U.S. Marines depart a checkpoint and patrol back to Forward Operating Base Geronimo, Afghanistan, May 30, 2010. The Marines are assigned to Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mark FaylogWinning the Battle, Losing the War -- Gordan Adams, Foreign Policy
The Pentagon may have come out of Barack Obama's 2012 budget mostly unscathed, but the military's salad days of limitless spending are over.
In U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal year 2012 budget, released Feb. 14, the Department of Defense will lose $78 billion in spending it thought it would have over the next five years. The administration is touting the proposed cut as evidence of its commitment to overall belt-tightening; the White House claims the cuts will "[bring] defense spending down to zero real growth."
In truth, however, it's no such thing. The $671 billion that Defense Secretary Robert Gates requested for the Pentagon -- a department "base budget" of $553 billion, plus another $118 billion for ongoing wars -- may be less than he asked for last year, when you account for inflation. But the decline is the result of the shrinking costs of the Iraq war as the conflict is scaled down and soldiers return home, offsetting what is still a growing overall budget.
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My Comment: The trends are for lower and slower growths in the U.S. military .... but .... another 9/11 attack, war on the Korean Peninsula, arms races that threaten regions vital to U.S. interests, instability in the Middle East that threatens the oil fields on the Arabian peninsula .... trust me .... if any of this happens, all bets are then off.