Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Thursday will put the official Pentagon stamp on a new U.S. strategy toward Asia. The strategy will solidify efforts to refocus on countering China’s growing arsenal of missiles, submarines, cyberweapons and other forces designed to push U.S. forces out of the region.
A senior U.S. official tells Inside the Ring that the strategy — produced in response to harsh defense budget cuts imposed by the Obama administration and expected deeper cuts from Congress — is focused on bolstering U.S. forces and alliances in Asia while seeking to maintain an effective military presence in the volatile Middle East.
According to the official, the strategy will try to force the military services to better use shrinking resources.
Those weapons and forces cutbacks mean that the United States will no longer be able to fight two regional conflicts at the same time, increasing the risk that when a war breaks out in, say, the Middle East, adversaries will use the opportunity to launch wars in other places such as the Taiwan Strait or the Korean Peninsula.
The strategy will call for fighting one major war while deterring a second with enough forces to dissuade an adversary from seizing the opportunity to strike while U.S. forces are preoccupied elsewhere.
To deal with the sharp decline in resources — people, weapons and money — the Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force will be required to share forces to a much greater extent than in the past, according to the strategy report set for release at the Pentagon.
Regarding China, the strategy is an outgrowth of the Pentagon’s Air-Sea Battle Concept that was announced several weeks ago. The concept calls for a major program of air and naval systems that are designed to counter Beijing’s “anti-access” and “area-denial” weaponry.Anti-access weapons, like China’s new anti-ship ballistic missile, are designed to keep U.S. naval and air forces far from China’s coasts. Area-denial weapons — surface-to-surface missiles and stealth aircraft — seek to prevent forward deployed forces, like those in Japan and Guam, from taking action against China.
The Pentagon is expected to cut $490 billion from defense spending over the next 10 years. An additional $500 billion could be added to that cut as a result of the congressional spending deal reached last year.
U.S. strategic missile defenses and an urgently needed strategic nuclear-modernization program are not expected to be targeted in the spending drawdown....
I am not sure how this plays into the evolving situation with Iran. Perhaps they are being so aggressive now because the sense our retreat from the region in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not think it is realistic in dealing with religious bigots who want to die. Deterrence is not on their radar screen.
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