The Washington Post reports today that the Defense Department is cooking up a communications strategy to push back against calls for more reductions in military spending in anticipation of the battle over budget cuts in Washington.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has already been quite vocal, saying — without offering any evidence — that the $600 billion cuts in national security spending that would result if the debt ceiling deal’s so-called trigger mechanism takes effect would be a “doomsday mechanism,” “dangerous,” and “devastating.”

The Post reports that according to internal memos, the Pentagon will rely on a similar strategy but also offer some specifics, namely that the trigger scenario would result in “only enough force presence for two theaters and 1.5 major conflicts,” as well as “the smallest Navy fleet since 1915.” But as the Post notes, this simply isn’t true:

Both claims are highly misleading, if not downright false. In its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon concluded that it no longer made strategic sense to prepare to fight two major conventional wars at the same time, but rather to plan for a variety of conflicts of different sizes.

And the Navy, with 285 ships and submarines on active duty, has already shrunk almost to its smallest fleet size since World War I (the nadir came in 2007, when it had 278 ships on active duty). It’s still exponentially bigger and more powerful, by any measure, than any other naval force in the world.

A Pentagon official even admitted that the talking points are bogus, saying they are only a draft and “very rough.” “They’re not accurate,” he acknowledged. “We didn’t think we could responsibly say that.”

Indeed, as CAP’s Larry Korb pointed out, far from a “doomsday” scenario, even if the defense budget were reduced by $1 trillion over the next 10 years, that would “allow the Pentagon to spend at its 2007 level for the next decade.”

A report from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Iran’s nuclear program remains largely under verifiable safeguards, but concerns linger about the possible diversion of nuclear material and “military dimensions” of the program. “[The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)] is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities,” said a copy of the report obtained by ThinkProgress.

The IAEA said that all of Iran’s declared nuclear sites are under IAEA inspection and diversion of materials would be detected, but questions about potential undeclared sites remain. Chiding Iran for not answering questions, its long-standing failure to adhere to U.N. Security Council demands to halt enrichment and heavy water work, and not implementing the Additional Protocols of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran withdrew from the protocols in 2005), the nuclear agency expressed concern about possible “military dimensions” of Iran’s program:

In particular, the Agency is increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency continues to receive new information. Examples of these activities were listed in the previous report. The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues is extensive and comprehensive and has been acquired both from many Member States and through its own efforts. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organisations involved.

The IAEA released the report to the U.N. Security Council and its the 35 member states.

Our guest bloggers are Larry Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Alex Rothman, special assistant with the national security and international policy team at CAP.

Protecting U.S. national security interests in the 21st century will require the integrated application of all the tools of American power – military, diplomatic, intelligence, development, and homeland defense. As illustrated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while American troops are the best in the world, overseas operations remain incredibly costly in both blood and treasure. New challenges, such as the Arab Spring, the transitions in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing states, and instability in Sub-Saharan Africa, will require a more integrated and comprehensive approach to securing America.

An Aug. 31 event at the Center for American Progress brought together Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides, former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Verma, and national security experts Lawrence J. Korb and Miriam Pemberton — principal authors of the recent report A Unified Security Budget for the United States — to discuss the merits of a unified security budget, a smarter way of funding U.S. national security.

The discussion centered on re-balancing the distribution of resources between the U.S.’s offensive, defense, and preventative capabilities. This coming year, in fiscal year 2012, the total defense budget will near $700 billion. While these funds are labeled as “defense spending,” DoD’s budget largely goes towards supporting the U.S.’s offensive capabilities — covering weapons procurement, personnel costs for our troops, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the United States’ defensive (homeland security) and preventative (non-military international engagement) programs, run by Departments of Homeland Security and State respectively, are funded at a fraction of our military budget and could be at risk of receiving further cuts in the wake of the debt ceiling agreement.

Twenty percent of the overall federal budget goes towards funding the Department of Defense. By comparison, the State department and USAID receive just 1 percent of the federal budget. Yet despite this tremendous imbalance in funding, development, foreign aid, and humanitarian assistance programs are often first on the chopping block.

As a result, in the decade since 9/11, the Defense Department has grown exponentially while State and USAID have seen their budgets slashed repeatedly. This artificial division between diplomacy and military force weakens U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps the gravest example: as the U.S. military withdraws from Iraq this year, the State department will greatly step up its presence in the country in order to ensure continued stability. Yet in June, the House Appropriations Committee cut the State department and foreign operations base budget by 18 percent, at a time when these departments will assume primary responsibility for ensuring that the U.S.’s military gains in Iraq are not lost. By comparison, the committee approved a 3 percent increase to DOD’s budget.

Protecting America in the 21st century will require a more holistic view of U.S. national security. Since 2004, the Task Force for a Unified Security Budget, has argued that combining the budgets of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and State as well as funding for U.S. intelligence agencies into one unified security budget would demilitarize American foreign policy while helping policymakers best leverage U.S. power to protect American interests.

To get our fiscal house in order, the United States must begin to deal with the massive federal deficit. But in the words of Deputy Secretary Nides, “avoiding crises where we need to put boots on the ground through diplomacy saves us an incredible amount of money.” It would be counterproductive for policymakers to slash our diplomatic and foreign assistance accounts at a time when we need them more than ever.