The new strategy is not exactly clear. Often the cases with such attempts at policy changes trial balloons are sent up and the leadership then waits for reactions to them from stakeholders. Many of the stakeholder have likely have seen this coming and have already been part of the discussions all along. Then these other stakeholders will go more public with their discussions and talking points. This is all part of the high-stakes theatre that is Washington.

How this will all work out with the coming budget battles that will include much more than just DOD is up to question. It is hard to tell now.

One thing is clear, however, this time it is different. I have heard many of the “old timers” tell me “we have been through this before…nothing new here”. They are wrong.

The resource constraints facing the government are hard and clear to all who want to see them.

The entitlements problem gets more severe by the year. The debt continues to grow. Our total national debt is now greater than our GDP although, thankfully, our national debt net of what the government owes itself is not.

We were hammered by a debt downgrade when our political leadership in the House and Senate could not conclude on some major budgetary issues. Given the dysfunctional nature of Congress, it is likely the next time big decisions are needed we will face another impasse of sorts until we are at the brink again. The so-called “Super Committee” ended up rather less than super.

Our budgetary woes continue. The pressures on many departments and agencies to cut back and to “do more with less” is becoming more intense even as Congress is bickering and back stabbing its way to yet another non-decision when real decisions and leadership are needed.

In many ways, whatever this new strategy will become it will be driven by real resource constraints. This IS different.

It may be that sequester may not happen. Then again, it just might if the ubiquitous can keeps being kicked down the road in this election year. There is a very dangerous time of the lame duck sessions between the end of the elections and the next session of Congress when either non-decisions or bad decisions may happen. This could be the riskiest time if things are not heading toward a better set of solutions prior to this. On this note, I am not holding my breath.

The world remains a dangerous place. The Gulf is getting tenser by the day. The Pacific is hardly getting simpler. However, there are other parts of the world that remain important and that are seeing increasing stress.

This is no longer a world, if it ever was where regions and countries alone define threats, risks and opportunities. Regions and countries are very much interconnected. Even cyber and ideological “regions” are interconnected.

Thinking in the old ways of regions and countries in a time of transnational and non-state threats and actors is not the way to go.

Thinking just about the potential threats to economies and more from oil blockades, closing off chokepoints for short periods (and not just Hormuz), and more points with stark clarity how events in one part of the world can have global, and sometimes severe impacts.

Sometimes threats off the radar one day become major ones in a few years or shorter. Who can guess what will come out of the Arab Spring? Who guessed that the Arab Spring would start in late 2010 back in 2000? Who reading this can tell me what Pakistan will be like in 2015? Venezuela in 2014? Mexico in 2016? What food prices might be in 2013? What water crises might happen in 2020? What oil shocks might hammer the world economy in 2030?

Admiral Mullen had a very good point when he mentioned that the years of a flush defense budget kept us away from making the hard decisions. It seems resource constraints are going to push those hard decisions. I hope we make the right decisions. However, in this complex, changing, changeable and uncertain world, making the right decisions is often much more difficult than one might think.

As Yogi Berra said “prediction is hard, especially about the future”.

Indeed.

However, we need to be as ready and as prepared as possible with the resources we will have. We need to use those resources wisely.

"Let us recall that at the height of our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, little more than 1/3 of our troops were engaged." Yes, that is correct for the percentage deployed at one time. To maintain that force deployed required a much higher percentage; in the pipeline; stood down for leave, training, etc. Very long deployments are quite different in their logisitcal and personnel implications from something that lasts a few months. These deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan should be viewed as a continuum over some ten years, not as a "snapshot" in time. In the same way it requires more aircraft carrier battle groups to maintain a presence than those deployed at any one time.

there is a widespread notion that the envisaged cuts in the military budget shift the odds heavily against the United States' launching military operations and intervening abroad. That conclusion is less than persuasive - for a number of reasons. The reduction in forces will only reduce capabilities marginally. That is one. Let us recall that at the height of our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, little more than 1/3 of our troops were engaged. So our ability to undertake similar misadventures is, and will remain, pretty much intact. Short of a reborn Red Army menacing Europe or the Chinese rampaging through Southeast Asia, we have more than enough means for mischief-making. Witness our saber rattling vis a vis Iran. Then there is the unsettling truth that capability limitations rarely if ever in American history inhibited the United States from committing itself to war. That's two. I believe this holds for the Civil War, the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. If there is perceived need to fight, our leaders will presume that the nation's resources could be mibilized to ensure success.

