Under current law, the U.S. Department of Defense automatically faces significant spending cuts over the next 10 years—cuts that america's civilian and military leaders have cadidly described as "devastating" and "very high risk."

Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

Mackenzie Eaglen and Michael O'Hanlon explain the disastrous repercussions of defense sequestration. In particular, they highlight the fact that, unless Congress acts quickly, defense sequestration starts today -- not in 2013.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said if sequestration stands, "we wouldn't be the global power that we know ourselves to be today." He's right.

Either the Navy is retiring these ships too early or its lifecycle estimates are hopelessly optimistic. But service leaders cannot have it both ways. Similarly, the administration cannot realistically “pivot” to Asia—a region defined by the “tyranny of distance”—and cut the fleet at the same time.

If ever we need evidence of ideology run rampant, the House vote to eliminate the annual American Community Survey and the Economic Census to provide basic information on the state of businesses and industries in the country and data used for generating quarterly gross domestic product estimates is exhibit A.

President Obama’s budget cuts the U.S. military while asking those in uniform to accept more risk in their jobs and providing fewer resources to fulfill their missions. Congress should reject these proposals as going too far for too few and pass a budget resolution that adds additional resources to properly fund military readiness and modernization.

First, fix the bureaucracy, then the real debate over secretive U.S. military operations can begin.