WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama rolled out a slimmed down defense strategy Thursday, pledging to maintain the United States position as the world?s dominant military power, remaining vigilant to ?threats? in the Middle East while signaling a shift away from large ground wars.
?Our military will be leaner but the world must know ? the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats,? Obama told a news briefing at the Pentagon.
Emphasizing the American presence in the Asia-Pacific region, where there is growing U.S. rivalry with an increasingly assertive China, Obama cautioned the military would remain vigilant in the Middle East.
At a time of tight budgets at home Obama?s strategy is aimed at absorbing hundreds of billions of dollars in defense budget cuts, saying the U.S. will retain the best-equipped military in American history but with slimmed down forces.
In a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room, the president announced that the military will be reshaped over time with an emphasis on countering terrorism, maintaining a nuclear deterrent, protecting the U.S. homeland and ?deterring and defeating aggression by any potential adversary.?
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 newly ended Iraq mission or the continuing war in Afghanistan.
Saying the country was ?turning a page? on a decade of war, Obama hinted at a reduced U.S. military presence in Europe and says Asia will be a bigger priority. It also emphasized improving U.S. capabilities in the areas of cyber warfare and missile defense.
China is a particular worry because of its economic dynamism and rapid defense buildup. A more immediate concern is Iran, not only for its threats to disrupt the flow of international oil but also for its nuclear ambitions.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and several top military brass lined up on the stage behind him, underscoring Pentagon support for cuts that Panetta and others said they know will be criticized as too drastic.
Panetta said that smaller military budgets will mean some tradeoffs and that the U.S. will take on ?some level of additional but acceptable risk.? But Panetta said that at this point in history, in a changing world, the Pentagon would have been forced to make a strategy shift anyway. He says the money crisis merely forced the government?s hand.
In a preamble to the strategy, Obama wrote: ?As we end today?s wars and reshape our armed forces, we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies. The document is titled, ?Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.?
Obama?s decision to announce the strategy himself underscores the political dimension of Washington?s debate over defense savings. The administration says smaller Pentagon budgets are a must but will not come at the cost of sapping the strength of a military in transition, even as it gets smaller.
In a presidential election year, the strategy gives Obama a rhetorical tool to defend his Pentagon budget-cutting choices. Republican contenders for the White House already have criticized Obama on a wide range of national security issues, including missile defense, Iran and planned reductions in ground forces.
Obama also wants the new strategy to represent a pivot point in his stewardship of defense policy, which has been burdened throughout his presidency by the wars he inherited and their drag on resources.
The new strategy moves the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars ? like the 1991 Gulf War to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait or a prospective ground war in Korea ? at the same time.
The strategy document announced by Obama contained no specifics on the size of expected troop reductions; the Army and Marine Corps already are set to shrink beginning in 2015. The document said the Pentagon will have to find savings in pay and health care benefits for members of the military, but it offered no specifics.
It made clear that while some current missions of the military will be curtailed, none will be scrapped entirely.
?Wholesale divestment of the capability to conduct any mission would be unwise, based on historical and projected uses of U.S. military forces and our inability to predict the future,? the document said.
The massive $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.
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