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Obama also wants more focus on Asia-Pacific security issues, starting with China's rapid military modernization. But that and other elements of his new military strategy could come apart at the seams if Congress and the administration don't come up with a way to avoid automatic budget cuts starting in January. If such a budget deal is not reached in time, the Pentagon would absorb an additional $500 billion in cuts over the decade. That was put in place by a bipartisan deal reached in August 2011 between the White House and Congress. At its core, the debate over whether the U.S. is spending enough on defense
-- and whether the dollars are being invested wisely -- gets down to this: What should America defend against? Is it the al-Qaida terrorist network, which has been the central focus of U.S. defense strategy for a decade but is now in decline? Is it China, which is gaining military strength and flexing its muscle in regional disputes? Is it Russia, whose nuclear arsenal is the only one in the world still capable, in theory, of destroying the United States? One lesson of 9/11 and the two wars that followed is that the U.S. has a poor track record of preparing for the right threat.
[Associated
Press;
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