The Bush administration?s proposed
spending plans for the Pentagon have
produced a series of dramatic headlines
around the world relating to an apparently
unprecedented US defence build up. The fiscal
2003 budget request for the Pentagon
fleshed out the budgetary details of Secretary
of Defence Donald Rumsfeld?s
Quadrennial Defence
Review (QDR), released on
30 September, 2001.
The QDR was a cautious
document on the whole.
While it unveiled several new
initiatives, they were largely
conceptual ones. It increased
the military?s emphasis on
homeland security, as
planned even before the
attacks on the US on September 11th of that year. It also adopted a somewhat less demanding type of two-war scenario as the
proper standard for sizing American armed
forces. In addition, the QDR placed greater
emphasis on missile defence, defence research
and development, and joint-service training
and experimentation.
However, the Bush defence review essentially reaffirmed the Clinton administration?s weapons modernisation agenda and force
structure. After rampant early speculation that
overseas troop deployments would be reduced,
the size of US ground forces would be curtailed
significantly and a generation of weapons programs
would be skipped, Rumsfeld?s defence
plan proved far more cautious and far more
consistent with that of his predecessors.
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