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Panetta: Sequestration Would Make U.S. ‘Second-Rate Power’

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Photo Credit: U.S. Army AfricaSecretary of Defense Leon Panetta used a hearing on the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on Benghazi to plead with Congress for a budget agreement that would prevent sequestration cuts to the Department of Defense.

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on Thursday, Panetta said his greatest concern as defense secretary is the fiscal uncertainty hanging over Washington.

“I cannot imagine that people would stand by and deliberately hurt this country, in terms of our national defense, by letting this happen,” he said.

Ultimately, sequestration cuts would erode the military’s capabilities and threaten its world standing, Panetta asserted.

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Panetta: Troop Pay May Be On Table in Future Budget Cuts

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At a packed National Press Club lunch event Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave a talk full, as always, of ire at the unresolved specter of sequestration, but also spent time talking about how to implement further cuts to the Defense Department.

Under the 2011 Budget Control Act, Panetta and the military service chiefs carved out $487 billion from planned spending over the next fiscal decade. But if members of Congress can’t reach a budget deal that finds equivalent savings, the sequestration mechanism will kick in and lop an additional half-trillion dollars off the Defense Department’s bottom line.

“Because of political gridlock, this department still faces the possibility of another round of across-the-board cuts,” Panetta said. “Wherever I visit our troops, they make clear their concerns about those cuts. What does it mean for them and what does it mean for their families. We’re down to the wire now.”

But even while Panetta urged Congress Tuesday to put a halt to sequestration, he joined the new trend of defense hard-liners talking in earnest about additional Pentagon cuts.

“We obviously continue to look at areas where we can achieve efficiencies at the DoD. There’s no question there is duplication, there is overhead in a bureaucracy of three million people,” he said.

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Japanese-Chinese Island Dispute Heats Up With Beijing Defense Minister “Reserving the Right to Act”

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China’s national defense minister warned Tuesday that Beijing reserves the right to take further action against Japan in the ongoing dispute over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.

Standing next to U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Liang Guanglie said Japan should bear full responsibility for the dispute, which has triggered violent protests in China against the Japanese. Panetta has been pressing both Liang and defense leaders in Japan to find ways to resolve the problem peacefully and diplomatically.

Liang, however, made it clear during a press conference that while China still would like to see a negotiated solution, he hopes the Japanese government “will undo its mistakes and come back to the right track of negotiations.” Tensions over the string of islands, called the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyu in China, spiked last week when the Japanese government said it was purchasing some of the islands from their private owner.

The island dispute has been a hot topic during Panetta’s weeklong tour of the Asia-Pacific region. But his session with Liang also touched on a wide expanse of issues as the U.S. and China try to find a way to improve their military relationship.

U.S. relations with China have been rocky, especially over America’s support of and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own. The U.S. also has been critical of China for its lack of transparency regarding its massive military buildup.

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