In his effort to preserve lower tax rates for the wealthy, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is now trying to buy the votes of hawkish members of his party by moving to block any cuts to military spending in the next fiscal year.

The debate over the coming “fiscal cliff” has always included the threat of a a trillion dollars worth of automatic cuts known as “sequestration,” spread evenly between military and non-military spending over the next ten years. That balance is now threatened by Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ legislation, prepared in a bid to circumvent his talks with President Barack Obama on how to avoid the looming set of tax rate increases and spending cuts due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013:

Posted late Dec. 19 by the House Rules Committee, Boehner’s “Plan B” addition would require $19 billion in new discretionary spending cuts. It also would allow the president and the White House Office of Management and Budget to conduct a sequestration round if fiscal 2013 discretionary spending levels exceed specific limits, known as caps.

But the Boehner measure would prohibit the president from tapping the defense budget in 2013 to get under spending caps.

“Any sequestration order issued by the president … to carry out reductions to direct spending for the defense function (050) for fiscal year 2013 … shall have no force or effect,” states the legislation.

Since the ‘Supercommittee’ failed to agree to deficit reduction terms in Nov. 2011, protecting military spending has been a top priority of members of the Republican Party. House Armed Services Committee Chair Howard ‘Buck’ McKeon (R-CA) has been at the forefront of the effort, clamoring for months that any further cuts in military spending “will force us to pull back further from the world.” Meanwhile, as Congressional Republicans continue claiming to favor a reduction in government spending, the House and Senate are prepared to pass a military spending bill over $1.7 billion dollars above President Obama’s request.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen is going on the offensive once more, this time in pursuit of cuts to military spending.

Mullen, who has previously called the national debt the “most significant threat to our national security,” is heading the new Coalition for Fiscal and National Security along with several other foreign policy luminaries. The group, operating out of the Peter G Peterson Foundation, is seeking to influence the debate surrounding the fiscal cliff by lending their gravitas in support of military cuts that are currently unpopular on the Hill.

In one of their first acts, the Coalition has put out a full-page ad in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers today, calling attention to the lessened need for overwhelming superiority in military spending:

“In previous eras, increased defense spending may have been required to maintain security,” the group wrote in a joint statement. “That is no longer the case. In our judgment, advances in technological capabilities and the changing nature of threats make it possible, if properly done, to spend less on a more intelligent, efficient and contemporary defense strategy that maintains our military superiority and national security.”

Areas that the Coalition believes could be targeted for savings include pension, health-care, and procurement costs. That spending would then be channeled into facets of national security that are under-funded, such as diplomacy and international organizations. As a comparison, in Fiscal Year 2012 the Pentagon requested $553 billion in funding; the State Department requested a paltry $47 billion in comparison.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2011 the U.S. spends about as much on supporting its military as the next ten countries’ expenditures combined. Just last night, the Senate unanimously passed a $630 billion bill to fund the Pentagon, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons for FY 2013.

The Coalition’s recommendations echo several of those put forward by the Center for American Progress Task Force on a Unified Security Budget’s recently published report calling for balancing the U.S. security budget, including providing more funding to non-military areas of national security.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will debate foreign policy tonight. We’ve chronicled Romney’s foreign policy positions throughout the campaign here and below are five facts we think you should have on hand during tonight’s third and final presidential debate:

1. New reporting finds that protest against anti-Islam video played role in Benghazi attacks. Facts have been lost in the Republicans’ scramble to politicize the attacks in Libya last month that killed three Americans. It turns out that, according to the latest reports, there’s “no evidence” that the attack was ordered by al Qaeda and the attack grew out of a protest against a video disparaging the Prophet Mohammed.

2. Romney harshly criticized Obama’s pledge to send U.S. troops into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden. In 2007, Romney attacked Obama for saying he’d order U.S. forces into Pakistan to kill or capture bin Laden, just like he did in May, 2011. “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours,” Romney said in 2007. The former Massachusetts governor also said in 2007 referring to bin Laden: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”

3. Iran is not enriching weapons-grade uranium. Iran is currently enriching low-grade uranium (against the demands of the United Nations), but Israeli and U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency all agree that Iran has yet to decide on whether to build nuclear weapons and enrich to the high grade needed for bomb. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the U.S. and the international community would know if Iran makes that decision and that it would take “a little more than a year” to construct a nuclear device.

