He must also determine the size of reductions in military personnel, which smaller weapons programs will be cut or ended, and how much should be spent on the future through research and development.
Sometime this year, there must be decisions on how to downsize in Afghanistan and what arrangements can be made to keep U.S. forces there after 2014, whether to send military trainers back to Iraq, and how to respond if Congress authorizes dispatching Special Forces to Nigeria to assist in fighting a terrorist group, as it did when U.S. troops were sent to help battle the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa.
(Omar Sobhani/REUTERS) - U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has a lot on his plate: the Pentagon’s budget crunch, the war in Afghanistan, the postwar period in Iraq, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israeli issues, U.S.-Pakistan relations, China’s growing military and the biggest challenge of all — Congress
Then there are the military issues that have election implications. Are personnel coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan getting enough help; what’s being done to reduce military suicides; are boards needed to determine which officers and senior enlisted troops should be retired as overall numbers go down; how do you monitor the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the new legislation dealing with sexual abuse and rape in the military? Who will be on the promised commission to look into changes in the military retirement system and perhaps the Pentagon’s health system?
These are all complicated issues, more often handled through small steps and compromise than through simplistic, black-and-white pronouncements — like campaign rhetoric.
Speaking on Oct. 6, Romney said that he wanted Pentagon core spending to rise to 4 percent of gross domestic product and that he would increase active-duty personnel by about 100,000. In a speech the next day at the Citadel, he said he would “reverse the hollowing of our Navy and . . . increase the shipbuilding rate from nine per year to 15.” He also repeated a pledge that has Republican roots going back to the Nixon administration: “I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system.”
During the Nov. 22 Republican presidential debate, Romney said the Obama administration, in response to the Budget Control Act, halted production of the F-22 stealth fighter, delayed aircraft carriers and said new long-range Air Force bombers would not be built. These steps and others, Romney said, are “cutting the capacity of America to defend itself.”
Panetta did not step forward to challenge these remarks, though others have noted, for example, that the decisions to limit F-22 production and slow carrier production were made by then-Secretary Robert M. Gates before the Budget Control Act passed, while plans for the strategic bomber are still going ahead.
When the presidential campaign becomes a two-person race in the fall, and the GOP candidate, his supporters or political action committees make similar charges against the Obama defense program, the feisty, outspoken politician inside Panetta may not be so controlled. “I am not sure Panetta will stay totally out of the fray,” said a person who knows the defense secretary well.
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