In creating new defense strategy, Obama attempts to outflank Congress

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and military commanders have warned in apocalyptic terms that such reductions would gut the armed forces. Obama has cast himself as a fully committed ally, behaving as if the worst-case scenario does not exist.

“The executive branch is totally ignoring sequestration,” said a senior administration official concerned about the military’s predicament who was not authorized to speak for attribution. “We are making no preparations at all.”

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President Barack Obama insists the United States will maintain what he calls the best-equipped military in history despite deep and looming defense budget cuts. (Jan. 5)

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Read an outline of the new U.S. military strategy.

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Some Republicans on Capitol Hill criticized Obama’s set of strategic priorities, suggesting that defense spending cuts, even those required by last year’s budget act, are unnecessary.

In a statement, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said “an honest and valid strategy for national defense can’t be founded on the premise that we must do more with less or less with less.” McKeon, who voted for the Budget Control Act last year, said Obama’s view is “founded on hope and a hollow force.”

A strategic rationale

Over four months in the fall, Obama held a half-dozen meetings with uniformed military commanders, service secretaries and the National Security Council. The sessions featured Obama as professor in chief, the hybrid role that has become the hallmark of his behind-closed-doors leadership style.

The objective was to ensure that the expected cuts would remain consistent with the country’s changing national security priorities, and to build a strategic rationale to defend those choices as a package on Capitol Hill.

“It will provide a benchmark for understanding the impact of changes” to the defense budget, Dempsey said in an e-mail, referring to the review. “Without a strategic benchmark, it would be impossible to assess the impact of future cuts.”

On each side of the river, an experienced Washington hand managed the process at Obama’s direction: Donilon, seasoned in foreign policy and electoral politics, at the White House; and Panetta, a former Office of Management and Budget director and House budget committee chairman, at the Pentagon.

“We are sensitive to the fact that this is an election year,” said one senior military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the process. “No one wants to be a shill for anyone. And yet this was an astonishingly open and positive collaborative process. Somehow, Panetta made it happen.”

On Sept. 7, during his weekly meeting with Panetta, Obama said he wanted to devote a substantial amount of time to the strategic review.

Donilon convened Panetta, White House budget director Jacob J. Lew and Adm. Mike Mullen, then at the end of his tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a week later at the White House. The meeting was to come up with some specific choices to present to Obama to manage the impending cuts.

“We’re going to have to do this at some point as a country,” Obama told them two days later at the first meeting with his civilian advisers and commanders. “Let’s do it now.”

This session was held Sept. 16 in the Situation Room and featured Panetta walking Obama through some of the budget-cutting ideas discussed in the earlier planning session.