2012 Defense budget outlook: The new certainty

Guest Article by Lou Crenshaw, Vice Admiral U.S. Navy (ret.)

The 2011 defense budget was characterized as a budget about uncertainty. Budget officials struggled to make ends meet in what seemed to be an endless stream of continuing resolutions (CRs), debt ceiling crises and impending government shutdowns. There was doubt about the continuing presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and planners were uncertain about what a post-Iraq war presence would look like. Given the lack of clear guidance, future force structure levels were practically impossible to predict. DoD officials were also concerned about the loss of supplemental funding and how to accommodate the migration of baseline expenses into supplemental funds. The newly appointed secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, had presumably been appointed to oversee a massive defense budget restructuring. Given his reputation as a tough but savvy budgeteer, DoD officials were uncertain about how aggressive he would be; they were still stinging from the relatively modest cuts mandated by Secretary Gates. In short, it was a very difficult year for Defense Department planners and budgeteers to put into place any sort of long-term plan that would adequately address the security challenges facing the nation and balance those challenges with the fiscal needs of Congress.

The good news is that unlike in 2011, the Defense Department can bank on quite a bit of certainty going into 2012…

• The New Certainty
  
• The good and bad
  
• The big picture
  
• Five Defense Trends for Clients
  
• Prepare now for a certain future
  
• Additional Readings
  

Rapid Fire May 1, 2012: Philippines | F-22s | DRS | Arlington

• The Philippines, whose appeal for international arbitration of territorial disputes with China has been rejected by Chinese authorities, wants to develop a “minimum credible defense posture”, gets closer to the US.

• Rory Medcalf from the Lowy Institute for International Policy gives his Australian perspective on US rebalancing toward Asia [PDF]:

“[I]t’s not only or principally China’s navy that been involved in incidents at sea, but in fact more often Chinese civilian and paramilitary agencies, whether they are fisheries, the oceanic administration, or any number of auxiliary actors. In some ways, confrontation with these groups can be more dangerous because civilian agencies probably have less discipline regarding rules of engagement than their military counterparts.”

• The latest DoD Report on progress toward security and stability in Afghanistan [PDF] is out: