CSBA in the News

Ten years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Pentagon confronts a new enemy that will require it to embrace an unfamiliar strategy: spending less money.Buckling beneath $14.3 trillion in IOUs, the U.S. now is pivoting from the whatever-it-takes philosophy employed against Osama bin Laden to a whatever-we-can-afford defense posture.

the “Achilles heel” of the U.S. strategic posture is its dependence on forward bases. Deny access to those bases and you roll back American power. The observation was included in a paper by Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense-oriented think tank.

A Congressional panel has roughly three months to come up with a plan to cut the deficit. The Pentagon is likely to get hit with hundreds of billions of dollars in additional budget cuts. Each branch of the military knows the cuts are coming — so they are trying publicly, and privately, to minimize the damage to their bottom lines. Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments predicts: “publicly it’ll come out with the services will be making an affirmative case for why their service and the unique capabilities they provide will be needed in the future.”

As the United States winds down its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new threat looms on the horizon: China. The growth of Chinese power outlined in the report is only the latest expression of the concerns voiced in Congress and by China’s neighbors, who have been pushing Washington to be more assertive in providing a counterbalance at a time when the nation’s budget woes are threatening dramatic cutbacks in security spending.

There aren’t many revelations in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on developments in China’s military capabilities. The 94-page document released Wednesday notes that the People’s Liberation Army doctrine identifies information warfare as key to countering a stronger foe, i.e. the United States. No surprises there.

The U.S. military is pursuing talks over a possible troop presence in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, a deal that if struck could cost billions annually and complicate efforts to reduce the nation’s untamed deficit/…/But Panetta already made clear, at his confirmation hearing in June, that he thinks Iraq will ultimately want U.S. troops to stay, citing the hundreds of al Qaeda-linked insurgents still in the country.