{US commando}
{{US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reduced the US Army to its smallest number since before the World War Two. It’s also planned to eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets.}}
The new spending proposal is described by officials as the first Pentagon budget to push the military off the war footing adopted after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Andrew Bacevic, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, discussed the issue in an interview with the VoR.
{{Do you think the US Army reduction is a justified measure?}}
It is not a surprising action. I think the mood in the US is one that would not favor a large scale commitment of US land forces and any kind of a war. The memories of Iraq are still alive and they are not happy memories the perception of the Afghanistan war isn’t very popular.
The American people are not in the mood for another land war. I think Pentagon planners recognize that and looking at their crystal ball, they think that the most likely contingencies in the near future are more likely to require air and naval forces.
There is not enough money to give to everybody, so what you do is you make your cuts in the service that seems to be least needed in order to preserve capability where it is needed.
{{Do you think we might see an increase of the budget put towards drones or, in other words, a decrease as well?}}
Hagel wants to retire 810 attack aircraft, but he is doing that in order to preserve the much more modern and in the eyes of its proponents much more capable F35s.
This budget may to some degree look austerity budget but it is intended to enhance certain capabilities in the realm of air and naval power. The budget also for example maintains all 11 current aircraft carriers.
So, I think it is important not to overstate the downsizing. I mean if you are in the Army, it looks like a bad news budget, if you are in the Air Force or in the Navy, it doesn’t look so.
{{How will the budget reduction affect the army? Will it become more capable and modern or will it become weaker?}}
It’s got to become smaller and of course the rhetoric was already cited about becoming more agile and deployable and all that.
I have to say that at the end of the day the Army remains a fairly heavy force and therefore one that is not particularly agile.
If you’ve got a bunch of great big Abram tanks and you need to move them over a long distance, it is going to take a long time to get there. So, I take the agility rhetoric with a grain of salt.
I think that we are going to have an Army that is probably going to stay at home more than has been in the end of the Cold war.
{{Will the reduced Army be able to protect the country’s national interests and defend the US territory?}}
I don’t think we are expecting any major invasion from Canada or Mexico. So, yes, the threats to the US are not the ones for which we need a large Army.
The real treats are terrorism, where law enforcement agencies are far more important than the army, and cyber warfare, but again a large army is not particularly relevant to that.
And to some degree we are threatened by the prospect of air attacks particularly by missiles, and again, the Army’s role in defending the country in that arena is also quite limited.
The problem with the Army for its proponents is to find an answer to the question what does the Army exists to do and I am sure there are plenty of generals who are squirming around about that question but there is no obvious answer.
It is much easier to find an answer for what the Navy and the Air Force are required to do particularly if you credit this notion of the 21st century as an Asian century in which the competition for power will tend to be occurring in the Asia Pacific region.
It is far easier to conjure up contingencies that would require the commitment of US naval power and air power than land power. Now that said, there is always that important caveat about the Korean peninsula, which continues to be divided as it’s been divided since the Korean War.
{Voice of Russia}
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