Obama likely to maintain military spending

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speaks to a National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) conference in Washington, June 28, 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic candidate Barack Obama is unlikely to make any quick cuts in defense spending as president despite pledging to rely less on military power than George W. Bush, an adviser to the Illinois senator said on Monday.

"It's hard to see how we could spend less on the military in the near term," Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary who advises Obama on national security, told Reuters in an interview.

Danzig said cuts would be hard to make due to the costs of Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq and of repairing and replacing equipment from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said current Pentagon budget projections also appeared to underestimate the cost of new weapons programs.

Bush has submitted a budget of more than $500 billion for the Pentagon for the next fiscal year, which begins in October. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost some $160 billion a year on top of that.

U.S. military spending made up about 45 percent of the world total in 2007, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks defense budgets.

Despite maintaining funding levels of the world's only military superpower, Danzig said Obama wanted to see a bigger role for the State Department and other agencies that could further U.S. foreign policy goals peacefully.

"There's been a tendency in this administration to militarize national security, to use the military as the mode of response that addresses all problems," Danzig said by telephone from his home in Washington.

"If we're spending more than $600 billion on military kinds of activities, we probably spend less than $40 billion on these other elements of national power and that's just a disproportion that needs to be addressed," said Danzig.

IRAQ WITHDRAWAL

Danzig said Obama was committed to withdrawing all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months but indicated some room for maneuver based on advice from military commanders.

"He's outlined a goal," Danzig said. "But... he certainly is going to listen to his combat commanders about how to effect that and be attentive to what the realities are on the ground."

Iraq is one of the main points of dispute between Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who broadly favors a continuation of Bush's policy of letting commanders decide on troop cuts.

Obama has also said he wants to send at least two more combat brigades -- the equivalent of between 6,000 and 10,000 soldiers -- to Afghanistan, where violence has climbed as the Taliban and al Qaeda regrouped.

He has accused Bush of neglecting the fight in Afghanistan to pursue an unnecessary war in Iraq.

The United States has 145,000 troops in Iraq and 32,000 in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon.

Danzig said he could not say precisely when more troops would go to Afghanistan under Obama but stated: "I don't see it as very far off, I think it's a priority."

The violent south of Afghanistan in particular needed a "more muscular U.S. presence," he said.

Danzig said Obama supported current efforts to build a missile defense system to protect the United States and its allies from attack by rogue nations. But he said the program would be subject to more careful scrutiny under Obama.

(Editing by Kristin Roberts and David Storey)