Your administration is considering cuts to the defense budget beyond the reductions already imposed by the 2011 provisions of the Budget Control Act. Many politicians and the public alike find it difficult to make sense of the huge numbers tossed around like so many chips in a Las Vegas poker game. In the national debate to date, some assume that immediate cuts will yield huge savings with little risk while others say that no more savings can be made without endangering America’s security. You need to frame this debate in a way that relates potential savings to capabilities and advances the nation’s understanding of national security in the coming decade.

Recommendation:

You should frame the debate as between two choices for U.S. defense policy. One approach would pursue relatively modest savings from additional efficiencies but stay within the parameters of existing national security strategy. The second approach would change that strategy in important ways, or otherwise seek fairly dramatic changes in how the Department of Defense goes about implementing its global responsibilities. Within that framing, you should argue for the first approach that, while difficult, is worth attempting given the nation’s fiscal plight. The risks associated with the second approach would not be worth the benefits.

Background:

The 10-year cuts already mandated from the 2011 Budget Control Act will reduce the budgets of the armed forces by $350 billion. These figures do not include war costs or Veterans Affairs budgets. Sequestration, like the Simpson-Bowles and Rivlin-Domenici deficit reduction commissions of 2010, would cut another $500 billion or so over ten years.

Your administration’s current military plan incorporates those assumed cuts from the first round of the Budget Control Act (though not from possible sequestration). It will scale down the military from about 1.5 million active-duty uniformed personnel to its pre-9/11 total of 1.4 million, or two-thirds the Cold War norm. It chips away at modernization programs but preserves most major ones, with one or two notable exceptions. It levels off various forms of military pay and benefits. But most troops will continue to be compensated better than private-sector cohorts of similar age, education, and technical skill. It also holds out ambitious hopes for achieving efficiencies from various unspecified reforms that would save $60 billion over a decade, and makes the optimistic assumption that weapons systems will be delivered at currently projected costs.

Conceptually, your administration’s approach is built on time-tested principles of American defense policy, modified only modestly in recent years. The Persian Gulf and Western Pacific remain the two principal theaters of overseas concern — though your administration’s “rebalancing” policy seeks to emphasize the broader Middle East somewhat less and the Pacific somewhat more. A two-war capability of sorts is retained, even if two full-scale simultaneous regional operations are assessed as less likely than before, and large-scale stabilization missions are also considered less likely. Of course, these latter assumptions must be tempered by the fact that possible enemies get a say in our decisions too. In the short term, force planning must also account for two specific matters of acute concern: the ongoing operation in Afghanistan, where 68,000 American troops remain, and possible operations in the coming year or two against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The First Approach: Seek Efficiencies, Not Major Cuts: