The Obama administration’s four-year defense strategy lacks funding needed for fulfilling global military missions and the U.S. military faces “high risk” in the world unless changes are made, according to a bipartisan report by a congressionally backed panel of defense experts.
The report by the National Defense Panel, led by former Defense Secretary William Perry and retired United States Army Gen. John Abizaid, criticized the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review for outlining military responsibilities that cannot be met because of sharp defense funding cuts.
The report concluded that the capabilities called for in the QDR “clearly exceed the budget resources made available to the department.”
“This gap is disturbing if not dangerous in light of the fact that global threats and challenges are rising, including a troubling pattern of territorial assertiveness and regional intimidation on China’s part, [and] the recent aggression of Russia in Ukraine.”
Other threats include nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran, the ultra-violent Islamist insurgency in Iraq and civil war in Syria, along with growing unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
“These are among the trends that mandate increased defense funding,” the report said.
Other trends that require growing military capabilities include the rapid expansion of lethal military technologies by states and non-state groups and the rise of military powers in Asia, along with demographic shifts and heated competition for scarce natural resources.
“These and other trends pose serious operational challenges to American military forces,” the report says. “Conflicts are likely to unfold more rapidly. Battlefields will be more lethal. Operational sanctuary for U.S. forces (rear areas safe from enemy interdiction) will be scarce and often fleeting. Asymmetric conflict will be the norm.”
The report said that U.S. military superiority in the world is “not a given” and that maintaining the U.S. military’s operational and technological edge will require “sustained and targeted investment.”
Under President Obama, U.S. military spending has been cut first by $487 billion over 10 years. That was followed by automatic spending cuts imposed by the Budget Control Act that included another $37 billion cut and additional cuts of $75 billion for 2014 and 2015.
The U.S. defense cuts come amid a major conventional and nuclear buildup by China and Russia, nations that have engaged in increasingly aggressive behavior.
China in recent years has claimed large areas of international waters as its territory. Russia’s military forcibly annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and is continuing to back separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
