The U.S. policy of supporting Taiwan through sales of U.S. weapons is the biggest irritant in the increasingly complicated U.S.-China relationship. This week, just before Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, a potential new round of arms sales to Taiwan threatens to overshadow the Obama-Hu summit.

Following the January 2010 sale of $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the Chinese cut off military-to-military relations with Washington. These relations were only restored this week during Defense Secretary Robert Gates' trip to Beijing, which was somewhat overshadowed by the first flight test of the People Liberation Army's new J-20 stealth fighter. The White House put off the last round of sales until after Obama's November 2009 trip to China. However, it only succeeded in delaying the inevitable Chinese outrage and now the Chinese are saying that no more sales will be tolerated.

"United States arms sales to Taiwan seriously damaged China's core interests and we do not want to see that happen again, neither do we hope that the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan will again and further disrupt our bilateral and military-to-military relationship," Chinese Minister for National Defense Gen. Liang Guanglie said during a joint press conference with Gates Jan. 10.

Gates told the Chinese that the arms sales would continue, as they have for decades, under the Taiwan Relations Act, a U.S. law that mandates that the United States will support Taiwan's self-defense.

"[I]f the relationship between China and Taiwan continued to improve and the security environment for Taiwan changed, then perhaps that would create the conditions for reexamining all of this," Gates said at a roundtable after the meeting. "But that would be an evolutionary and a long-term process, it seems to me.  I don't think that's anything that's going to happen anytime soon."

Meanwhile, a new package of arms sales is in the works. The next package is made up of upgrades and add-ons for Taiwan's fleet of 146 F-16 A and B type fighters. Defense News reported Jan. 10 that the Pentagon is planning in the next few weeks to release price and availability data for the materials, which will include advanced avionics and engines.

And today, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz reported that the Obama administration has reached a decision to extend a news arms package to Taiwan, "but is keeping details secret until after next week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao." Gertz wrote that the State Department was holding up the sale and that it could total as much as $4 billion.

A State Department official threw a bucket of cold water on the Gertz report, saying that there's no "pending" decision on arms sales to Taiwan and there was no effort to delay arms sales due to the Hu Jintao visit.

"We review Taiwan's defensive capabilities on an ongoing basis. Taiwan frequently tells us what they'd like to have and then we work with Taiwan on equipment that meets their needs," the official said.

Referring directly to Gertz, a reporter whose conservatives views have irritated the State Department on matters ranging from missile defense to Russia to China, the State Department official said, "This particular reporter, as you know, has his own foreign policy."

A Taiwanese government source told The Cable that yes, there was a desire to buy F-16 A/B upgrades from the U.S. but they have no idea about the timing of such a deal, and that it had never been finalized or considered imminent. The source went on to emphasize that Taiwan is still pressing a 2006 request for more advanced F-16 C and D type fighters and is interested in purchasing the fifth generation F-35 fighter as well.

Douglas Paal, who as director of the American Institute in Taiwan was the de facto U.S. ambassador there from 2002 to 2006, said that upgrading Taiwan's F-16s was an ongoing process dating back to 1993 and would continue whether Beijing liked it or not. He also remarked that the Obama administration is smart enough not to act on the sale on the eve of the Hu visit, and doubted that it was ever planning to do so.

"The upgrades will go forward at the appropriate time. I don't think this will be viewed (inside the administration) as the appropriate time," said Paal.

China-Taiwan ties have been warming for years, but haven't yet lessened Taiwanese security concerns or U.S. officials' determination to continue arm sales to the island. Beijing has hundreds of missiles pointed at Taiwan, and continues to shift the balance of power across the strait in its own favor.

"This goes to the heart of the gap in perception on both sides (of the U.S.-China relationship)," said Michael Swaine, a China military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Even though you have improvement in cross-strait relations, you have a continued build up of capabilities opposite to Taiwan that are only relevant to Taiwan."

Regardless, a new round of sales still risks upending the U.S.-China relationship, said Bonnie Glaser, senior fellow at the Center for International Studies. "If we do go ahead with a major arms sale to Taiwan then probably all bets are off."

Defense Secretary Bob Gates is among the most savvy officials in a long time when it comes to navigating the budget debates between Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon. But as the Pentagon's fiscal crisis reaches critical mass, Gates' budget gymnastics are pleasing neither the right nor the left.

Gates held a press conference on Thursday to announce a new set of measures that he said would save $100 billion in "efficiencies," and reduce defense spending by another $78 billion on top of that, over the next five years. He said that these steps were necessary "to tackle the budget deficit and the debt problem."

Gates said that his plan would allow the Defense Department to maintain "modest" growth going forward. He has spoken openly about how his strategy is meant to defend the defense budget from both those on the right that seek ever-increasing military budgets and those on the left, as well as conservative deficit hawks, who seek steep cuts in defense funding as part of the U.S. efforts to reduce the government's massive deficits.

"My hope is that, as we go through the hearings for the fiscal year '12 budget, that we will be able to show those who are interested in protecting defense that we have done that, and those who think that defense ought to contribute to reducing the deficit, that we have done that as well," he told PBS News Hour's Jim Lehrer.

That requires Gates to portray his new saving announcements as "cuts" to please those who are concerned with deficits -- which angers the right -- while simultaneously portraying his efforts as a defense of steadily increasing budgets to mollify defense hawks, which angers the left and those concerned with the deficit.

"We will have modest growth in the defense budget for the next three fiscal years. And, then, the last two years of the five-year period, we will be protected against inflation, but not have real growth," Gates told the press conference.

"These cuts are being made without any commitment to restore modest future growth, which is the only way to prevent deep reductions in force structure that will leave our military less capable and less ready to fight," shot back Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), the new head of the House Armed Services Committee.

Gates is not only stuck between two sides of Congress, but also must deal with the White House, which is changing the rules on him in the middle of the game. The whole reason that Gates was forced to find $78 billion in new savings over five years was the agreement he struck with the White House on future budgets was cancelled by Jacob Lew, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Back in August, Gates announced he would find $100 billion in savings but would allow the military services to "keep what they catch." This was Gates' way to incentivize the services to find waste and get out ahead of Congressional drives to cut deeper into the defense budget. But when Lew came in, he directed Gates to trim $150 billion from defense spending over the next five years, and would not allow the Defense Department to keep the savings.

"Gates defended to the teeth the budget request that he thought the White House had agreed to,"
said Gordon Adams, who directed national security spending at OMB during the Clinton administration and now teaches at American University. "Then Jack Lew comes in and asks him to cut $150 billion more."

Gates eventually negotiated the $150 billion figure down to $78 billion, the amount he announced Thursday. But that's where the math gets really fuzzy, because Gates' $78 billion in cuts aren't really cuts at all. $54 billion comes from the president's announcement to freeze federal civilian worker pay. So Gates is capitalizing on Obama's decision without making any additional sacrifices, Adams said.

Another $14 billion comes from "shifts in economic assumptions... for example, decreases in the inflation rate and projected pay raises," Gates said. Adams explained that means the Pentagon simply changed its figure for projected inflation, which changes how much it predicts everything will cost in the future.

The irony is that the Pentagon for decades has used its own mysterious method to measure inflation, rather than using the common GDP deflator that OMB uses. But usually, the Pentagon is arguing that inflation will be higher. Now, because it suits his needs, Gates is arguing inflation will be less than previously expected.

"It's economic magic," said Adams. "If you believe the rate of inflation will be lower than what you thought it was last year, then you can claim you will have modest growth in the defense budget. But there's no way of knowing. And there's no reason in the last 12 months to think that inflation experienced by DOD is in any way different than what the Pentagon thought it would be last year."

What really irritates Adams and other defense budget analysts is Gates' contention that "ever since World War I, when we have come to the end of wars, we have dramatically reduced our defense spending, cut our military forces, and then ended up in another war."

As this chart of defense spending clearly shows, after World War II, that's just not the case. Spending tapered off somewhat after the Korean War and President Clinton sought a reduction in the 1990s, but defense reformers point out that the biggest shift in defense spending is the drastic increases since 2001.

"The point of reference is the amount of spending we had just before the current wars in the base budget, which in the year 2000 was under $400 billion," said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. "So we've gone up a huge amount and now they're calling $530 billion a disaster? Their rhetoric doesn't match their actions on both ends."

The Defense Department is slated to receive $530 billion for the 2011 fiscal year if Congress fails to pass a budget for the Pentagon when the current temporary funding measure expires in March. $530 billion is also the amount the Pentagon received in fiscal 2010, but it is $18 billion less than what the administration requested and $23 billion less than they would have gotten if Congress had passed the bill last year.

"That will be a disaster for us. We will have real problems," Gates said, about the possibility that the Defense Department would receive $530 billion in funding.

"They're going to have to live within that $530 billion so they better go ahead and plan on that basis," said Wheeler.

For fiscal 2012, the White House has agreed to allow the Pentagon to request $554 billion, which is $12 billion less than what the Pentagon had planned for before negotiating with the White House.  That request will be vetted by a new Congress full of Tea Partiers, fiscal conservatives, anti-war lawmakers, and many others who may oppose further budget increases. These lawmakers will also be able to point to calls by the President's deficit commission to take big chunks out of the defense budget in support of their case.

"When you have a potential coalition of Republican budget hawks and those on the left side of the spectrum, that's very real," said Wheeler.

Gates is as skilled as anyone when it comes to handling these competing interests. But his Herculean effort to please all sides may become too difficult even for him this year.

"Gates has been very effective at kicking the can the road and not facing the music," said Wheeler. "But the problem is, that is now catching up to him because the deficit problem is real, the Republicans are under the gun to deal with this, and most of them understand that defense is on the table."

A full year has passed since a bipartisan group of senators began calling for the sacking of Arnie Fields, the embattled Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), and those senators are as frustrated as ever that the White House refuses to address the situation.

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Susan Collins (R-ME), have been pressing the White House to fire Fields since December 2009, following complaints about both the conduct and the work product of the SIGAR office, which is charged with overseeing tens of billions of dollars in Afghanistan reconstruction contracts managed by both the State and Defense Departments. Last July, the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which is meant to oversee the overseers, issued a scathing report on SIGAR, which only fueled the fire of lawmakers calling for Fields' removal.

McCaskill and Coburn continued to press the case, but as the congressional session ended last week, McCaskill said she had still not gotten any substantive response from the White House to her many letters and calls for Fields' sacking.

"I visited with people in the White House about Arnie Fields last week and I continue to push as hard as I know how for his removal," McCaskill told The Cable in an exclusive interview Dec. 20. "I have not gotten a satisfactory answer other than ‘we are working on it' and that is not satisfactory."

"I'm frustrated. It's not going as quickly as it should. I've been trying to move this person out of the position for over a year now," McCaskill told The Cable in October. "The White House needs to act. That's where the buck stops. It is way past the time when they should have removed him."

In her capacity as chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, McCaskill called Fields to testify on Nov. 18.

"I would say that it's a pleasure but I would be telling a lie if I were to say so," Fields told the lawmakers, who grilled Fields on his office's work, which McCaskill said failed to meet the standards set forth by the law that set up the SIGAR office.

McCaskill pointed out that the taxpayers have given $46.2 million to SIGAR but their investigations have only resulted in collections of $8.2 million.

The hearing also examined General Fields' decision to award a $96,000 sole-source contract for tracking SIGAR's efforts to improve itself to Joseph Schmitz, the former Defense Department inspector general, who resigned in 2005 amid allegations of ethical misconduct and misleading Congress.

So why is Fields still around? The back story is one of bureaucratic inaction and what many on Capitol Hill see as the National Security Staff's failure to deal with the SIGAR problem due to a lack of clarity over whose responsibility it is to make a decision about Fields.

SIGAR is meant to oversee both State and Defense Department (DOD) contracts in Afghanistan. It was created in 2008 due to a realization that neither of these agencies had the capacity to oversee their own contracts in the warzone. But when the NSS first got the request to review SIGAR, they sent the request to the State and Defense Departments' Inspector General's (IG) offices for them to review, multiple Senate aides said.

But this made little sense, as the entire purpose of SIGAR was to do the job that the State and Pentagon IG offices weren't capable of doing. That's when the NSS tasked the review to CIGIE, which issued its harsh verdict on July 16.

