Budget Realignment Reflects Pentagon’s Vision of Covert and Endless War

Monday, March 3, 2014
By Paul Martin

Brian J. Trautman
RINF.com
Mar. 3, 2014

The Pentagon’s budget proposal for next year was announced last week by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. In an interview with the New York Times, Hagel argued that to meet today’s national security needs, the Department of Defense (DoD) must shift its focus and capabilities away from “fighting grinding ground conflicts” and towards “new arenas of combat.” To achieve these ends, the budget calls for a realignment of the military that would reduce the total number of ground troops to its lowest level since 1940 and discontinue some military equipment deemed obsolete or unnecessary. According to Hagel, current levels of both assets are “larger than we can afford to modernize and keep ready.” The proposed budget also includes reductions in personnel benefits and base services, as well as base closings. The targeted cuts, however, are only one aspect of the budget. The other involves the new sources of priority spending.

The budget plan includes a call for greater expenditures on computer-based technologies and special operations. The Nation‘s Bob Dreyfuss reports that the “cuts would fund new projects including cyberwarfare capabilities, $1 billion for a more fuel-efficient jet engine, and plans for a new Navy surface ship.” Despite the cuts to traditional aspects of the military, the DoD has no plans to shrink or limit programs that would undermine America’s ever-growing hegemonic objectives. Dreyfuss writes, “Major weapons systems that might have been cut were sustained, the US special forces units are being increased substantially from already high levels” and “the US Navy would maintain all eleven of its aircraft carriers.”

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