Herschel Smith at The Captain's Journal ("dedicated to the dissemination of conservative views, based on a solidly and consistently conservative world view, on matters political and military") ponders defense spending and America's geo-strategery.
Money quote(s):
"I have always been a proponent of wise defense spending, and cutting where there is no reasonably feasible return on investment"
Congressional pork-barrelling notwithstanding, defense spending really isn't about spending money in everyone's district, or shouldn't have been (but is).
"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has indeed warned against sweeping defense cuts"
Note the caveats with which Mr. Hershel follows that statement.
"(I)f we fail to stop Iran’s increased hegemony in the Middle East, if we fail to prevent Iran from going nuclear, if our military power and resolve isn’t sufficient to prevent Russia from invading Georgia again, if we relinquish the Pacific to growing Chinese Naval provocations, if we fail to deal a decisive blow to the Taliban and al-Qaeda aligned fighters in the AfPak region, there will be war. Israel cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Eastern Europe is looking to the U.S. for direction, and our abandonment of a missile defense shield was indication that we aren’t serious about their security, much less entry into NATO. Russia is back up to their dirty tricks, and is poised to conduct yet another assault into Ossetia, and the Chinese still want Formosa."
That paragraph is a good a brief statement of America's current strategic challenges as any I have seen and is arguably better than some of the multipage national strategic papers with which the defense and intelligence communities have saddled themselves with.
"America has benefited from the defense doctrine of fighting our battles away from the homeland rather than allowing the threat to land on our own shores before we confront it. Troops are currently deployed in more than 100 countries, and while it may be a tantalizing prospect to withdraw from the entire world and focus inward, we should be careful what we advocate. It will be much more difficult to recreate that military presence and deterrent that it was to dismantle it, regardless of how much money we throw at the problems once they have become obvious.
Cuts are coming. That which cannot continue, won’t. That which cannot be sustained will fall by the wayside. The question is whether America will address the growing entitlement state, however painful, or retreat from the world, also painful, just in a completely different ways, and perhaps permanently."
Writers of speculative fiction such as John Birmingham have already started to make oodles of cash by considering just what a world without America, as a metaphor for American engagement in the world, would be like. Entertaining reading, but quite ghastly in long stretches.
