From The Washington Post:After three months of very impressive decisions regarding national security, President Obama made perhaps his first significant mistake. It concerns the defense budget, where his plans are insufficient to support the national security establishment over the next five years. Thankfully, this mistake can be fixed before it causes big harm -- either by Congress this year or the administration itself next year.
The administration is hardly slashing funds for defense; it is simply adopting a policy of zero real growth in the "base budget" (the part that does not include war costs, which are too unpredictable to include in this analysis). Specifically, the base budget is to grow 2 percent a year over the next five years. But with the inflation rate expected to average over 1.5 percent, the net effect is essentially no real growth. Cumulatively, that would leave us about $150 billion short of actual funding requirements through 2014. The administration is right to propose increasing resources for the State Department and aid programs. But it is unwise politics and unwise strategy to put these key elements of foreign policy in direct competition with each other, as appears to be the case in the new budget.
Read more ....
My Comment: Like many of his predecessors, President Obama has made the decision that the state of the military and its mission statement will be left for future leaders to determine. His priority is to maintain some status quo, and to fight the wars that he inherited.
Is this possible? Probably, but a major terrorist strike on the U.S., or a major conflict in the world (the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East, etc.) .... can and will alter these calculations.