Pentagon Reportedly Considers Major Budget Cuts

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is looking at making major cuts to the defense budget, according to the New York Times. Anchor Marco Werman discusses the strategy behind the cuts, and the impact on foreign policy with Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

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Marco Werman: Since the end of the Cold War the United States has kept it armed forces strong enough to fight and win two ground wars at once. In theory that means the US can realistically deter say North Korea while still preoccupied in Afghanistan. According to The New York Times that ability to fight two wars at once may soon be a thing of the past. This week Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is due to outline a new strategy that will guide the Pentagon through some very painful budget cuts, and the Times says that two-war doctrine will be a victim. Lawrence Korb isn’t so sure. He’s a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. He says cuts are inevitable though the extent is not yet known.

Lawrence Korb: They’re talking about anywhere from an 8% cut in real terms over the next decade, and as sequestration kicks in it could be up to 17%, but I think it’ll be probably closer to 10% when all is said and done.

Werman: So the exact nature of the cuts not yet known, but the military will inevitably be smaller. Do you believe the doctrine of being able to fight and win two wars at once is now over?

Korb: No, I don’t think so because if you take the ground forces, which were the ones that grew during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, if you take them back to where they were before you know, 9/11, you’ll be able to take 100,000 people off the payroll and save $15 billion a year. And before 9/11 we had a two war doctrine. What we can’t do is win two wars and do nation building again. That was the problem. It wasn’t winning. We were very successful in Afghanistan and Iraq in a matter of weeks. Our problem was we stayed and tried to reengineer those societies.

Werman: But with all the talk of building democracy around the world won’t something get lost?

Korb: Well, you could never no matter how much you spend on defense, you can’t prepare for every contingency. But the fact of the matter is right now we’re spending more on defense than the next 17 nations in the world combined. And even if you take you know, a 17 percent real reduction it would bring you back to 2007, well above where you were for example, back in 1998. What people forget is the baseline budget. I’m not talking about the war-funding budget, but the baseline budget over the last 13 years has grown in real terms by about 70%. And so if you took the 17% cut again, in real terms controlling for inflation, we’d be above average of what we spent during the Cold War. I mean right now in real terms if you count war funding we’re spending more than at any time since the end of WWII. So defense if you need to cut it, this is a very, very good time to do it without jeopardizing security.

Werman: Lawrence Korb, you sound pretty optimistic that the Pentagon can weather even a 17% base cut as you say. Is there any area where you are worried?

Korb: Well, I’m worried that if they don’t do it correctly. I think from everything I’ve seen they ought to get the army and the marines back to where they were before 9/11 because as former Secretary Gates said, we’re not gonna be doing nation building anymore. I think another area they ought to take a look at is nuclear weapons. We’re about to embark on a program to modernize all three legs of the triad — the submarine launch, ballistic missiles, the bombers and the ground base missiles. I don’t think we need to modernize all three because we don’t need 5,000 nuclear weapons anymore. We could easily for example, instead of building 12 new ballistic submarines, build 7 or 8, put more tubes on them.

Werman: What about the cost of dealing with psychologically troubled veterans who if you look at the news headlines they’re already slipping through the cracks. Just this week we saw the tragedy of the park ranger getting killed by an Iraq veteran. How will these cuts affect people with PTSD?

Korb: Not in the least, those are taken care of by the Veteran’s Administration budget, which you know, since 9/11 has gone from about $40 billion to over $100 billion. No, nobody is talking about making those cuts. We’re talking about the core or the baseline defense budget, not war costs, not veteran’s costs, it’s basically the defense department, which throughout its history has gotten along even if you control inflation, on much less than even if you took the most Draconian cuts that are there.

Werman: Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and currently with the Center for American Progress in Washington, thank you.

Korb: Thank you for having me.

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