete understanding than what the press will report.

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 46 , 26 January 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1101bm46.pdf

摘录：

* Although described as a “cut,” Gates' offer would allow defense spending to rise steadily over the next five years.

* Although Gates says that any bigger cuts would court “catastrophe,” all the savings plans grant DoD more money in real terms during the next ten years than it had during the last ten.

* The proposals for bigger cuts would produce average Pentagon base budgets during the next ten years that are only about 5% below Reagan-era spending, adjusted for inflation.

* The Pentagon seeks future budgets that average more than 12% above the Cold War highs.

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine , 24 November 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=258

摘录：

An AESA equipped Super Hornet is “generation four-and-a-half,” says [Michael “Ponch” Garcia, a reserve Navy pilot and manager of business development at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems]. “All the sensors are fifth generation. You won't have super cruise. You won't have 360 stealth. You lose that. But you're getting it for half the price.”

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine , 22 November 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=255

摘录：

“The Defense Department's biggest weakness is its budget strategy: the absence of strategic choice,” says Gordon Adams, American University professor who authored the defense recommendations in the Domenici-Rivlin proposal that was presented by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (RN.M.) and White House Budget Director under Clinton, Alice Rivlin.

Cutting the defense budget should not be about doing the same with less, Adams says. The reaction to the Simpson-Bowles report, which takes aim at many big-ticket weapon programs and calls for work force reductions, was predictable. Every targeted program or agency, as was seen recently with US Joint Forces Command, is making a case that it is essential to national security, and its supporters already are mobilizing lobbyists and advocacy groups.

The smarter approach would be for the Obama administration and Congress to agree to a scaled-back military strategy, says Adams. “At the end of the day, it's about policy makers restraining their impulse to use the military in the reckless way it's been used in the past 20 years,” he says.

18 November 2010

Dear Co-chairman Bowles and Co-chairman Simpson:

We are writing to you as experts in national security and defense economics to convey our views on the national security implications of the Commission's work and especially the need for achieving responsible reductions in military spending. In this regard, we appreciate the initiative you have taken in your 10 November 2010 draft proposal to the Commission. It begins a necessary process of serious reflection, debate, and action.

The vitality of our economy is the cornerstone of our nation's strength. We share the Commission's desire to bring our financial house into order. Doing so is not merely a question of economics. Reducing the national debt is also a national security imperative.

To date, the Obama administration has exempted the Defense Department from any budget reductions. This is short-sighted: It makes it more difficult to accomplish the task of restoring our economic strength, which is the underpinning of our military power.

As the rest of the nation labors to reduce its debt burden, the current plan is to boost the base DOD budget by 10 percent in real terms over the next decade. This would come on top of the nearly 52 percent real increase in base military spending since 1998. (When war costs are included the increase has been much greater: 95 percent.)

We appreciate Secretary Gates' efforts to reform the Pentagon's business and acquisition practices. However, even if his reforms fulfill their promise, the current plan does not translate them into budgetary savings that contribute to solving our deficit problem. Their explicit aim is to free funds for other uses inside the Pentagon. This is not good enough.

Granting defense a special dispensation puts at risk the entire deficit reduction effort. Defense spending today constitutes over 55 percent of discretionary spending and 23 percent of the federal budget. An exemption for defense not only undermines the broader call for fiscal responsibility, but also makes overall budget restraint much harder as a practical economic and political matter.

We need not put our economic power at risk in this way. Today the United States possesses a wide margin of global military superiority. The defense budget can bear significant reduction without compromising our essential security.

We recognize that larger military adversaries may rise to face us in the future. But the best hedge against this possibility is vigilance and a vibrant economy supporting a military able to adapt to new challenges as they emerge.

We can achieve greater defense economy today in several ways, all of which we urge you to consider seriously. We need to be more realistic in the goals we set for our armed forces and more selective in our choices regarding their use abroad. We should focus our military on core security goals and on those current and emerging threats that most directly affect us.

