According to The New York Times, Secretary Gates has told the Pentagon to tighten its belt to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and everything else: “His goal is $7 billion in spending cuts and efficiencies for 2012, growing to $37 billion annually by 2016.”
Some may think this is a good news story. It is not. Rather than achieve “savings” mostly what the Pentagon will do is job Peter to pay Paul. What is happening under Obama is exactly what happened under Carter after the Vietnam War. Cutting back just made the military “hollow.” “Hollow force,” a term coined in the post-Vietnam War era, describes a military that lacks the resources to field trained and ready forces, support ongoing operations, and modernize.
Heritage Defense analyst Baker Spring already made the case that Obama’s defense budgets are short changing readiness and modernization. Gates orders to the Pentagon are pretty much an admission that Spring was right…and the Obama defense plans are wrong.