The congressional calls for Fields' head only increased after that, which led to an interagency meeting at the White House in the fall to decide what to do about Fields. A State Department official confirmed that both the Pentagon and the State Department were asked to weigh in on the SIGAR situation.

Both the State Department and the Pentagon declined to give a position on Fields at the meeting, noting that it was not their proper role. "We declined to give an opinion on the situation and we remain neutral," a State Department official close to the issue said.

On Capitol Hill, McCaskill said the NSS's decision to seek consensus from State and DOD was a delaying tactic and inappropriate. She said it's not the State or Defense Department's job to act on replacing Fields as the head of SIGAR.

"That's why the White House should just do this," McCaskill said.

The SIGAR can't be evaluated by the two agencies he is tasked to oversee because it's a clear conflict of interest, said one Senate aide close to the discussions.

"The problem is that the whole thing is perfectly ripe for inaction," the aide said. "If the NSS is waiting for consensus from State and DOD that Fields should go, they aren't likely to get it.  From State and DOD's perspective it might be good to have a weak SIGAR over there... This is why you don't ask the agency under review whether or not the IG should go. They can't answer."

But lawmakers such as McCaskill and Coburn also know their power to get rid of Fields is limited. He can only be fired by the president. Congress's has the option to defund his office, but that would have the effect of weakening the oversight of contracts in Afghanistan further.

Fields is seeking a budget of $35.6 million in 2011 and wants to hire about 60 more employees to better track reconstruction spending in Afghanistan.

The United States has committed $51 billion to Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001, and that endowment will reach $71 billion by the end of 2011, according to the AP.

Ever since President Barack Obama took office, his administration has refused to sell military equipment to Georgia. In a newly released WikiLeaks cable, the U.S. ambassador to Russia made the argument that U.S. military support to Georgia is unwise because it would upset the U.S.-Russian "reset."

"A decision to move towards a more robust military relationship with Georgia will imperil our efforts to re-start relations with Russia," read a June 2009 cable signed by U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle. "Our assessment is that if we say ‘yes' to a significant military relationship with Tbilisi, Russia will say ‘no' to any medium-term diminution in tensions, and feel less constrained absent reverting to more active opposition to critical U.S. strategic interests."

The U.S.-Russia reset policy is not as important to Russia as its "absolute" priority of expanding its influence in Eurasia, Beyrle wrote. He said that sending military supplies to Georgia would cause Russia to backtrack on other areas of U.S.-Russia cooperation, including joint action to pressure Iran.

Besides, the Russians don't think that the United States possesses the power to force a resolution to the situation in the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia has occupied since the end of the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, Beyrle explained in the leaked cable.

The Obama administration hasn't actually set forth a policy banning weapons sales to Georgia. They simply haven't sold weapons to Georgia and don't plan on doing so. That de facto ban on arms sales has riled some in Washington, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar (R-IN).

"The United States, under substantial Russian diplomatic pressure, has paused the transfer of lethal military articles to Georgia, and no U.S. assistance since the war has been directly provided to the Georgian Ministry of Defense," Lugar's staff wrote in a December 2009 report. "Consequently, Georgia lacks basic capacity for territorial defense."

Contradicting Lugar, the Beyrle cable argues that arms sales would actually be harmful for Georgian national security, because it increases the likelihood of sparking another war that Georgia would surely lose.

"From our vantage point, a burgeoning military supply relationship with Georgia is more of a liability for Georgia than a benefit," Beyrle wrote. "We recognize that our suggested approach would be deeply dissatisfying to Saakashvili, but we see ... no way to neutralize the advantages of geography, size, and capabilities enjoyed by Russia."

Samual Charap, associate director for the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center of for American Progress, agreed. "Instead of the argument of whether we can fulfill this desire of the Georgian government, we have to step back and say ‘what is the U.S. interest here,'" he said. "There's no such thing as a military balance or a military deterrent in this case."

More broadly, Charap and top administration officials argue that the reset policy with Russia is actually good for Georgia, even if it means that the United States won't sell it weapons.

"I guess the question is: Is Georgia and is the rest of Europe more secure today than they were -- than Europe was when we first got here? And I think our answer is yes," Michael McFaul, senior director for Russia at the National Security Council, said in June.

"The reset protects Georgia because Russia now has a whole lot more to lose," added Charap. "Before, nobody in Moscow was going to think ‘what will they think in Washington,' because they didn't care. Now they care."

Other experts said that while the Beyrle cable reflects just one man's opinion, it fits into a broader pattern of an Obama administration that has ignored Georgia and other parts of central Asia due to a focus on improving U.S.-Russian ties.

"Having a reset policy is fine, but what the administration has not done is create a simultaneous comprehensive policy for the central Asian states," said Alexandros Petersen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.  "Right now 100 percent of our Georgia policy is about Russia, where it should be about 25 percent."

Petersen agreed that selling arms to Georgia is not a panacea, but should be combined with other types of assistance, including civil institution building, which is mentioned in Beyrle's cable.

"The Georgians love banging the table and saying give us lots of arms, but they are just as myopic as this cable was," Petersen said. "If you're going to do arms sales, you have to do 10 other things relating to bolstering Georgia."

The cable, by alluding to Russian corruption and heavy handedness in the disputed territories, fits into the larger picture of State Department reporting, as revealed by WikiLeaks, which privately emphasizes Russian misbehavior in Georgia. These cables, including reports on Russian military and intelligence attacks inside Georgia dating back to 2004, go well beyond what U.S. diplomats commented on in public.

Although Beyrle's cable does not represent U.S. official policy, some experts see a White House keen to adopt its candid recommendations.

"As the U.S. ambassador to Russia, naturally he is going to a focus on a better relationship with Russia, so you can't say this necessarily this trickles up to the Obama administration's policy," said Petersen. "But a senior official at State is clearly saying we should throw Georgia under the bus."

U.S. diplomats collecting personal information on foreign officials is neither new nor unusual, multiple State Department officials told The Cable, in response to the release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic messages by the self-described whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

One of the most discussed of the more than 200 diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has released from its reported cache of over 250,000 is a July 31, 2009 cable sent from Washington to several diplomatic missions entitled, "Reporting and collection needs: The United Nations." Classified as SECRET by Michael Owens, the State Department's acting director for operations at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the cable outlines a long list of personal information the U.S. intelligence community wanted U.S. diplomats to collect about U.N. and foreign officials, including cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, internet "handles," passwords, credit card account numbers, and frequent flyer account numbers.