We also need to be more judicious in our choice of security instruments when dealing with international challenges. Our armed forces are a uniquely expensive asset and for some tasks no other instrument will do. For many challenges, however, the military is not the most cost-effective choice. We can achieve greater efficiency today without diminishing our security by better discriminating between vital, desirable, and unnecessary military missions and capabilities.

There is a variety of specific options that would produce savings, some of which we describe below. The important point, however, is a firm commitment to seek savings through a reassessment of our defense strategy, our global posture, and our means of producing and managing military power.

■ Since the end of the Cold War, we have required our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places around the world. The Pentagon's task list now includes not only preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to “shape the strategic environment” and stem the emergence of threats. It is time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and deterrence.

■ US combat power dramatically exceeds that of any plausible combination of conventional adversaries. To cite just one example, Secretary Gates has observed that the US Navy is today as capable as the next 13 navies combined, most of which are operated by our allies. We can safely save by trimming our current margin of superiority.

■ America's permanent peacetime military presence abroad is largely a legacy of the Cold War. It can be reduced without undermining the essential security of the United States or its allies.

■ The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed the limits of military power. Avoiding these types of operation globally would allow us to roll back the recent increase in the size of our Army and Marine Corps.

■ The Pentagon's acquisition process has repeatedly failed, routinely delivering weapons and equipment late, over cost, and less capable than promised. Some of the most expensive systems correspond to threats that are least prominent today and unlikely to regain prominence soon. In these cases, savings can be safely realized by cancelling, delaying, or reducing procurement or by seeking less costly alternatives.

■ Recent efforts to reform Defense Department financial management and acquisition practices must be strengthened. And we must impose budget discipline to trim service redundancies and streamline command, support systems, and infrastructure.

Change along these lines is bound to be controversial. Budget reductions are never easy – no less for defense than in any area of government. However, fiscal realities call on us to strike a new balance between investing in military power and attending to the fundamentals of national strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe savings in defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power and how, why, and where we put it to use.

真诚的，

This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only. The letter is the result of a joint effort by The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the Project on Defense Alternatives .

by Winslow Wheeler.
November 2010.

Based on my experience at the Senate Budget Committee, I learned that reading different deficit reduction plans can be tricky. Some use CBO or other “baselines” as a basis for comparison, but those baselines can be a mystery to some and differ – sometimes by huge amounts – from more readily understood future budget proposals for departments, such as the Pentagon's. Other sources of confusion can be whether the plan applies just to the Pentagon or the larger National Defense Budget Function, uses outlays rather than budget authority, and does or does not include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes the dollars used are “constant;” sometimes they are “current.”

Sometimes the press and others simply misunderstand elements of an overall plan, such as by reporting a plan's savings for one “illustrative” year as the entirety of the plan's savings. Sometimes uncovering what a plan really means requires close reading of the text and footnotes; in still other cases, it requires prolonged discussion with the authors.

This information paper attempts to remove the various impediments to an apples-to-apples comparison of the major plans to reduce defense spending that have been publicly proposed to the Obama Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It compares all the plans to the Obama/Gates Plan for National Defense Spending for the years 2011 to 2020; it addresses only “base” budgets (which exclude spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere), and it applies budget authority in “current” dollars.

Budget Authority Savings
Relative to the Obama/Gates “Base” National Defense Budget 2010-2020
Billions of Dollars, All Dollars Are “Current” Dollars

After the above table each plan is addressed briefly , pointing out its major characteristics. I have attempted to do so objectively, with as little editorial comment as possible.

Editor's Commentary

There are at least as many reasons to think that significant real reductions in defense spending will be hard to achieve as there are reasons to doubt that significant revenue increases will be found or that substantial reductions in entitlement spending will happen. “Political realities” are indeed daunting for any of the options the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will consider. If there were quick, easy and obvious decisions to be had there would be no need for the Commission.

Political realities change over time in part because underlying realities eventually change political calculation. Such is the case with defense spending. After more than a decade of rapid growth there is likely to be some retrenchment in the middle of this decade, notably by 2015.

The likely path of defense spending this decade was recently forecast by the high-tech industry association Tech America Foundation in their DoD Topline Forecast 2011-2020 .

