Even With Cuts, Military Will Remain Capable, Official Says

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2012 — Defense Depart­ment offi­cials will use the mil­i­tary strat­e­gy guid­ance that Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma announced yes­ter­day to tie num­bers to the department’s fis­cal 2013 bud­get request, Pen­ta­gon Press Sec­re­tary George Lit­tle said today.

The bud­get request is expect­ed to be deliv­ered to Capi­tol Hill in ear­ly February.

Offi­cials will use the strat­e­gy review to set fund­ing lev­els and pri­or­i­ties as the depart­ment seeks to trim $487 bil­lion through fis­cal 2022, Lit­tle said.

In a meet­ing with reporters, Lit­tle cor­rect­ed what he said was a mis­per­cep­tion in media cov­er­age that the strat­e­gy guid­ance means the U.S. mil­i­tary will be able to han­dle only one war going forward.

“The doc­u­ment did not say that we are going down to fight one war,” he said. “What the doc­u­ment said was that we are pre­pared to address a full spec­trum of threats. This coun­try is poised to take on more than one nation­al secu­ri­ty chal­lenge at a time.”

The mil­i­tary will be pos­tured to defeat aggres­sion and take on chal­lenges from oth­er coun­tries and non­state actors, he added.

“That is an invi­o­lable prin­ci­ple on the way ahead on our defense strat­e­gy,” Lit­tle said. “It is sim­ply wrong to sug­gest that we are going back to some one-war con­struct – if that ever existed.”

Being able to fight two wars has been an impor­tant pil­lar in mil­i­tary doc­trine, Lit­tle said. Still, the nation must adapt as the threats change and the secu­ri­ty land­scape has changed.

“We have threats that can come from nation states, we have threats that can come from non­state actors like al-Qai­da,” he said. “We have to be flex­i­ble enough and adapt­able enough to address con­tin­gen­cies that arise from any of those sources.

“Let me be very clear,” he con­tin­ued. “If we take on more than one threat from a state or non­state actor, we will be pre­pared to address those threats, and we will win.”

Not every­thing the Defense Depart­ment has done has been tied to a two-war strat­e­gy, Lit­tle noted.

“We are pre­pared today to deal with var­i­ous con­tin­gen­cies,” he explained. “There may be new prob­lems that might arise, and new domains. We are think­ing ahead, and that is the prop­er thing to do.

“No one should leave this room think­ing that we will only be able to fight one war at a time,” he con­tin­ued. “That is not what the strate­gic guid­ance outlines.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →