Few branches in the U.S. Military have been busier or more important operationally since 9/11 than U.S. Special Operations Forces who have been engaged in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, while also helping build partnerships globally through training missions.
President Obama has announced the next step in his quixotic quest to achieve a nuclear-free world. Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate this week, the president proposed reductions in U.S. nuclear forces to about 1,000 deployed strategic warheads; that represents a cut of more than 30 percent from the level of the 2010 New START agreement. While the offer was placed in the context of a bilateral agreement with Russia, Obama’s words were carefully chosen. He did not rule out unilateral reductions — something the president’s top advisers have indicated might happen if Moscow refuses to reduce its forces — or pursuing an arrangement outside of the constitutional treaty process.
“The Pentagon has an opportunity to use its upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to define and then resource a new mix of military capabilities that will be needed for future contingency operations,” argues a new Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) report released at a congressional briefing last week.
Instead of shoehorning its current force structure within a confined budget, the U.S. military should decide what it wants to be able to accomplish in the future and then design an affordable force to achieve those goals, a new study on the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review contends.
Mark Gunzinger, a retired Air Force colonel and now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the Pentagon no longer has the luxury of indulging in institutional inertia as generals and admirals seek to preserve their programs.
The military must move beyond preparing its entire force to address one or two particular kinds of threats as it did in 1993.
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