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Pushed by strategic and budgetary concerns, President Barack Obama on Thursday outlined a new direction for a smaller American military with heavier emphasis in the Pacific.Offering few specifics, the president promised that the military will stay focused on countering terrorism, keeping its nuclear deterrent and building cyberwar defenses. “As we end today’s wars and reshape our armed forces, we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies,” said Obama’s preamble to his “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.marc jacobs”The statements by Obama and his Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are interpreted as leaving behind the strategic requirement of being able to fight two major ground wars at once in different corners of the globe. Rep. Howard McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called it a “retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy.” Taking up a phrase leveled against Obama earlier in the Libya conflict, the California Republican said that “this is a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America.”Specific cuts won’t be detailed until Obama’s budget proposal is released next month, but U.S. ground forces, with Iraq behind them and draw downs in Afghanistan in sight, already are on track for serious downsizing beginning in 2015. Fort Riley in Kansas and Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri probably will feel the Army-wide shedding of at least 50,000 soldiers.marc jacobs bagsSo far, an ongoing trimming of hundreds of civilian jobs at installations in the two states is the only concrete evidence in the region so far of the U.S. military’s titanic struggle to beat down its own budget. “If we allow the current trend to continue,” Pentagon adviser Arnold Punaro told The Washington Post, “we’re going to turn the Department of Defense into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist.”To encourage enlistment in the voluntary services and reward the 1 percent of our society that goes to war for us, Congress has been generous with pay raises and benefits for military personnel, retirees and their dependents.Two years ago, Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told the House oversight panel that military compensation was out of whack. Health care benefits and pensions, he noted, normally make up about 29 percent of total compensation in the private sector. General Motors was driven into bankruptcy in part because these costs had swollen to 46 percent.For the Department of Defense, he testified, it’s 52 percent and growing.The exploding Tricare health program for retired military, expected to hit $65 billion over the next five years, has been targeted by the administration. Its premiums — nudged upward this year for the first time since the 1990s — are a fraction of those in the private sector, deductibles are low and co-pays limited.The Pentagon also is mulling traditional retirements, in which 20 years of military service can mean a pension of half pay for life beginning at age 38.Officials have warned of damage to morale and recruiting. “I’ve got to put everything on the table and take a look at it,” Panetta has said. “And compensation in the retirement area is one of those… But at the same time, I’ve made very clear that we can’t break faith with those in the service.marc jacobs bags cheap”Such deficit-cutting ideas arose last year to the fury and frantic letter-to-Congress writing of retirees. The Veterans of Foreign Wars is against any cut to retiree benefits, said Joe Davis, Washington spokesman.“They’re trying to recapture saving from people who have sacrificed 20 or more years of their lives. We’re relegated to just an expense item now.”The New York Times and The Associated Press contributed to this article.