Tech America's forecast is for a real reduction in the base Pentagon budget (not including Overseas Contingency Operation war supplemental funding) of 9% or $45 billion (USD 2011) in 2015 relative to the 2011 base budget.

When taking into account the Pentagon's preferred budget path this decade of at least 1% real annual growth, Tech America forecasts a reduction in defense spending by 2015 of 16%.

Tech America's forecast of Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) war supplemental spending during the decade is also important to consider. Since FY10 (President Obama's first budget) there has been an OCO war supplemental DoD budget line for FY12-FY15 of $50 billion per year. The OCO war supplemental in the FY11 budget is $159 billion.

Although the actual OCO war supplemental might come down in FY12, with the military operational demands in Afghanistan remaining elevated it is unlikely the OCO war supplemental will come down even $50 billion, let alone $109 billion in FY12. Tech America forecasts OCO war expenditures of $122 billion in FY12.

These likely under-budgeted OCO war supplemental costs should be counted as probable additions to the national debt beyond those already projected by the government.

Tech America's forecast is for the OCO supplemental to be $122 billion in FY12, $102 billion in FY13, $69 billion in FY14 and $57 billion in FY15. That adds up to $150 billion more than is budgeted in the Five Year Defense Plan … an un-budgeted addition to the national debt.

For the target year of the federal budget reaching “primary balance” in FY15, the forecast OCO war supplemental will add $7 billion to the problem that the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform faces in attempting to balance the budget in that year.

Adam J. Hebert. Air Force Magazine , November, 2010.
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2010/November%202010/1110edit.aspx

摘录：

…ill-advised calls to cut the Pentagon budget follow as predictably as the tides. Without credible analysis of strategy or requirements, critics are once again declaring defense spending to be out of control.

Editor's Comment:

In his editorial Security Isn't Cheap Adam J. Herbert cites the work of the Sustainable Defense Task Force as a case in point of critics of Pentagon spending recommending cuts “without credible analysis of strategy or requirements.” As a member of the task force I differ over the credibility of our analysis. But let me speak to where I agree with Mr. Herbert:

• “Security is not cheap.” In fact it is extremely expensive. When the country is hit with a financial disaster we owe it to the country and our military to reexamine our national security strategy and make sure priorities are clear and that our military investments are cost-effective. In the last twelve years of Pentagon budgets the planning has proceeded as though there is no resource constraint. Unfortunately, that is true of the last QDR as well. Those days are clearly over – Secretary Gates has said as much.

• “A well-trained, well-equipped, professional military is not cheap. If the nation wants it to cost less, the nation will probably have to ask it to do less.” Exactly. Since the end of the Cold War the US military has steadily advanced its global reach and engagement. Missions have proliferated, including many that should be done by civilians in the State Department and other agencies. Significant numbers of US troops still remain in Europe, even though there is no military threat to Europe that allies can't handle. The most important take-away lesson from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that long low-intensity land wars are not cost-effective uses of US military power and should be avoided whenever possible. Hopefully we can all agree there should never again be such a “war of choice.”

• “There are certainly ways to reduce defense spending…” Yes, and one that will save around $45 billion in Air Force modernization accounts is available in a choice about how to modernize the fighter fleet. The Air Force has decided to replace its aging F-16s with just about the most expensive new fighter one can dream up, the F-35. In today's fiscal environment either the Air Force will end up with a lot fewer of these planes than planned, or they will choose to get ahead of the budget crunch and modernize with new block versions of the still best of class F-16s and limit the buy of F-35s this decade to a few squadrons for high-intensity air-superiority missions. If serious air competition emerges a decade from now we can then roll out production of F-35s (or perhaps a less costly follow-on to the F-16), planes presumably much improved with ten years or more of further fighter technology development.

Thomas PM Barnett. China Security , October 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1010Barnett.pdf

摘录：

In sum, ending China's free-riding is arguably more important for long-term system-wide stability than continuing to deter China's military invasion of Taiwan. As globalization's networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, America's ability to play sole Leviathan to the system naturally degrades dramatically. That means, while the likelihood of China's military invasion of Taiwan dissipates with each passing year, the likelihood of America's “imperial exhaustion” most certainly surpasses it in strategic importance in the near term.