The new National HUMINT Collection Directive was only one of several that asked U.S. diplomats to collect human intelligence around the world, has been roundly portrayed in domestic and foreign media as directing diplomats to act as intelligence assets. The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper's article was entitled, "US diplomats spied on UN leadership." The New York Times said that the cables "appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies."

But in an interview with The Cable on Sunday evening, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that these activities did not mean that U.S. diplomats were being asked to act as intelligence assets.

"Our diplomats are just that, diplomats," Crowley said. "They represent our country around the world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of foreign governments and civil society. Through this process, they collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years."

Another State Department senior official objected to the contention that these directives came from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that they are marked as being from "SECSTATE." Germany's Der Spiegel, in their write up of the State Department cables, called them "Orders from Clinton."

"The long-standing practice at the State Department is to include the secretary's name at the end of every cable sent from Washington," Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy told The Cable. "This practice has not included that the secretary review or approve the hundreds of thousands of cables sent each year."

But the leaked directives to U.S. diplomats to report about foreign officials are causing considerable angst inside the State Department, where many officials believe that the nature of the communiqués are being misreported and misinterpreted.

"What this cable represents is an annual wish list from intelligence managers that just highlights for the U.S. government issues of particular interest and just asks if they come across any of these areas in the course of their normal duties that they report it through appropriate channels," one State Department official told The Cable on background basis.

"Overseas, it's being misconstrued that the Secretary of State is tasking diplomats to do intelligence duties, and that's not the case," the official said.

At their Foggy Bottom headquarters, State has set up an internal working group that is working in shifts around the clock, "monitoring the situation and supporting our senior staff and embassies around the world," the official said. "We follow the same process whenever a major event occurs."

Specifically, the cables show that U.S. diplomats in New York were asked to collect Biographic and biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats. Separate cables disclosed on Sunday show that U.S. diplomats overseas were asked for specific reporting on officials from the Palestinian territories, Paraguay, Bulgaria, and Africa's Great Lakes region.  

The State Department officials emphasized to The Cable the distinction between diplomats who collect information as part of a wide range of duties and intelligence personnel, who have a singular and specific mission. The official also argued that other countries do the same thing and that the intelligence gathered by U.S. diplomats also benefits Washington's allies.

"Information collection is something that diplomats of every country do every day. These areas of particular interest, they're not just ours," the official said. "This is information that's of use to us, and to our allies and friends with whom we're trying to solve regional and global challenges."

"We're not asking our diplomats to do anything substantially different from what they've been doing for eons," the official continued. "Every diplomat and mission around the world is doing the same thing."

10 incoming GOP senators wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today to demand the right to vote on the New START treaty with Russia. Senator-elect Mark Kirk (R-IL) didn't sign that letter, but his staff told The Cable that he hasn't decided how he will vote yet and won't decide until he receives several specific things from the Obama administration.

Kirk is a key vote, and not just because he is a moderate GOP lawmaker with decades of military and foreign policy experience. Kirk will fill the seat being vacated by appointee Roland Burris, which means he will be seated this year, probably shortly after the Thanksgiving break. So if somehow the administration is able to secure a vote on New START this year, Kirk will be one of three brand-new senators who will vote on the pact, along with Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Chris Coons (D-DE). Among them, Kirk is the only Republican taking over for a departing Democrat.

"The Senator-elect wants to carefully review all available information before making a decision on this matter," Kirk spokesman Lance Trover told The Cable Thursday.

An aide to Kirk explained to The Cable  that Kirk is asking for multiple pieces of information before he makes up his mind:  copies of the complete negotiating record of the treaty; documents related to a parallel discussion on U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperation conducted by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher and her Russian counterpart deputy foreign minister Sergei Rybakov; classified briefings on the reliability of America's nuclear warheads from the directors of the Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories; U.S. Strategic Command's written analysis prepared to support the treaty negotiations; planning documents showing the administration' commitment to modernize the three legs of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; and formal briefings from the Departments of State, Defense, and Energy.

That's a lot of data for the administration to pull together for Kirk before the end of the year. The administration has so far refused to provide senators with the full negotiating record or the inside details of the Tauscher-Rybakov discussions, so that could also be a stumbling block in the effort to win Kirk's vote.

On a conference call Thursday afternoon, The Cable asked Ben Chang, deputy spokesman for the National Security Staff, if the administration would entertain the idea of handing over the full negotiating record for New START.

Chang wouldn't say. But he reiterated that " there is time on the Senate calendar to get the treaty ratified this year and we are committed to do so."

So what about the other two new senators who will be seated during the lame duck? We haven't been able to get a response from Coons on his position, but Manchin spokesperson Lara Ramsburg told The Cable that "Joe Manchin's governing philosophy on defense policy will be to listen to our commanders and generals on the ground, and before he can cast a vote for or against START II, he will need to assess their recommendations." We're still trying to figure out just what that means, considering that every military leader from Defense Secretary Robert Gates on down has voiced strong support.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama continues to pledge to push for a treaty vote this year and has tasked Vice President Joseph Biden to work on it "day and night."

"It is a national security imperative that the United States ratify the New START treaty this year," Obama said Thursday. "There is no higher national security priority for the lame duck session of Congress. The stakes for American national security are clear, and they are high."

The incoming head of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) said that he will use his new perch to push for increases in defense spending -- beyond what the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are calling for.

McKeon, speaking at a policy conference organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative think tank, said that while he supports Gates' drive to find $100 billion in efficiencies within the defense budget, he is worried that, once the defense secretary identifies possible cuts, deficit-minded officials and lawmakers will seek to take that money away from the Pentagon.

"I am extremely concerned that no matter what the intentions of Secretary Gates may be, the administration and some in Congress will not allow the secretary to keep the savings identified in his efficiencies initiative," McKeon said. "Sustaining growth for the Department of Defense requires leadership from the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. Once savings from this efficiencies initiative are identified, what's to stop them from taking this money, too?"

