US Army General Martin Dempsey — or ‘Marty’ as he is known to his friends and colleagues — celebrates 40 years of service this year. However, it’s not looking like it’s going to be an easy year for him and celebrations may need to be put on hold as tensions in the Middle East flare up again.
As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey is the highest-ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces and the principal military advisor to the President of the United States, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defense. While his army credentials are obviously impeccable, President Barack Obama’s decision to launch airstrikes against ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria presents a whole other challenge for the 62-year-old: balancing the budget at the Pentagon.
Dempsey admits that balancing the Pentagon’s 2015 budget proposal had assumed stable or declining commitments abroad. However, confronted with challenges from Russian forces in Ukraine, the Ebola crisis in West Africa, regional instability in North Africa and new operations in the Middle East, it seems that assumption is proving to be somewhat wide of the mark.
“Commitments have gone up,” Dempsey told reporters bluntly at a recent press conference. “So if you’re asking me do I asAs images of two American journalists and British aid workers being beheaded are released by ISIL, there is mounting pressure on US Congress to roll back $1 trillion in mandatory defence cuts.
For now, the Pentagon is working on the assumption that the fiscal 2016 budget will include deep spending cutbacks, which also comes at a time when the US defence industry claims that 100,000 jobs have been cut in the sector.
Estimates show that US military efforts against ISIL have already cost nearly $1bn and are likely to run to between $2.4bn and $3.8bn per year if air and ground operations continue at the current pace, experts have forecast.
However, if this operation progresses further and efforts are ramped up, including more jet fighters in the air and significant ground forces, the costs could start to spiral very quickly and could soar to between $13bn and $22bn annually, according to the Washington, DC-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), an independent policy research institute set up to promote innovative thinking and debate about US national security strategy and investment options.
“Future costs depend, to a great extent, on how long operations continue, the steady-state level of air operations, and whether additional ground forces are deployed beyond what is already planned,” says Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defence budget studies at CSBA, whose job is essentially to put a price tag on how much of a toll US military operations around the world are likely to have on the Treasury’s bottom line.sess right now... that we’re going to have budget problems? Yes.”
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