History will judge US strategists most severely if our choice to maintain “access” to East Asia by triggering a regional arms race precludes our ability to draw China into strategic co-management of this era of pervasively extending globalization—without a doubt America's greatest strategic achievement. I cannot fault the AirSea Battle Concept as an operational capability designed to keep us in the East Asian balancing “game.” But my fear is that it will—primarily by default and somewhat by “blue” ambition—serve America badly in a strategic sense, absent a proactive political and military engagement effort to balance its negative impact on the most important bilateral relationship of the modern globalization era.

Editor's Comment:

Barnett alerts us to a prospective instance when leading with military capability is likely to be a disservice to strategic interests.

Daniel Goure. Early Warning Blog , Lexington Institute, 03 September 2010.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/future-defense-budget-choices-require-clear-strategic-priorities

摘录：

The United States cannot afford and the people will not pay for a military that can do battle with uncertainty.

As a consequence of the need to do battle with uncertainty, emphasis was placed on a military that can cover all bases and do all things. This would not be a wise strategy even if resources were unconstrained. Not all threats are equal. Nor are all interests equally important. Finally, it is possible to make reasoned and reasonable judgments regarding how the future security environment will unfold and define a set of demand signals that would require shifting strategic priorities.

In the past, when US leaders refused to make choices they allowed the military to shrink symmetrically, by cutting every program or service a little. That approach is self-defeating. It makes no sense to keep a so-called full spectrum military but continually reduce it in size.

Editor's Comment:

Relevant passages from the archives ($3 trillion later):

Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. “Dueling with Uncertainty”, February 1998.
http://www.comw.org/pda/bullyweb.html

There is no escape from uncertainty, but there is relief from uncertainty hysteria. It begins with recognizing that instability has boundaries — just as turbulence in physical systems has discernible onset points and parameters. The turbulence of a river, for instance, corresponds to flow and to the contours of the river's bed and banks. It occurs in patches and not randomly. The weather also is a chaotic system that resists precise long-range forecasting, but allows useful prediction of broader trends and limits.

Despite uncertainty, statements of probability matter. They indicate the weight of evidence — or whether there is any evidence at all. The uncertainty hawks would flood our concern with a horde of dangers that pass their permissive test of “non-zero probability.” However, by lowering the threshold of alarm, they establish an impossible standard of defense sufficiency: absolute and certain military security. Given finite resources and competing ends, something less will have to do. Strategic wisdom begins with the setting of priorities — and priorities demand strict attention to what appears likely and what does not.

The world may be less certain and less stable today than during the Cold War, but it also involves less risk for America. Risk is equal parts probability and utility — chances and stakes. With the end of global superpower contention, America's stakes in most of the world's varied conflicts has diminished. So has the magnitude of the military threats to American interests. This permits a sharper distinction between interests and compelling interests, turbulence and relevant turbulence, uncertainties and critical uncertainties. And this distinction will pay dividends whenever the country turns to consider large-scale military endeavors, commitments, and investments.

Among the visions that guide present policy, one is absent conspicuously: a world in which economic issues have displaced military ones as the central focus of global competitions and concerns. Failing to engage this prospect, the recent defense policy reviews are oblivious to the opportunity cost of military spending. And it is this lapse that gives license to their speculative methods and overweening goals.

The United States continues to invest more of its national product in defense than does its allies, more than the world average, and much more than its chief economic competitors. By disregarding the requirements and consequences of increased global economic competition, present policy makes an unacknowledged bet about the future: The Soviet Union is gone and no comparable military challenge to the West exists, except as distant possibility. Nonetheless, the American prospect depends as much as ever, if not more, on the specifically military aspects of strength. Of this much, the uncertainty hawks seem certain.

Army Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC Pam 525-3-1, 19 August 2010.
http://www-tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/tp525-3-1.pdf

摘录：

This pamphlet revises the conceptual and operating focus of the Army from major combat operations to that of operational adaptability employing full-spectrum operations under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

TRADOC Pam 525-3-1 describes how future Army forces conduct operations as part of the joint force to deter conflict, prevail in war, and succeed in a wide range of contingencies in the future operational environment. The pamphlet describes the employment of forces in the 2016-2028 timeframe and identifies capabilities required for future success to guide Army force development efforts.

