National SecurityDepartment of Military Readiness: Gates’ Farewell WarningSecretary of Defense Robert Gates is taking a retirement lap ahead of his departure later this month, and he made some predictions about U.S. national defense and also warned about cutting it going forward. “More perhaps than any other secretary of defense, I have been a strong advocate of soft power — of the critical importance of diplomacy and development as fundamental components of our foreign policy and national security,” Gates said at Notre Dame. “But make no mistake, the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power — the size, strength and global reach of the United States military.”
\nThat size, strength and reach has been diminished in part by long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but more importantly by the determined effort of our current commander in chief.Barack Obama has insisted on cutting back the military even when Gates has pleaded for the smallest of funding increases. Gates correctly points out that the defense budget “is not the cause of this country’s fiscal woes,” but conceded that “as a matter of simple arithmetic and political reality,” cuts in defense spending “must be at least part of the solution.” Gates said that the Pentagon would need 2-3 percent growth just to maintain its current force, but could probably tighten its belt and survive on 1 percent growth. Obama gave him 0 percent.According to The Wall Street Journal, “America’s role as a global leader depends on its ability to project power. In historical terms, the U.S. spends relatively little on defense today, even after the post-9\/11 buildup. This year’s $530 billion budget accounts for 3.5% of GDP, 4.5% when the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars are included. The U.S. spent, on average, 7.5% of GDP on defense throughout the Cold War, and 6.2% at the height of the Reagan buildup in 1986. But on coming into office, the Obama Administration put the Pentagon on a fiscal diet — even as it foisted new European-sized entitlements on America, starting with $2.6 trillion for ObamaCare. The White House proposed a $553 billion defense budget for 2012, $13 billion below what it projected last year. Through 2016, the Pentagon will see virtually zero growth in spending and will have to whittle down the Army and Marine Corps by 47,000 troops.”Gates concludes, “The American military will remain the greatest deterrent against aggression and the most effective means of preserving peace.” Yet, at best, it will be “a smaller, superbly capable military” that “will be able to go to fewer places and be able to do fewer things.”In related news, the Pentagon said this week that it will consider cyber attacks originating from another country as grounds to retaliate using traditional military force. As one military official put it, “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.” That’s an important shot across the bow of our enemies.<\/p>\n
via Digest for Friday, June 3, 2011 – Editions – PatriotPost.US<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" National SecurityDepartment of Military Readiness: Gates’ Farewell WarningSecretary of Defense Robert Gates is taking a retirement lap ahead of his departure later this month, and he made some predictions about U.S. national defense and also warned about cutting it going forward. “More perhaps than any other secretary of defense, I have been a strong advocate … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,275],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-gates-farewell-warning","tag-patriotpost-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":878,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/patrioticfederalist.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}