Obama’s Leaner, Meaner Military

The president plans to shrink the Pentagon. But are we just swapping soldiers for drones, contractors, and reserve troops?

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Raymond Odierno, and President Obama unveil their new military strategy at the Pentagon Thursday.<a href="http://www.defense.gov/DODCMSShare/NewsStoryPhoto/2012-01/scr_120105-D-BW835-005c.jpg">DOD/Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In an announcement long on ambition and short on specifics, President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rolled out a new national security strategy Thursday that aims to drastically downsize the military. “[W]e have the opportunity and the responsibility to look ahead to the force we need for the future,” the president said. His plan, “Sustaining US Global Leadership,” aims to slash troops, fighter jets, and $450 million from the Pentagon bureaucracy. “Whenever possible, we will develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives,” the 16-page plan states.

If the strategy takes hold—and that’s hardly a given, considering how heavily the defense industry lobbies Congress—progressives may like a lot of what they see in the military’s newer, leaner look. Still, the plan leaves open the possibility that drones, contractors, and reservists will take over any gaps left in the mammoth, post-9/11 national security complex.

The strategy continues to focus on some perennial areas, like combating Al Qaeda, tracking WMDs, and maintaining a big presence in the Middle East (i.e. around Iran). But its updates would be significant:

  • Nukes: Cuts to the country’s bloated nuclear weapons complex could become a reality: “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy.”
  • China and North Korea: The US will “of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” In lay terms, that means going back to pre-9/11 basics: keeping a robust Navy close to China and North Korea. Obama reportedly nixed a Pentagon proposal to reduce the number of aircraft carriers from 11 to 10, a sure sign the US plans to flex its maritime muscle.
  • Europe: The last remnants of America’s Cold War-era role in protecting Europe will probably be handed off to its regional allies. “Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it,” the strategy states. That could mean downsizing big US bases in Germany and removing old missiles from the landmass.
  • Global policing: “U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.” Even small overseas incursions will be rarer, since “with reduced resources, thoughtful choices will need to be made regarding the location and frequency of these operations.”
  • Foreign invasions: On the big-picture level, say goodbye to the long-held goal of a unilateral US force that can fight two simultaneous major ground wars. This strategy will be replaced with a “fight and deter” objective: “Even when U.S. forces are committed to a large-scale operation in one region,” the plan states, “they will be capable of denying the objectives of—or imposing unacceptable costs on—an opportunistic aggressor in a second region. U.S. forces will plan to operate whenever possible with allied and coalition forces.”
  • Personnel and benefits: While cuts to personnel and administration are likely, the president says he’ll “keep faith with our troops, military families and veterans.” This could mean the administration is backing away from a controversial corporate-friendly plan to privatize soldier pensions that gained currency in the budget debate last year.

While the Pentagon presentation didn’t offer specifics on what cuts might come, the New York Times reported that the Army will lose nearly 100,000 troops, and the Air Force’s aircraft fleet will be reduced significantly—including delays on future orders of the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most expensive programs in US military history.

But the new strategy could also augur boom times ahead for contractors, spies, and drones: “In adjusting our strategy and attendant force size, the Department will make every effort to maintain an adequate industrial base and our investment in science and technology,” the plan states. “We will also encourage innovation in concepts of operation.” Such science could include unmanned aerial surveillance, which has been a favorite tool of the Obama administration; such innovations could include the expansion of contractor-managed military logistics overseas, a trend that started in the ’90s and was a hallmark of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then there’s the issue of reserve and National Guard soldiers. Since 9/11, many of these part-time servicemembers were used overseas to take the strain off America’s overstretched active-duty troops in what came to be known as the “back-door draft.” Despite the pain this imposed on weekend warriors and their families, the National Guard brass were rewarded recently with a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Since their newfound relevance comes directly out of their usefulness in war, they might become advocates of future interventions. The new DOD strategy addresses this possibility in a cryptic line, saying that “the Department will need to examine the mix of Active Component (AC) and Reserve Component (RC) elements best suited to the strategy.”

So it appears that the plan is to shrink the military significantly—but as always, the Pentagon is hedging its bet. “Wholesale divestment of the capability to conduct any mission would be unwise,” the strategy warns, “based on historical and projected uses of U.S. military forces and our inability to predict the future.” In other words, a lot will change, unless it doesn’t.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate