NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The military would not be able to carry out the Obama administration’s global military strategy under budget sequestration, which would require rewriting the new doctrine, Marine Assistant Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford warned yesterday.
“If we have sequestration, the current strategy is not executable,” Dunford said at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Exposition outside Washington.
The draconian budget measure that could take effect in January would force the White House to “fundamentally change” the global strategy and lay out revised spending priorities for Pentagon, Dunford said.
“It is not going to be budget driven,” he said. “It’s going to be a fundamental reordering of our national priorities and that’s the level at which the dialogue needs to take place with regard to sequestration,” Dunford said.
The Pentagon is already absorbing $487 billion dollars in reductions over the next 10 years under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was passed by Congress in August and designed to rein in the national debt and deficit spending.
Under the law, if Congress cannot agree to a budget blueprint for the next decade that finds an additional $1.2 trillion in cuts by Jan. 2, there will be automatic reductions across the federal government under the sequestration measure, and about $500 billion of that will hit the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has already said such a scenario would be disastrous.
The Obama administration’s global posture review calls for a larger footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, along with emphasized focus on the Middle East.
Navy Undersecretary Robert Work told the same gathering that the service has not begun planning for possible sequestration, saying “the only thing you can plan for is how to pick up the pieces.”
Work, however, said he believes sequestration would not have as drastic effect on the Navy and Marine Corps as it would on the other services because the global strategy is focused on a strong maritime presence.
“I would assume that the Department of the Navy will do better than the other departments,” he said, later adding: “If you read our strategy, it is impossible not to walk away from reading that strategy and saying that the Navy and Marine Corps team, and the Coast Guard–our national maritime services–are absolutely essential to the strategy.”