The lead story in this week’s Defense News (“DoD to Launch 2011 Budget Planning”) reports that Secretary Gates’ team will shortly be sending the military services their budget-building guidance for the fiscal year 2011 budget. The guidance provides the services with the total amount they can expect to spend for that year. Others are reporting that this figure will be either no increase from 2010 or a further cut from 2009.
Note, the guidance will be issued well before the Quadrennial Defense Review is completed—the review mandated by Congress to provide the overall strategic guidance for military planning in the years ahead. As noted previously, what this suggests is that the Obama-Gates defense plans are driven by what the White House and Office of Management and Budget are willing to give the Pentagon in terms of money, and not strategy. Although the rest of Obama’s government is spending like drunken sailors, the military — fighting two wars and facing possibly equally daunting contingencies with Iran, North Korea, and others — is being told to make do.
Congress returns from its July 4th recess this week. It would be nice if conservatives and moderate Democrats on the two armed services committees were less deferential to Secretary Gates and began to understand that the secretary who acceded to President Bush’s decision to go forward with “the surge” in Iraq is equally willing to accede to President Obama’s desire to cut military strength. Acceding seems to be what he does best.