/.../The Pentagon is set to cut 100,000 ground forces and $487 billion over 10 years (without the budget sequester, which would raise the dollar figure to roughly $1 trillion). They must work out how to do so without compromising their ability to maintain America’s national security/.../
“Today’s drawdown is much more challenging than the 1990s, in part because security threats are not only increasing in number and scale but also shifting in form,” says Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Add a global financial crisis that has prompted Western allies to slash defense budgets, he says, and this period of retraction looks perilous even by historical standards.