The key is threat assessment, not numbers. The latter is a diversionary exercise that distracts from the compelling task of figuring out what our security objectives are. Budgeting is a lot less challenging intellectually than is devising strategy. After our triumph in the Cold War followed by the post-9/11 terrorism hysteria, we have done no serious strategizing. We may have forgotten how. It well nigh time to begin some remedial work in this domain.

Blog contributors have addressed these question, in varying circumstances, repeatedly in the past. The often instructive discussions, though, soon reach their limits for want of the policy/strategy/budget's candor in making explicit what purposes our armed forces are meant to serve. What are the security threats? What is their magnitude and probability of endangering vital American interests? What is the overall security environment out there and what would we like it to be? What are the reasonable means of achieving it - non-military and military?

These questions are never posed - much less rigorously considered. Implicit in these documents is the delusional goal of achieving a state of zero threat to the United States and its interests. That is the old Wolfowitz line going back to his 1991 report in the Pentagon for Bush the Elder. It's Gospel for the neo-conservatives who succeeded in having it adopted as the Defense establishment's sacred text. This philosophy also has dominated almost all discussion about national security and defense since 2001. It permeates the Obama administration. This despite serial failures when acted upon in the Greater Middle East. Despite the financial crisis. Despite the rise of other powers who make the idea of a global American imperium something that the rest of the world sees as ridiculous. Yet the American political class as a whole, and especially the foreign policy community, continues to think in this realm of fantasy.

As the kids say, let's get real - and get on with the compelling business of debating the core questions of what America is and what we can reasonably achieve in the world.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. There is really nothing new here. This is a Clinton-defense paired with a Carter foreign-policy.

It is difficult to argue that this is anything but a budget-driven exercise, largely peddled for political purposes--the president's campaign declaration arguing he can gut defense and leave America and the world a lot less safe.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon as it always does when the commander-in-chief barks--rolls over...and that's always nice cover for a reelection bid.

To the administration's credit it did make a "choice" in how to take the cuts--there are four armed services--four legs to the stool if you will. Obama cut-off two (the Army and Marines) and said we'd stand on the two legs left (Navy and Marine).

This is a new strategy of sorts--but not a very good one. It lapsing back to a pre-9-11 mindset in a post 9-11 world.

For all the talks of shifts and reinvestments---the reality is that it's just smoke and mirrors. We are not increasing investments in the Navy, the Air Force or Asia--we are just cutting more elsewhere. All the rest is simply moving forces around on a rotational basis--a kind of global Ponzi scheme.

True there some new "long leg" systems in the plan, e.g. bombers and submarines, but these were on the books before the strategy--and they are a long way off.

And then, since we are going to have less conventional, it only makes sense according to the White House, to gut nuclear systems too--no nuclear bomber, no modernization, fewer warheads.

The problem with this strategy is that it jump starts America back to a time when the twin towers fell while the rest of the world has moved on.

There is nothing in this strategy that adequately addresses the persistent challenges of Iran, North Korea, a rising China, or a troubling Russia. There is nothing that accounts for the significant decline in the capacity of our European allies. There is just a lot of wishful thinking.

Obama is taking away the safety net, the capacity of the US to prevent regional conflicts or multiple incidents from spinning into larger global wars. He is cancelling America's insurance policy--and for what benefit--spending cuts that don't come close to addressing America's real fiscal challenges, but make us markedly less safe. How anyone could find anything reassuring about in this kind of leadership is beyond.

I have thought that the kind of retrenchment in Defense that is envisioned in this new strategy document is entirely apropriate. I will not repeat the points in your introduction to the question. I agree with them. A re-alignment in emphasis of this kind must be introduced in small doses. The political scene in the US demands that. The awkward truth buried in this strategy is that the suggested conventional force reductions will inevitably be a beginning and not an end. These reductions are a first step that will lead to much, much smaller ground forces.