The Twelve-Year Rule

Two years ago, I warned that the Obama administration was prepared to live off of past defense expenditures to coast through the medium term without funding defense improvements needed for the future while focusing more limited resources on winning the current wars. While enemies and potential enemies would gain ground on us over that time, our superiority would last even if at reduced margins of error. Some future president and Congress could take responsibility for reversing the trends if they identify a potential threat (and if we can afford it after jacking up domestic spending). This version of Britain's inter-war "ten-year rule" where they saw nobody to challenge them over the next decade seemed all but certain to be adopted here and now.

The time for gutting our defenses in the medium term is here. But instead of a vague "medium" term of assured superiority or the old British decade, we'll get a defense holiday for 12 years:

Obama announced last week that he would work with Gates and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to find additional cost savings beyond the $400 billion in reductions the department has made over the past two years.

The goal is an additional $400 billion in national security cuts through 2023, to help realize $2 trillion in savings as part of a plan to reduce federal borrowing by $4 trillion over the next 12 years.

“We have been given a mission, and the secretary will undertake it,” Wilson said.

I--and our allies and enemies--must wait to see what capabilities we decide to reduce or abandon.

Have a nice day.