4. Romney will increase military spending by $2.1 trillion, with no plan to pay for it. Romney plans on increasing military spending by $2.1 trillion. One adviser repeatedly dodged questions on how Romney plans to pay for it while another said that Romney would maintain war spending indefinitely to make up the cost. CAP has charted the numbers:

5. Israeli leaders have praised Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security: “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “I think under President Obama we have the best relationship on the issue of security. Never were the security [...] needs better met than today under president Obama,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Mitt Romney has spent considerable effort trying to avoid foreign policy and national security this campaign season. But when he’s had to engage, he’s forced to strike a delicate balance between satisfying his neocon advisers and right-wing war base on the one hand — while speaking to the rest of the country, which has no appetite for the militaristic Republican policies that have plagued this country since 2001, on the other.

In recent weeks, Romney made good on a promise he made earlier this year to a wealthy donor that he would try to exploit a foreign policy crisis for political gain. “If something of that nature presents itself,” Romney said, referring to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, “I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.” With the attack that killed four Americans at the U.S diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya last month, Romney has done just that.

The basis of Romney’s foreign policy critique of President Obama is that Obama went around the world and apologized for America after he became president. Of course, this never happened, but the baseless attack has been a hallmark from Romney’s campaign with respect to foreign policy. Indeed, Romney’s foray into foreign policy has been a bumpy road. Here’s a timeline from throughout the 2012 presidential campaign that lays it all out:

EARLY 2011

– Romney accused President Obama of “mission creep” and “mission muddle” in Libya. “Military action cannot be under-deliberated and ad hoc,” he said. Libyan rebels ousted then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi five months later. (In his book, Romney attacked Obama for appeasing Qaddafi.) [4/21/2011]

– Romney announces he is officially running for president and, in doing so, chides Obama for “leading from behind” in Libya. One wonders if Romney would criticize Nelson Mandela, who once said: “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” [6/02/2011]

– Romney says he will let the generals dictate his Afghanistan policy. “I want those troops to come home based upon not politics, not based upon economics, but instead based upon the conditions on the ground determined by the generals,” he said. [6/13/2011]
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A top Romney foreign policy advisor has indicated that Mitt Romney intends to incorporate war spending into his military budget even after 2014, when American troops are set to be out of Afghanistan. Speaking at a debate last night at the Military Reporters and Editors Association Conference in D.C., Dov S. Zakheim, a former Under Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration at one point incredulously claimed that Romney’s plan for Pentagon spending actually is a reduction in current rates.

Romney has advocated pegging military spending to 4 percent of GDP in the past, an increase of $2 trillion over ten years. Zakheim confirmed that 4 percent “is indeed Governor Romney’s policy. Full stop.”

When asked to explain the math behind his claim of reduction, Zakheim said Romney will keep incorporate war spending into the baseline budget even after the war in Afghanistan comes to a close:

ZAKHEIM: Here’s the point. The Overseas Contingencies Operations (OCO) account is essentially driven by Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq is gone. And Afghanistan is being drawn down. [...] In which case that account, because it is driven by operations, comes down. The point though is you’ll still be taking some of that that money, there are billions of dollars in that account that really have a long-term implication and they’re not purely driven by Afghanistan operations. So you would move that into the baseline. So in theory, you would come down from 4.2 percent to 4 percent.

Prior to the development of the the Overseas Contingencies Operations budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were primarily funded by supplemental bills, outside of the normal budgetary process, driving up the deficit. While OCO funding levels are now incorporated into the overall federal budget, they remain separate from normal appropriations in that the funding is not tied to any one Department.

Zakheim is right in determining that current military spending is at 4.2 percent of GDP, but only when OCO spending is incorporated. According to the Obama administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget request, OCO spending would be reduced to $96 billion, compared to about $112 billion in FY 2012. Those spending levels are currently predicted to fall much further after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2014. Under Romney, they would instead become the new normal.

Michelle Flounroy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under the Obama administration, repeatedly pressed Zakheim on how Romney would pay for the sustained increase and goals such as ramped up shipbuilding. Zakheim responded that the OCO accounts transfer, along with greater efficiencies at the Pentagon and an improved economy under a Romney administration would provide for the funding required. In other words, the Romney campaign still cannot offer specifics on how a Romney administration plans to pay for this massive increase in military spending.