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By John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus

The Pentagon, the most obese institution in the United States, was about to go on a diet at the end of 2013. As a result of the mandatory cuts known as sequestration, the U.S. government was on the verge of cutting $500 billion in military spending over the next 10 years. This was on top of another nearly $500 billion in agreed-upon reductions over the same period. A trillion-dollar cut would reduce the morbidly obese Pentagon to the status of the merely overweight.

The Pentagon, reluctantly, was readying itself for these cuts. It was looking to trim administrative costs. It was going to lay off thousands of civilian employees and reduce the size of the active military personnel. Cuts in weapons systems and reductions in military bases were next on the list.

But the Pentagon’s New Year’s resolution to go on a diet didn’t happen.

Instead, at the end of December, the U.S. Congress arrived at a deal to avoid the sequestration cuts. And the Pentagon received a huge holiday bonus of over $20 billion. It even received a promise that in 2015 it would get another $9 billion more.

After the holidays, the Pentagon is in need of a diet more than ever before. The United States continues to spend more on its military than any other country - and more than the next 13 top spenders combined. The base budget for the Pentagon in 2014 will be $526.8 billion. If you add in overseas contingencies (including $80 billion for operations in Afghanistan) and nuclear weapons ($17.6 billion out of the Energy Department budget), military spending rises above $600 billion. And that’s not all. If you include all the military-related expenditures from Homeland Security to the Veterans Administration, the number climbs to more than $750 billion.

However, this recent boost for the Pentagon will be its last binge for a while. After the next two years, barring some unforeseen war or uptick in terrorist attacks, U.S. military spending will begin to shrink.

The short-term increase in Pentagon spending will help to sustain the illusion of the “Pacific pivot.” The long-term decline in U.S. military spending has even bigger implications for Korea.

First, as its military spending gradually declines, the United States will increasingly rely on burden sharing. South Korea has already embarked on an expensive, long-term modernization of its own military. It wants to construct a naval base on Jeju Island to house its Aegis-equipped destroyers. And it is bracing for the transfer of operational control that has been pending since 2009. Washington wants Seoul to build up its military muscle. If a “contingency” were to break out on the Korean peninsula involving an attack by North Korea or the collapse of regime above the 38th parallel, the burden of response will increasingly fall on ROK forces.

Second, the Obama administration has pushed hard to deregulate U.S. arms export policy in order to facilitate the overseas sales of defense contractors. The United States has been the number one arms exporter since the end of the Cold War. The Obama administration is eager increase the U.S. edge, not only to lock allies into an integrated command and control structure but also to compensate U.S. manufacturers as the Pentagon’s procurement budget shrinks. Under Obama, weapons exports have increased by 25 percent, from $6.9 billion in 2009 to $8.7 billion in 2012.

Japan is a potential growth market for U.S. weapons exporters, since the Japanese government has traditionally limited its military spending. The government of Shinzo Abe is committed to restoring Japan to “normal” by beefing up its offensive military capabilities. Japan will increase its military spending by 5 percentover the next five years, which will include two Aegis-equipped destroyers and 28 F-35 jet fighters.

Korea, too, is a key purchaser of U.S. weapons. South Korea is the fourth largest importer of weapons in the world, 77 percent of which comes from the United States. South Korea is also a key pusher. It had a record year in 2013 with arms sales of $3.4 billion. That‘s 14 times the amount of exports as 2006.

Fueled by U.S. arms exports and increased Chinese military spending, East Asia is in the middle of an overheated arms race. It’s one of the only areas in the world where military spending is on the increase. This is an especially dangerous trend given the persistence of territorial disputes in the region - at the DMZ, around disputed islands like Dokdo/Takeshima, and in the South China Sea.

Which brings us to number three: the Pacific “pivot.” The United States doesn’t want to lose its influence in Asia to a rising China. But it is somewhat awkward for Washington to confront Beijing directly. After all, the United States is dependent on Chinese trade and investments in the U.S. economy. The strategy, then, is to create a web of alliances that restrict China’s movement. The “pivot” doesn’t really translate into major new capabilities for the United States in Asia. But it is certainly meant as a signal to reassure our allies.

Our allies, in turn, will be expected to join hands to encircle China. They are expected to spend more money on their own defense. They are tapped to build infrastructure - in South Korea, Australia, the Philippines - to accommodate U.S. forces. They are building their own indigenous arms industries to offset the cost of this major military expansion.

Whether it’s more burden-sharing, increased arms exports, or the redeployments as part of the “Pacific pivot,” the United States is trying to remain a Pacific power, but on a cheaper budget. The eventual reduction in the Pentagon’s size is not necessarily going to be good news for East Asia - unless the countries in the region put their own militaries on a crash diet as well.

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