Obama’s new defense strategy is based on a false premise

The Obama administration knows full well what the state of the military is. However, because it would rather shift the country’s spending priorities to domestic programs long favored by Democrats, it has willingly accepted, indeed gone beyond, what the 2011 Budget Control Act required in cuts to national security programs. To give this shift the patina of legitimacy, the administration has prepared a new “strategic guidance” that largely compounds the mistakes of the past. In the fiscal year 2013 budget, where the specific details of the president’s new strategy will be spelled out, we are likely to see deep end-strength cuts, a greater reliance on reserves and postponed modernization programs — all bolstered by the idea that, if anything goes wrong, we can quickly “regenerate” our military strength.

The new strategy comes both in the midst of a continuing war and with additional Pentagon budget cuts likely pending — the product of congressional “sequester” with the failed super committee. It is certain that President Obama’s decisions will leave his successor with constrained choices and greater risks in carrying out the country’s security commitments. Hoping that these constraints and risks can be mitigated by “reversibility” plans is a bet that history suggests is a long shot. Far better for Congress, and perhaps a new president, to challenge the administration’s assumptions and reverse course — a much sounder version of reversibility.

Richard Cleary is a research assistant for the American Enterprise Institute’s Program on Advanced Strategic Studies.