U.S. President Barack Obama’s “rebalance” to Asia has done a modest job diplomatically, but is ultimately failing due to deep defense budget cuts, a former senator said Monday.
Jim Talent, a Republican from Missouri who served in the House of Representative and the Senate until 2007, made the point during a Heritage Foundation speech, stressing that such deep cuts made the American military much smaller at a time of growing risks around the world, including a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Talent said the U.S. has reaffirmed alliances with Japan, the Philippines and Korea and is attempting to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership that “will further pull those countries together.” But the budget cuts known as “sequestering” have damaged the U.S. military, he said.
“I think the Obama administration’s rebalance policy has done a reasonable job … diplomatically,” Talent said. “But the rebalance policy is failing for want of power, primarily because of the defense cuts in the United States over the last four years and the chaotic atmosphere they created in the Department of Defense.”
He accused the administration of making the cuts “without any analysis of the impact on national security.”
“It was highly irresponsible. It is forcing reductions in the size of the military,” he said.
The cuts have left the U.S. military confronting global challenges, such as North Korea, the danger of Iran’s nuclear program, the militant group Islamic State and an unfriendly Russia “with a military that is smaller than existed 20 years ago which is losing its technological edge, particularly as regards China,” he said.
“And another problem is that the cuts coming at this time send exactly the wrong message, not just to China, but to other countries, and not just to potential adversaries, but to friends and allies that the United States does not have the will or healthy enough sense of its own self-interest to sustain the tools necessary to defend itself.”
The Heritage Foundation organized Monday’s event as part of the annual B.C. Lee Lecture program set up in honor of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull, with sponsorship from the South Korean conglomerate. (Yonhap)
