One of the Pentagon’s top officers warned that the military’s fundamental strategy for how it would confront two simultaneous crises in different parts of the world will have to change if Capitol Hill rejects the Obama administration’s 2016 defense budget request.
Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the nation faces a “pivotal” moment as lawmakers decide whether to lift the budget caps and the sequestration mechanism that was passed into law in 2011.
“There is no free lunch,” Winnefeld said Tuesday at a conference of defense business leaders in Washington.
President Obama formally requested $534 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget next fiscal year, about 7 percent above the $499 cap that was written into law a few years ago with the Budget Control Act. Winnefeld said anything below $534 will trigger massive changes in the military’s strategy and its footprint of forward-deployed forces around the world.
“Those are going to have to change if we go below the president budget submission,” Winnefeld said.
At its core, the current military strategy states that “if deterrence fails,” the Defense Department “will be able to defeat one adversary’s aggressive actions in a major campaign and deny the objectives of or impose costs on a second adversary,” Winnefeld said.
“Again, if our means drop below the president’s budget submission, we will simply not be able to do both of those things. We will simply have to recast our capacity for conflict,” Winnefeld said.
For decades, Pentagon planning was based on a “two-war construct,” meaning it was based on the belief the U.S. should be prepared to simultaneously fight and win two full-scale wars in two different parts of the globe.
However, that changed in 2012 when the current national security strategy was unveiled.
Winnefeld acknowledged that the Congress appears reluctant to lift the budget caps, making a constrained defense budget “likely.”
“Our forward presence is either going to have to be at the same level in fewer regions or at a lower level in the same regions,” he said.
