The Defense Department is to some extent crying wolf with its dire warnings about sequestration’s effect on military readiness because the dollars being cut will become part of an inevitable longer-term budgetary drawdown, a trio of defense specialists said on Friday.
Todd Harrison, from the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, cautioned Pentagon officials need to be careful with their dire rhetoric.
The Diplomat’s editor Harry Kazianis spoke with Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment Senior Fellow Mark Gunzinger concerning Sequestration and its possible effects on America’s pivot to Asia.
Too bad Chuck Hagel wasn’t at the Brookings Institution on Friday when a panel of national security experts discussed a solid agenda for the next secretary of defense.
Under sequestration, the Pentagon faces $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, $45 billion just in the remaining months of this fiscal year. The across-the-board cuts affect every branch of the military—everything from contracts, to fixing ships, to training troops. But Hagel isn’t without options.
The main problem with the sequester is not the size of the cuts to the defense budget, but rather the across-the-board way they are administered, according to Todd Harrison of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
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