'U.S. Grand Strategy and the Debt Crisis'

from national interest..........

"There has been a fair amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding the debt crisis, most recently about what it might mean for the U.S. military and for U.S. foreign policy.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon has gone on record opposing the Gang of Six proposal on the grounds that it might cut $800 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next ten years. According to McKeon, such proposals raise “serious implications for defense and would not allow us to perform our constitutional responsibility to provide for the safety and security of our country or keep faith with men and women in uniform.”

"We can responsibly maintain a smaller, less costly military if we resist the impulse to deploy our military wherever and whenever trouble erupts. Such restraint would encourage others to take primary responsibility for their defense. And it would put the United States, and the world, on a sustainable path for the future. It simply isn’t realistic to expect a single country to underwrite the security of the entire planet.

Americans might lament that it took a crisis to compel Washington to restrain its ambitions, and to align the nation’s goals to available means. As Ben Friedman and I argued last year, a strategic shift would make sense even if we weren't staring into a huge fiscal hole. But perhaps now, finally, that long-postponed discussion is about to take place"..........READ MORE