Homeland defense doesn't generate any force requirements beyond having enough National Guard to save lives in natural disasters and to baby-sit nuclear power plants on Code Red days.
An economically confident America has - since becoming a world power at the start of the 20th century - tended toward global engagement. It is during times of economic stress (1930s, 1970s) that America has become more withdrawn.
An Obama administration truly looking to break with the molds of the past would stop treating Africa as an obligation and start treating it as globalization's next great opportunity, understanding that Chinese - along with Indians and Arab sovereign wealth funds - are natural partners in this process.
Crafty politician that he is, Obama was smart enough to set low enough standards for his administration to claim 'victory' by the summer of 2011 or so.
During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.
Here's my favorite bonehead concept from the 1990s in the Pentagon: the theory of anti-access, area-denial asymmetrical strategies. Why do we call it that? Because it's got all those A's lined up I guess. This is gobbledygook for 'If the United States fights somebody, we're going to be huge. They're going to be small.'
I don't think, post 9/11, we're going to wait for real obvious things like Country A attacking Country B - because Country A doesn't attack Country B any more.
I have long argued that, if China and the United States were interested in pursuing a strategic partnership, Africa is the best place to start, as neither enters the situation with past colonial baggage, and both possess interests that are quite complementary.
If America is addicted to foreign money and foreign oil, then China is addicted to foreign supplies of just about every commodity known to man - save highly polluting coal.
Is there anything about cyberspace that particularly screams Air Force? Not really. If cyber warfare is going to be as all-encompassing as it's made out to be by its vigorous proponents, then it will disseminate throughout the services even more than the drone phenomenon has.
Most Americans have little idea of how far our nation's worldwide standing had fallen by the end of the Bush administration; no matter how bad you thought it had gotten, it was worse.
The Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA - thousands standing around.
There is no battle space the U.S. Military cannot access. They said we couldn't do Afghanistan. We did it with ease. They said we couldn't do Iraq. We did it with 150 combat casualties in six weeks. We did it so fast we weren't prepared for their collapse. There is nobody we can't take down. The question is, what do you do with the power?
To ask a country with 750 million people living on less than a dollar a day to optimize their development for the environment as opposed to getting food in the mouths of these people and giving them a decent lifestyle, that's just a little bit too much to ask.
China's headlong rush to industrialize was pursued with the most Marxist of prejudices - bending nature to man's will. That's a desperately hard trick to pull off when one fifth of humanity, having previously subsisted on 7 percent of the world's freshwater supply, decides that it wants to instantaneously increase its caloric intake.