In fact, the two co-chairs of the president's Debt Commission proposed last week to divert this money away from the defense budget. They said the $100 billion Gates is looking to save should be applied directly to the deficit, and also proposed other drastic cuts in defense programs and entitlements as part of the overall effort to solve the nation's fiscal problems.

As far as Gates is concerned, his cost-saving measures are not meant to enable overall cuts in the defense budget. He is seeking to protect 1 percent real growth in the budget, which has more than doubled -- from just over $300 billion in 2001 to almost $700 billion for fiscal 2010 -- when the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are taken into account.

But McKeon said that even 1 percent real growth going forward is not good enough.

"One percent real growth in the defense budget over the next five years is a net cut for investment and procurement accounts. A defense budget in decline portends an America in decline.  It will undermine our ability to project power, strengthen our adversaries and weaken our alliances," McKeon said.

He pointed to the report of an independent panel created by Congress to respond to Gates' Quadrennial Defense Review led by former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Defense Secretary William Perry to support his argument. That panel recommended significant new investments in naval power and ever increasing defense budgets in the future.

"Let me put this in the simplest terms possible: cutting defense spending amidst two wars is a red line for me and should be a red line for all Americans," McKeon said.

In a roundtable discussion with reporters following his remarks, McKeon said he did not expect the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill, which is now before the Senate, to be passed this year.

"For the first time in 40 years, we may not have a defense authorization bill passed," he said. "We need to get it done before the appropriations bill gets done so we can maintain relevance."

He also maintained his opposition to including a measure in the defense bill that would repeal the ban on gays serving openly in the military, which is currently supported by the Democratic leadership.

"Whether it be the hate crimes legislation, immigration, or don't ask don't tell, the defense bill has been used as a vehicle to divide instead of unite the Congress," McKeon said. "This must end today."

The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released its proposal Wednesday to slash $200 billion from the federal budget by 2015, including $100 billion in cuts to the defense budget.

"We have a patriotic duty to come together on a plan that will make America better off tomorrow than it is today," wrote the co-chairs, former GOP Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, in their draft proposal. "America cannot be great if we go broke. Our economy will not grow and our country will not be able to compete without a plan to get this crushing debt burden off our back."

$100 billion is exactly the amount Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed in August to save through cost-cutting initiatives over the next five years. But Gates' proposal is meant to incentivize services to find savings by letting them "keep what they catch," and was actually a move to defend the administration's call for ongoing 1 percent real growth in the defense budget going forward.

Simpson and Bowles want that $100 billion to be applied directly to deficit reduction, which they calculate would save $28 billion in 2015. But they don't stop there. The heads of the commission also proposed freezing military pay for three years, reducing procurement by 15 percent, reducing overseas basing personnel by one third, doubling Gates' promise to cut contractors by 10 percent, reducing research funding by 10 percent, and modernizing the military's healthcare system known as Tricare, the costs of which have been spiraling out of control.

In their "illustrative list" of proposed defense cuts, the commission co-chairs identified a host of Pentagon programs that they feel should be scaled back or eliminated. They recommended ending procurement of the V-22 Osprey, cancelling the Marines Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and its version of the F-35 fighter, replacing half of the planned Navy F-35 fighters with F-16s and F18s, cancelling the Navy's "sea-basing" plan, and scuttling the Army's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), Ground Combat Vehicle, and Joint Tactical Radio.

Wired journalist Spencer Ackerman points out that this is just one more salvo in the ongoing battle over whether it's time to start cutting the defense budget in order to address the nation's deteriorating fiscal situation.

"None of this is binding. It'll take the support of 14 out of 18 commission members to even get Congress to consider Simpson and Bowles' proposals, something congressional leaders have pledged to do. The full commission has until December 1 to vote on the plan, and as David Kurtz writes, the commissioners don't seem pleased with what Simpson and Bowles are offering," Ackerman writes. "Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called the national debt the single greatest threat to national security. Now to see what resistance develops to Bowles and Simpson's effort at confronting it."

Nevertheless, those in the defense community who have been calling for cuts, such as the members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, are praising the recommendations as a step in the right direction.

"Even though this appears to be a good start, the devil in the details," said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. "For example, the cuts may double-count to some extent by claiming Gates' proposed saving as a subtraction from currently proposed deficits. Still, defense is cut close to its proportion of spending - which is a good place to start."

The White House is trying to stay out of the fray, for now.

"The president will wait until the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work before commenting," White House spokesperson Bill Burton said in a statement. "He respects the challenging task that the co-chairs and the commissioners are undertaking and wants to give them space to work on it. These ideas, however, are only a step in the process towards coming up with a set of recommendations and the President looks forward to reviewing their final product early next month."

Twenty-nine leading human rights organizations wrote to President Obama on Friday to express their disappointment with his decision last week to waive sanctions against four countries the State Department has identified as using child soldiers.

The human rights and child advocacy community was not consulted before the White House announced its decision on Oct. 25 to waive penalties under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, which was supposed to go into effect last month, for violators Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen. The NGO leaders, along with officials on Capitol Hill, also expressed their unhappiness about the announcement, and their exclusion from the decision making process, in an Oct. 29 conference call with senior administration officials. Today, they backed up their complaints in writing and called on the administration to mitigate the consequences.

"We believe that your waiver undermines the intent of the law and sends an unfortunate message that the administration is not seriously committed to ending the use of child soldiers," the groups wrote to Obama. "By giving a blanket waiver, the administration has also given up the significant leverage that the law provides to influence the child recruitment practices of its military allies."

A secret administration justification memo spelled out the reasons that the White House ultimately decided to forgo the sanctions for each country, explaining why cooperation with these troubled militaries was in the U.S. national interest. But critics countered that these interests could have been maintained without gutting the law.

"We recognize that the United States has a complex set of national interests in each of these countries, including for example, counter-terrorism concerns in Yemen," they wrote. "However, the administration could have accommodated these concerns while also showing that it was taking the Child Soldiers Prevention Act seriously and using its leverage strategically to effectively end the use of child soldiers."

In the administration's  conference call reported first on The Cable , the National Security Council senior director Samantha Power argued that staying engaged with these militaries while "naming and shaming" them was actually the most effective way to make progress on the child soldiers issue.

