By ROBERT BURNS Associated Press ADVERTISING WASHINGTON — Looking beyond the wars he inherited, President Barack Obama on Thursday launched a reshaping and shrinking of the military. He vowed to preserve U.S. pre-eminence even as the Army and Marine Corps
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Looking beyond the wars he inherited, President Barack Obama on Thursday launched a reshaping and shrinking of the military.
He vowed to preserve U.S. pre-eminence even as the Army and Marine Corps shed troops and the administration considers reducing its arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The changes won’t come without risk, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. But he called it acceptable and, because of budget restraints, inevitable.
In a presentation at the Pentagon, Obama said the U.S. is “turning a page” after having killed Osama bin Laden, withdrawn troops from Iraq and begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. He outlined a vision for the future that some Republican lawmakers quickly dubbed wrong-headed.
“Our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority,” Obama said with Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, at his side.
Obama unveiled the results of an eight-month defense strategy review that is intended to guide decisions on cutting hundreds of billions from planned Pentagon spending over the coming decade. The eight-page document contained no details about how broad concepts for reshaping the military — such as focusing more on Asia and less on Europe — will translate into troop or weapons cuts.
Those details will be included in the 2013 defense budget to be submitted to Congress next month.
The new strategy was begun last spring by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates after Obama called for defense spending cuts. The Pentagon now faces at least $487 billion in cuts in planned defense spending over 10 years.
Panetta said that smaller military budgets will mean some trade-offs and that the U.S. will take on “some level of additional but acceptable risk.”
Obama wants the new strategy to represent a pivotal point in his stewardship of defense policy, which has been burdened by two expensive wars.
The drag those conflicts placed on military resources has deferred other priorities.
Obama said the military will be reshaped between now and 2020 with an emphasis on countering terrorism, maintaining a nuclear deterrent, protecting the U.S. homeland and “deterring and defeating aggression by any potential adversary.”
Those are not new military missions, and Obama announced no new capabilities or defense initiatives.
He described a U.S. force that will retain much of its recent focus, with the exception of fighting a large-scale, prolonged conflict like the recently ended Iraq mission or the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
“U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations,” the strategy document said, referring to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new strategy moves the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars at the same time.
It said the U.S. will maintain a robust nuclear arsenal but hinted at reductions.
“It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy,” the strategy said.
The new strategy strongly suggests a reduced U.S. military presence in Europe, notwithstanding a continuing close relationship with NATO, and says Asia will be a bigger priority. It also emphasizes improving U.S. capabilities in the areas of cyberwarfare, missile defense, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised the U.S. strategy, calling it consistent with the alliance’s vision for collective defense.