Reva Patwardhan. Peace Action West Groundswell Blog , 29 July 2010.
http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2010/07/29/wikileaks-war-logs-roundup/

Jason Sherman, Inside Defense , 26 July 2010.

A bipartisan independent review of the Obama administration's 20-year blueprint for the Defense Department calls for increasing the size of the Navy to a 346-ship fleet and increasing the US military's posture in the Western Pacific to counter China's growing influence in the region, according to a draft report of the Independent Quadrennial Defense Review Panel.

InsideDefense.com obtained a draft copy of the report titled “ The QDR in Perspective: Meeting America's National Security Needs in the 21st Century .”

The 20-member blue-ribbon panel — co-chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry and Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush — also finds a significant increase in funding is needed to bolster capabilities necessary to counter anti-access challenges, strengthen homeland defense; and to deal with cyber threats.

The panel's report argues that a centerpiece of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review — a force-planning construct that downplayed the significance of preparing to fight and win two, nearly simultaneous major wars, a bedrock of defense planning since 1993, in order to prepare US forces to deal with a wider set of possible contingencies — is unreliable. Instead, the independent panel recommends the Pentagon adopt force levels required by analysis conducted 17 years ago.

The “panel recommends the force structure be sized, at a minimum, at the end strength outlined in the 1993 Bottom-Up Review,” an assessment prepared by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, which Perry then worked to implement during his 1994 to 1997 term as secretary. “We further recommend the department's [weapon system] inventory be thoroughly recapitalized and modernized,” states the draft report.

Funding to pay for these capabilities, as well as to recapitalize equipment consumed in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, will require resources beyond the $100 billion efficiency savings recently directed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to the report.

The “panel believes that substantial additional resources will be required to modernize the force. Although there is a cost to recapitalizing the military, there is also a price to be paid for not recapitalizing, one that in the long run would be much greater.”

Tasked by Congress — and composed of members appointed by lawmakers and Gates — the panel's report delves into nearly every dimension of the US military enterprise — from personnel policy to weapons acquisition to defense policy formulation — and offers an “explicit warning” about the shape of US weaponry after a nearly a decade of persistent conflict.

“The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure,” states the draft report.

The draft document argues that the Pentagon's force-structure plans “will not provide sufficient capacity” to deal with a major domestic catastrophe while also conducting contingency operations abroad. The panel also asserts that the recently established US Cyber Command should be prepared to assist civilian authorities in defending this domain “beyond” the Defense Department's current role, to support civilian agencies.

The Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review did not include a force-planning construct that explicitly quantifies the number and type of contingencies for which the US military must prepare, removing a formula the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have relied on since the end of the Cold War to justify their force structures and their investment plans, an omission the independent panel laments.

The Pentagon's 1993 Bottom-Up Review, the first major assessment of the the US military's needs after the fall of the Berlin Wall, advanced a requirement to fight and win two major-theater wars nearly simultaneously, a construct that was incorporated in the 1997, 2001 and 2006 QDRs.

“The 2010 QDR, however, did not endorse any metric for determining the size and shape of US forces,” states the independent panel's draft report. Rather, it put diverse, overlapping scenarios, including long-duration stability operations and the defense of the homeland, on par with major regional conflicts when assessing the adequacy of US forces.”

The current size of US ground forces “is close enough to being correct,” according to the draft report.

In addition, the panel argues that the Army is “living off the capital accumulated” during the Reagan administration. “The useful life of that equipment is running out; and, as a result, the inventory is old and in need of recapitalization,” states the draft report, which calls for inventory replacement on a one-for-one basis “with an upward adjustment in the number of naval vessels and certain air and space assets.”

A larger Navy and Air Force, according to the panel, is needed to protect US interests in the Pacific region.

“The force structure in the Asia-Pacific needs to be increased,” states the draft report. “The United States must be fully present in the Asia-Pacific region, to protect American lives and territory, ensure the free flow of commerce, maintain stability, and defend our allies in the region. A robust US force structure, one that is largely rooted in maritime strategy and includes other necessary capabilities, will be essential.”