In their letter, the human rights groups rejected that argument. "This approach has been ineffective thus far," they noted. "Continuing existing programs -- as the U.S. has done for years -- without other changes in the approach is unlikely to yield change."

The groups had some specific recommendations for how the administration could mitigate the damage caused by waiving the sanctions. They want the administration to establish benchmarks to gauge whether these troubled militaries are actually making progress on demobilizing child soldiers, publicly commit to not transfer lethal materials to these armies, and start engaging the NGO community and congressional offices about these issues in an organized and transparent manner.

Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, said the groups are also preparing some specific recommendations for the administration for each of the four countries.

So is the White House dealing well with the NGO groups involved, following last week's botched roll out? "They're certainly paying attention to this issue now," said Becker. "They say this is a priority and we would like to take them at their word."

The letter was signed by the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, the African Faith & Justice Network, the American Federation of Teachers, Amnesty International USA, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Caring for Kaela, Child Protection International, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, the 3D Security Initiative, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Foreign Policy in Focus , the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Human Rights First, Human Rights Program, the University of Minnesota, Human Rights Watch, the International Labor Rights Forum, International Justice Mission, Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice, National Consumers League, the Open Society Policy Center, Oxfam America, Pax Christi USA, Physicians for Human Rights, Presbyterian Church USA, the Ramsay Merriam Fund, Refugees International, Resolve, the United Methodist Church, and the General Board of Church & Society.

The White House spent an hour Friday afternoon trying to convince angry Hill staffers and human rights activists that "naming and shaming" governments that recruit child soldiers, rather than imposing Congressionally-mandated sanctions on them, will better address the problem. But advocacy leaders are upset with the administration and rejected top White House officials' contention that removing sanctions against four troubled states will be a positive move.

The White House began a conference call on the issue Friday afternoon by apologizing to the NGO and Hill community for the decision's botched rollout, which was announced only through a short official presidential memorandum on Monday and then reported on by The Cable on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The call was off the record and not for press purposes, but a recording was made available to The Cable.

"This is a call that should have happened before you read about the administration's child soldiers' posture in the newspaper," said Samantha Power, the National Security Council's senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights. "Given the way you all heard about the implementation of the statute, I can understand why some of the reactions that you had were prevalent."

Power defended the president's decision to waive penalties under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, which was set to go into effect this month, for Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Yemen. She argued that identifying these countries as violators while giving them one more year to stop recruiting underage troops would help make progress.

"Our judgment was brand them, name them, shame them, and then try to leverage assistance in a fashion to make this work," said Power, adding that this was the first year the Obama administration had to make a decision on this issue, so they want to give the violator countries one more year to show progress.

"In year one to just say we're out of here, best of luck, we wish you well... Our judgment is we'll work from inside the tent."

But Hill staffers and advocacy leaders on the call weren't buying what Power was selling. They were upset that they learned about the decision via The Cable, and challenged Power on each point that she made.

For example, Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, pointed out that the law was passed two years ago.

"The law was enacted in 2008, so countries have had two years to know that this was coming down the pike," she said. "So the consequences of the law really shouldn't be taking anyone by surprise, so to say countries need a year to get their act together is really problematic."

She also disputed Power's contention on the call that "there's evidence that our diplomatic engagement and this military assistance has resulted in some changes."

"The U.S. has been providing training for years already with no real change on the ground," said Becker. "We haven't seen significant changes in practice so far from the engagement approach, so that seems to indicate to me we need to change the approach, maybe withholding programs until we see changes on the ground."

"I think the logic of engagement is something reasonable people can disagree on," Power responded. "There's probably empirical evidence on both sides."

Advocates on the call did acknowledge Chad's efforts on child soldier demobilization, but lamented that little or no progress has been seen in the DRC or with South Sudan's Southern People's Liberation Army (SPLA). But they wanted to know: If the administration believes that the threat of the sanctions has caused progress, then how does removing that threat keep the pressure on?

"Why remove that leverage now when we've seen it's been so valuable?" asked Scott Stedjan, senior policy advisor at Oxfam America

Jesse Eaves, policy advisor for children in crisis at World Vision, was one of several on the call to wonder why the administration decided to waive all sanctions, rather than using a part of the law that allows the continuation of military assistance to violator countries, along as that assistance goes toward military professionalization.

"Naming and shaming has not worked," he said. "You can give support under the law. Much of the aid that's even discussed in the justification memo that many of us have seen can still be given to these countries if they show a reasonable attempt to demobilize child soldiers."

Overall, Power wanted to point out that the administration is still intent on fighting the use of child soldiers and that waiving the sanctions doesn't mean that all pressures will stop. She promised that if these countries don't shape up, the administration will take a tougher line when reevaluating the sanctions next year.

Power repeatedly attempted to argue that the attention over the president's decision to waive sanctions was exactly the kind of public pressure needed to spur violator governments to change. However, her argument was complicated by the fact that the administration failed to tell anyone about the decision and announced it with no rollout or explanation whatsoever.

"I do think there's something different between what happened in 2008 [when the law passed] versus actually being named this week," she said. "And we're already seeing out in the field via our embassies a huge amount of discomfort and angst on the part of those countries about being branded in this way."

Power said at the end of the call that the administration plans to capitalize on the fallout from its decision. She said that the administration planned on "[u]sing the attention from this moment and the leverage of having abstained from having put the sanctions in effect right now and saying... ‘You're not going to get so lucky next time if we don't see some progress.'"

Overall, the call showed that the White House realized it botched the rollout of the decision but is standing by the decision itself. Next, they will have to defend it on Capitol Hill, where staffers are set to receive a special briefing on the issue next week.

"I think it's unfortunate that the NGO community and those in Congress who wrote the law were not involved in its implementation," said Kody Kness, an aide to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), one of the lead sponsors of the law. "I think that's a missed opportunity."

The Obama administration quietly waived a key section of the law meant to combat the use of child soldiers for four toubled states on Monday, over the objections the State Department's democracy and human rights officials. Today, the White House tells The Cable that they intend to give these countries -- all of whose armed forces use underage troops -- one more year to improve before bringing any penalties to bear.

