News
Search News
In the News
Trump’s ‘Historic’ Military Buildup Vision Has a Money Problem
Trump's $603 billion baseline national defense budget is about $18.5 billion — or about 3 percent — more than the amount projected by the Obama administration, said Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
In the News
Amid Raqqa, Mosul fights, US Prepares for IS Endgame Effort
"ISIS will go down fighting, of course, and do enormous amounts of harm in its death throes," Hal Brands and Peter Feaver, two U.S. defense analysts, wrote in a recent assessment of how the extremist group will be defeated.
In the News
New Defense Budget Poised to Meet Lower Expectations
Comparing Trump’s budget with the early years of the Reagan administration buildup, and others, Katherine Blakeley, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said: “This is not a historic increase.” “The political characterization is that we are at the early part, and we should expect an upward drive,” Blakeley said. “We won’t see a lot of that in [the president’s 2018 budget], but they are clearly laying the groundwork for that. “In this budget, you see some trial balloons, like: Can we have an accelerated path to Navy shipbuilding?"
In the News
The U.S.‘s Delicate Balance Between Arms Deals and Diplomacy
President Trump is headed to Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his first foreign trip as president. The Saudis buy a lot of weapons from the U.S., and more arms deals could be announced this weekend. The U.S. keeps careful tabs on who buys American-made weapons and what they buy. There is sometimes a delicate balance between arms deals and diplomacy.
In the News
Pentagon Budget Release Expected This Week
On May 23 the Pentagon is expected to release its defense budget request, one that is anticipated to provide $603 billion and focus on improving military readiness. But when it comes to making the fiscal 2018 budget law, the Trump administration is “walking into a political buzz saw,” says Katherine Blakeley, a budget analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Defense hawks in Congress are supportive of a larger increase to defense spending, but the support ...
In the News
Thousands of U.S. Forces May Still Be Needed for Post-ISIS Iraq
The U.S. may need to keep as many as 20,000 troops and other military personnel in Iraq, even after the Islamic State is driven out, to stabilize the country, the former head of the Pentagon’s policy shop said Thursday. A postwar force of between 4,000 to 8,000 American troops “is probably sufficient” to help local security forces ensure security in Iraq as ISIS faces defeat in its final stronghold in Mosul, Eric Edelman, the Pentagon’s top policy official during the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview. The U.S. forces would likely be deployed as advisers, not combat troops, to support Iraq’s police and military forces, he said. “We are dealing with an an ISIS that is severely, severely weakened” after nearly two years of constant war against U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces, said Mr. Edelman, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a Washington-based defense think tank.