PRESIDENT OBAMA pledged that the $489 billion in defense cuts he has proposed over 10 years would be governed by a concerted strategy, and on Thursday he delivered one. At the Pentagon, Mr. Obama unveiled a “strategic guidance,” which aides said reflected a considerable investment of his personal time and ideas. The president’s thesis is that the need for fiscal austerity coincides with a global “moment of transition,” in which the United States is winding down a decade of land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and facing the need to turn toward a very different set of challenges, particularly in Asia.
Several previous administrations have tried to shift to Asia from the messy Middle East, only to be dragged back by wars, terrorists, turmoil and the unending need to protect allies and the flow of oil. The Obama strategy acknowledges that history and says this pivot will be different. The means to reduce spending and build capacity in Asia, it suggests, will come not from the Mideast but from U.S. deployments in Europe, benefit and retirement costs, Cold War weapons systems and the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Though the administration has yet to spell out specifics, in principle these are sensible areas to look at for savings. We have argued previously that the military’s health-care system, which consumes $50 billion a year and charges military personnel premiums that are one-tenth of those of other federal employees, is unsustainable. Though the administration already has cut or canceled 30 weapons systems, saving some $300 billion, more could be trimmed. Whether benefit cuts could be pushed through Congress during an election year is open to question, but under the circumstances the president would be right to try.
A more dubious, and risky, assumption of Mr. Obama’s plan is that the United States will no longer conduct operations like those of the last decade: “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” Though counterinsurgency has produced results in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it — and the troop levels required for it — will be retired; the size of the Army and Marines will be returned to prewar levels. This, too, is not a new concept: After Vietnam, the Pentagon abandoned counterinsurgency and planning for troop-intensive operations.
Mr. Obama acknowledges that was a mistake, and he vowed Thursday not to repeat it. His solution is what the Pentagon is calling “reversibility.” Officials say the expertise and some of the officer cadre necessary to carry out counterinsurgency and nation-building will be preserved, so that the capacity could be restored if needed.
Even if that works, the judgment that such operations can be ruled out for the next decade strikes us as at odds with the reality of a Middle East in revolution, an increasingly belligerent Iran and a North Korea undergoing an unpredictable leadership transition — to name just the most obvious threats. Afghanistan itself is due to be the site of U.S. counterinsurgency operations until 2014, and tens of thousands of troops will remain for many years afterward if a pending deal with the Afghan government is completed.
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