The NGO community was shocked by the announcement, reported Tuesday by The Cable, that President Obama authorized exemptions from all penalties set to go into effect this year under the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2008. The countries that received waivers were Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen.

The failure of the administration to consult or even warn those groups that had worked hard to pass the law caused unease and concern around the advocacy community Tuesday. Child protection advocates worried that the administration was abandoning the tactic of threatening to cut off military assistance as a means to pressure abusive regimes to stop forcibly recruiting troops under the age of 18.

"This took us totally by surprise and was a complete shock to people who are working in the field," said Jesse Eaves, policy advisor for children in crisis at World Vision, a children-focused humanitarian organization.

On Tuesday evening, a White House official explained to The Cable the reasons for the decision and the details of what it means for U.S. activity in the affected countries. Essentially, the administration decided that it could not ensure that the offending countries would be able to abide by the law in time -- the breach of which would have required Washington to pull funding. In the end, the administration's calculus weighed in favor of continuing to fund several ongoing assistance programs like military training and counterterrorism advising. They decided to give each country at least one more year to implement reforms before sanctions are brought to bear, according to the official.

"This is the first year that sanctions were to take effect and part of our thinking here has been to put countries on notice of these legal provisions that are taking effect for the first time and that progress is going to have to be made on these things if these countries are going to continue to receive assistance," the White House official said.

The official also noted that the Obama administration was keen to preserve their relationships with the governments in question and argued that engaging troubled militaries was the most effective way to encourage the reform the law was designed to bring about.

"We still think it's important to maintain a solid relationship with the governments there to ensure they provide protection to those folks," the official said. "One rationale for continuing the assistance is to help them address the very problem that is the source of the sanctions."

Inside the administration, however, The Cable has learned that there was a heated debate over whether to issue the waivers. Apparently, this debate was held inside the State Department, with the bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons arguing against blanket exemptions. The bureau of Political and Military Affairs (PM) argued for the exemptions. The PM bureau's argument won the day and the State Department submitted recommendations to the White House, which issued the waivers.

The 2008 Child Soldier Prevention Act was originally sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and wrapped into a larger bill sponsored by then Sen. Joe Biden. Durbin's office was not able to comment by deadline and Biden's office deferred to the White House.

Leading human rights activists involved in the issue were skeptical that letting abusive governments evade sanctions would have the effect of producing reform faster.

"This is the first year it's being enacted, so to waive everyone right out of the gate sends exactly the wrong message," said Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch. "By providing a blanket waiver, the U.S. is really giving up all of its leverage to force them to change their approach to using child soldiers."

She also criticized the official's contention that the abusive countries needed more time to become aware of the law, which was signed in December 2008. It became operative in June 2009 but couldn't go into effect until violator countries were identified in the State Department's 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, which came out in June.

"If the State Department was doing its job, governments would have been well aware two years ago that this process was underway," said Becker.

The 2010 Trafficking in Persons report identified six countries that are systematically employing the use of child soldiers. In addition to the four that Obama waived sanctions on, Burma and Somalia are also implicated. But neither of those countries receive U.S. military assistance that could be cut off as a sanction, according to the law. Therefore, Obama's waivers have the effect of preventing the law from imposing any sanctions at all this year.

The White House official said when the next State Department report comes out in June 2011, there will be another assessment of whether to impose penalties on violator countries. He also hastened to underline that the waivers weren't issued to pave the way for new military sales to any of the countries found to be using child soldiers.

In Chad, the U.S. is engaged in counterterrorism activities but also is working with the government's armed forces to deal with the spillover of refugees from the crisis over the Sudanese border in Darfur. In the DRC, the U.S. is providing training of various types, military advisors, and also military vehicles and spare parts to the Congolese army. Over 33,000 child soldiers have been involved in the decade old civil war there and the country leads the world in the use of underage troops, according to UNICEF.

With regard to Sudan, other sanctions prevent the United States from helping the Khartoum government in the North, but the U.S. is giving military training assistance to the Southern People's Liberation Army, which could end up a national army if the South votes to separate in the January referendum. The SPLA has about 1,200 child soldiers, the official said, adding that cutting off such training would only undermine ongoing reform efforts.

Yemen is a recipient of significant direct U.S. military assistance, having received $155 million in fiscal 2010 with a possible $1.2 billion coming over the next five years. Yemen is also a much needed ally for counterterrorism operations. The government is engaged in a bloody fight with al Qaeda (among other separatist and terrorist groups), and estimates put the ratio of child soldiers among all the groups there at more than half. Nevertheless, "the president believes there are profound equities with Yemen in terms of counterterrorism that we need to continue to work on," the official told The Cable.

Several outside experts pointed out the existing law already contains an exemption that would permit the U.S. government to sanction abuser countries while still providing assistance that "will directly support professionalization of the military."

"This exception gives the U.S. government very wide berth to continue to provide assistance to bring these militaries more in line with the American image of what their military should look like," said Rachel Stohl, Associate Fellow at the Washington office of Chatham House, a U.K.-based think tank. "The law allows for professionalization of these militaries, so these waivers are really disappointing and add insult to injury."

Meetings between Afghan leadership and Taliban figures are ongoing, but the two sides are nowhere near a peace deal and in fact are not even to the point of negotiating one, Special Representative Richard Holbrooke said Sunday.

"I think the press has left the impression that negotiations of the type which ultimately ended the war in Vietnam in 1973 and ultimately ended the war in Bosnia in 1995 are somehow breaking out. That is just not the case," he said on CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria show Sunday morning.

"What we've got here is an increasing number of Taliban at high levels saying, hey, we want to talk," Holbrooke explained. "I think this is a result, in large part, of the growing pressure they're under from General Petraeus and the ISAF command."

Holbrooke was adamant that -- whatever talks are taking place between the government of President Hamid Karzai and leaders of some of the insurgent groups -- it should not be called a "negotiation."

"I would not use that word," he said. "I know what a negotiation looks like... Let's not leave the viewers with the impression that some kind of secret negotiation like the famous secret negotiations on Vietnam, is taking place, because it's not."

Holbrooke warned that a peace agreement of the sort seen in past conflicts is unlikely because there is no titular head of the insurgency with whom to strike a deal.

