Paul Brill: ‘Financial Distress Will Force US To Reduce Armed Forces’

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/227491/financial-distress-will-force-us-to-reduce-armed-forces/

American support for Europe is no longer automatic.

Paul Brill: ‘Financial Distress Will Force US To Reduce Armed Forces’
Volkskrant, The Netherlands
By Paul Brill
Translated By Nikki Rosenberg
23 November 2013
Edited by Jane Lee

On my way to Brussels for several briefings at the NATO headquarters, I read a noticeable article in the magazine Foreign Affairs about the crucial decisions the Pentagon is facing. In the next 10 years it will need to cut at least $500 billion in spending. That is a five with 11 zeros.

Cindy Williams, head of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,* calculated that the damage this threatens to bring to the general defensibility of the American forces can only stay within bounds if the current excessive royal salaries and especially the medical coverage for the military are decreased.

Whether this will be successful is definitely questionable. Associations of soldiers and veterans shape an influential lobby in Washington. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want to carry the odium for not supporting their men and women in uniform. But even if that resistance can be broken, ground forces and the Marine Corps will have to decrease their personal scale by approximately 15 percent, according to Williams.

They will also have to be careful when producing new weapon systems. The White House and the Pentagon have claimed that East Asia is the strategic pivot, and that necessarily means that the Marine Corps should be strengthened. This is because the unfolding of power in that part of the world mostly has a maritime angle.

[Skittles]

1. gee, that's what happens when pay stagnates

repukes do not think that far ahead

[bemildred]

2. "Is", not "will", but yeah. nt