AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter for a timely discussion of U.S. defense budgets, of the changing strategic landscape in the U.S. and the force that this landscape demands.

In the course of doing everything I could to turn things around first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, from the early months I ran up against institutional obstacles in the Pentagon--cultural, procedural, ideological--to getting done what needed to get done on behalf of those fighting the wars we are in.

If the Obama administration succeeds in its plans to cut defense further, that percentage will drop to 3 percent or lower--the lowest total in the whole of the post-World War II era. But first, members of Congress and the American taxpayer want answers from Leon Panetta.

At AEI on May 24, Secretary Gates will deliver one of his last Washington addresses as secretary of defense.

On Tuesday, May 15, join the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for a New American Security and the New America Foundation to discuss an issue sure to face the next president: U.S. defense spending in light of American grand strategy.

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."

America is nearing a decisive moment.  Unless Congress acts to change current law, automatic sequestration cuts will slash future spending on national defense across-the-board by over $500 billion beginning early next year.