"There's no Ho Chi Minh. There's no Slobodan Milosevic. There's no Palestinian Authority. There is a widely dispersed group of people that we roughly call the enemy," he said. "So the idea of peace talks, to use your phrase, or negotiations, to use another phrase, doesn't really add up to the way this thing is going to evolve."

Holbrooke said he had no personal information that the Pakistani military or intelligence services have been trying to thwart rapprochement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, as the New York Times has reported. He refused to publicly call for the Pakistani military to increase its effort against terrorist groups in North Waziristan, saying that Pakistan knew the Obama administration's position on the issue.

"I'm not here to defend the Pakistani military or to attack them," he said.

Overall, Holbrooke's take on the progress of the war effort was cautious, if not entirely bleak.

"It's certainly not another Vietnam, for reasons you and I discussed before. And it is certainly not hopeless. But anyone who doesn't recognize what a daunting task it is, is misleading," he said. "And the American public should understand that this is not going to be solved overnight. It is going to be a difficult struggle."

Holbrooke was not asked about the stunning admission by Karzai that his office received bags full of cash from Iran. Holbrooke did attend a meeting last week in Rome with dozens of Special Representatives from various countries dealing with the Afghan war where the Iranian government was also represented.

In a 2008 episode of the British satire show Bremner, Bird and Fortune, a fictional news reporter interviews the fictional Admiral Sir George Parr about the strange trajectory of the British Navy.

Talking about the British Navy's real-life plan to build two new aircraft carriers, Admiral Parr struggled to explain why the constrained British defense budget should be spent on such big-ticket items like aircraft carriers, and what the new carriers would be used for.

"An aircraft carrier, as its name implies, carries aircraft," Parr said, "But at the moment we can afford to have the carrier or the aircraft but not both... I'm sure we'll find a way around it."

Skip ahead to today, where British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced the results of his government's "Strategic Defense and Security Review," which will immediately decommission the Royal Navy's flagship carrier, the HMS Ark Royal, in anticipation of the two new carriers that are being built. But now, they won't be ready until 2020, at the earliest, leaving only one carrier in operation until then.

As part of sweeping British defense cuts, Cameron's government also announced the immediate withdrawal from service of the Nimrod MRA4 maritime reconnaissance jet fleet and the Harrier fighter jet fleet, the latter plane making up a large part of the carriers' current armament.

Axing the Harrier and Ark Royal means that no planes will be able to fly from British aircraft carriers until 2019, according to the BBC's analysis.

The new carriers must now await delivery of the American-made Joint Strike Fighter, which faces production delays and cost overruns that have raised concerns with allies that have ordered them. The Brits decided further that they no longer want the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) version of the JSF, which is more complicated and more expensive to build, placing more of the development costs back on the shoulders of the U.S. taxpayer.

The decisions have caused significant angst inside the U.S. Air Force, both because the British are drastically reducing their naval strength for the next decade or so, and because cutting their airlift fleet could put more responsibility on the shoulders of the Americans, who are already compensating for British airlift shortfalls in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The question is, how can they operate as a credible ally and partner if they can't project power very well," said Douglas Birkey, director of government relations at the Air Force Association, the industry group that represents the Air Force. "Considering their allies are also taking cuts, including the U.S., buffers from allies aren't going to be there as much as they go along."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made that point explicit during remarks last weekend in Brussels, in anticipation of the cuts.

"We must guard against the hollowing out of alliance military capability by spending reductions that cut too far into muscle. My worry is that the more our allies cut their capabilities, the more people will look to the United States," he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also in Brussels, said that the plan worries her.

"I think we do have to have an alliance where there is a commitment to the common defense. NATO has been the most successful alliance for defensive purposes in the history of the world I guess but it has to be maintained. Now, each country has to be able to make its appropriate contributions," she said.

With less ability to project power from the sea, the British defense decisions seem tailored to focus military strength on ground-based conflicts, or those that can be fought from bases on the ground.

"It tailors their operations to things that look a lot like Iraq and Afghanistan, which is fine as long as the future threat environment matches that paradigm," said Birkey. "But the only thing we know about the future is that it's going to be unpredictable."

When asked whether the new aircraft carriers themselves might be even further delayed, Admiral Parr said it was "very likely indeed."

"But then, this is Britain," he said.

If there's one thing that the liberals and libertarians can agree on, it's the need for large cuts in defense spending in order to reduce the U.S. budget defecit.

55 lawmakers sent a letter Wednesday to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, widely known as the Debt Commission, urging them to include in their final report "substantial reductions in projected levels of future spending by the Department of Defense." The letter was signed by leading liberal representatives such as Barney Frank (D-MA) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), but also many Democrats involved in national security matters such as Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and House Oversight and Government Reform National Security subcommittee chairman John Tierney (D-MA).

The lone Republican to sign the letter was libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). But the libertarian Cato Institute has also campaigned aggressively in support of the movement.

"We hope that the report you release this coming December will subject military spending to the same rigorous scrutiny that non-military spending will receive, and that in so doing a consensus will be reached that significant cuts are necessary and can be made in a way that will not endanger national security," the lawmakers wrote.

On a conference call, Frank and Cato experts argued that their longstanding call for a revision of the U.S. military role in the world is more necessary than ever due to the United States' fiscal woes, particularly as political leaders search for ways to limit cuts to entitlements.

"I've been a critic for some time of America's excessive military engagement with the rest of the world," said Frank. "We have a changed situation... it is clear that we have to do something to reduce our deficit.

Cato's Benjamin Friedman argued on the call that the recent aggressive conservative efforts to defend ever-increasing defense budgets was a recognition of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party's increasing momentum in support of trimming military spending.

"Conservatives are starting to figure out that trying to run the world is not conservative," Friedman said.

Friedman participated in a bipartisan report, published in June, which spelled out exactly how $1 trillion of savings could be found in the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years by scaling back military arsenals, large weapons systems, and permanent overseas troop deployments.

Frank and Friedman both acknowledged that the issue of defense spending is highly polarized and that, politically, implementing defense budget cuts would be extremely difficult, especially in Congress. But they are nevertheless laying down a marker by going on record that there are at least 55 votes in Congress in support of such moves.

"What we are saying is that there will be a number of us that will be very unhappy if defense cuts are not part of the tradeoffs," Frank said.