The panel advances recommendations to reform the structure and organization of both Congress and the executive branch in order to improve oversight of national security matters. The panel also advances suggestions for the Defense and State departments to shore up “institutional weaknesses of the existing security assistance programs and framework.”

Hearing on Achieving National Security through Sustainable Spending, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, National Security and Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives, 20 July 2010.

This hearing continued the Subcommittee's oversight of defense spending by examining recent scholarship and policy research on defense budget reform, including the conclusions and recommendations made in a recent report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward , which presents a series of recommendations to reduce the budget of the Department of Defense by $960 billion by 2020.

Witnesses offered perspectives on the Department of Defense's plan to cut military spending in the context of national security priorities and the current economic environment. The Department of Defense's budget has accounted for nearly 65 percent of the increase in federal discretionary spending since 2001. Citing the role of defense spending in the overall economic health of the United States, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently called for reductions in defense spending by eliminating wasteful spending and unnecessary weapons systems, and reducing overhead costs at the Pentagon.

To watch a webcast of the hearing, click here: http://groc.edgeboss.net/wmedia/groc/nationalsecurity/2010/07.20.10.ns.defense.budget.wvx

Witnesses:

* Carl Conetta, Co-Director, Project on Defense Alternatives
* Benjamin Friedman, Research Fellow, Cato Institute
* Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
* Gary Schmitt, Ph.D., Director, Advanced Strategic Studies, American Enterprise Institute
* Gordon Adams, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center

Opening Statement of Chairman John F. Tierney

Prepared Statement of Mr. Carl Conetta

Prepared Statement of Mr. Benjamin Friedman

Prepared Statement of Mr. Todd Harrison

Prepared Statement of Dr. Gary Schmitt

Prepared Statement of Dr. Gordon Adams

Lance M. Bacon. Navy Times , 28 June 2010.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/navy_force_cuts_062810w/

摘录：

With an eye on diminishing budgets and rising tensions with Iran and North Korea, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead on June 24 called for continued international partnerships to hone a “just and sustainable international order.” He also continued his call for fiscal restraint, emphasizing that the Navy “cannot afford a tailor-made solution to every need that we have.” But the CNO still is adamant that a 313-ship Navy is needed to maintain maritime security.

Editor's Comment:

Lance M Bacon quotes from a speech by Chief of Naval Operations Roughead at the Maritime Systems and Technology seminar on June 22nd. These quotes are misleading because Roughead is speaking not about reducing the national deficit, but rather about the Navy's need to watch its spending in the context of growing fiscal pressures on service budgets.

Roughead remains committed to the goal of a 313 ship battle fleet. He also supports Secretary Gate's initiative to save $105 billion within DoD accounts over the next five years. Gates' savings will not contribute a penny to deficit reduction. He plans to plow all savings back into Pentagon programs and it is the Navy's share of this money that Roughead wants to use to help grow the battle fleet to 313 ships.

Not only is Gates not offering to contribute to deficit reduction, but he is sticking to his goal of real growth of 1 to 2% a year for in Pentagon budgets. This will increase annual national deficits somewhere in the range of $6 to 12 billion.

Gates' position is untenable and will not hold. If the nation is going to meet its deficit reduction commitments the Pentagon will have to contribute its share — which is at least 40% of the $230 billion a year increase in its base (non-war) budget during the last decade. This is the level of cuts the task force has suggested — it is not “extreme”, but rather responsible and realistic.

In the context of the coming national fiscal restraint, the worst thing the CNO can do is continue pushing to grow the Navy battle fleet to 313 ships. The more success he has in buying now what will prove to be unaffordable new ships, the further the fleet will have to shrink when austere budgeting arrives.

Far wiser is to start reconfiguring and trimming the fleet now and save procurement dollars for a more realistic set of priorities and a more restrained strategic posture. The task force has put forward one set of priorities for lean times. Let others suggest theirs.

Michael Hastings. Rolling Stone , 22 June 2010.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

摘录：

When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose.