CSBA in the News

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that possible budget cuts triggered by the breakdown of the congressional “supercommittee“ would have devastating consequences, but many skeptics question whether such dire predictions are an exaggeration.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the cuts would terminate the military’s next generation fighter jets, cut the submarine fleet, and leave America with its smallest ground force since World War II /…/

The congressional supercommittee has only a few days left to come up with a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit. One of the areas on the chopping block is the nation’s defense budget.

A breakdown in high-stakes budget talks in Congress could threaten plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.Negotiators have shown little sign they will be able to meet next week’s deadline for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion. If they fail to agree, a new law mandates cuts throughout the federal government, including a big slice of the defense budget.

It’s hard to miss the irony: Leon Panetta, as President Clinton’s budget guru, backed billions of dollars in Pentagon cuts. Now, as secretary of defense, he’s warning that the U.S. could become a “paper tiger” if his department’s budget is further reduced.On Monday, Panetta warned members of Congress that if the bipartisan budget supercommittee fails to agree on a plan, a set of automatic cuts would amount to “doomsday” for the military/…/

Sustaining robust U.S. leadership will mean making some tough strategic choices. Americans will have to rank core U.S. interests in order of priority; determine an affordable size for hard- and soft-power instruments (the armed forces, the diplomatic corps, foreign aid); rethink the forward presence of U.S. forces and the current alliance structure; and more carefully weigh the risks of action versus inaction in response to an endless list of global crises. “Our security challenges are growing in scale and shifting in form even as our resources decline,” says Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “If that’s not a call for rethinking our national strategy, I don’t know what is. There’s an old military adage that if you try and be strong everywhere, you are strong nowhere.”