Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this week outlined a new five-year budget plan for the Pentagon that would shrink the Army to its smallest size since 1940, cancel expensive weapons systems, and rein in military pay increases and benefits. Obama administration officials said the proposed budget would save hundreds of billions of dollars by taking the military off its post-9/11 war footing while leaving it capable of defeating any aggressor, but acknowledged that the U.S. would no longer be able to wage two wars at once. “If we continue on the current course without making these modest adjustments now,” Hagel said, “the choices will only grow more difficult and painful down the road.”
This budget amounts to “an announcement of American retreat,” said NationalReview.com in an editorial. Serious threats still face the U.S. in both Asia and the Middle East. Supporters of big cuts in U.S. armed strength ought to tell the rest of us just how America’s military readiness in those regions has become less essential. “We suspect Americans won’t buy it.” Hagel himself conceded that the cuts would entail “some increased levels of risk”—which sounds like “a careful way to say a very dangerous thing.”
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