Panetta's Excellent Pentagon Adventure: Cut Cash, Rewrite Strategy

CIA Director Leon Panetta knows what his overriding task will be as President Obama’s next defense secretary : cutting the defense budget down to size. No one needs to wait for his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to hear about that. But defense analysts are itching to hear how Panetta will adjust U.S. defense strategy to make the impending budget cuts make sense.

It’s too glib to say Panetta’s test as defense chief will be to execute Obama’s desired 12-year, $400 billion budget cut. Panetta will take over the Pentagon from Robert Gates at a time when not only is the budget out of whack, but so is U.S. defense strategy. The U.S. is fighting three wars at once, all of which have a debatable relationship to the national interest. His real test is how he can craft a smaller budget that supports a more sustainable strategy — one that cuts back on ground wars and personnel costs and emphasizes maritime, air and cyber dominance.

“Gates has laid down a marker” for defense cuts, says Andrew Krepinevich, the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a leading defense think tank. “Let strategy drive [budgetary] priorities. That’s going to be a challenge.”

If the Senate Armed Services Committee does its job on Thursday, Panetta won’t just mouth blandishments about tweaking the budget while keeping the military strong. But even if he does, it won’t delay Secretary Panetta’s day of reckoning with defense strategy and defense cash.

It’s an overstatement to say Gates’ legacy hangs over everything Panetta will do at the Pentagon from the outset. But he casts a long shadow. Not only did Gates try to steer the Pentagon bureaucracy into supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars , he cancelled big-ticket planes, trucks and ships cherished by the services that he considered archaic. More immediately for Panetta, Gates’ final major act in office was to order a review of the military’s “roles and missions” to see what could be jettisoned, before giving speeches suggesting that not much can .

Panetta would do well to ignore that advice, says Benjamin Friedman, a security analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “If you’re serious about cutting the defense budget, you have to reconsider the ambitions it serves,” says Friedman, who recently penned a provocative article criticizing Gates . “You can try to have your cake and eat it too by going with ‘efficiency’ savings, if the purpose is to offend no one. But saving money requires choices. People are going to lose.

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Panetta's Excellent Pentagon Adventure: Cut Cash, Rewrite Strategy

With 20000 fewer troops, you don't have to pay salaries, medical benefits, and even some modernization because don't have to outfit or equip” those troops. Again, it's hard to view Panetta's time at CIA as a guide to his time at the Pentagon.



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