Here are a few thoughts.

First, there will be no reduction in the current defense budget. The cuts in question are in fact reductions in future expenditure as called for in the Pentagon’s spending plans. In nominal dollars, outlays in fact will rise somewhat. Whether they grow in constant dollars depends on the rate of inflation – now quite low.

Second, there is no responsible way to assess the implications of these projected figures without rooting them in a rigorous analysis of security needs. The various strategic reviews that have appeared, providing the supposed justifications for the moneys requested, are not that. They are superficial, lowest common denominator committee products. For the most part, they are little more than cut and stitch versions of former reviews with only marginal modifications. In all honesty, they could be done by a good Masters student in a quality International Relations program.

Three, perceived military needs will grow to match the money available. Put succinctly, work expands to spend what’s there. This is a truism for every big organization. An example is the creation of a costly Africa command whose justification is known only to those with imaginations enriched by a seeming infinitude of resources. Another minor, sui generis example is the hasty outfitting of a “mother ship” as an operating base for elite commando units in the Persian Gulf. This was explained to us by Lt. Cmdr. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command. We have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than decade. We have long established bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and elsewhere. We have three aircraft carrier groups in the region. SEALS and DELTAS have been active. Yet suddenly there is an urgent need for a refitted battle ship. Supposedly, Iran is the target. Having done everything possible to push Iran’s back to the wall, we now belatedly realize that there is a good chance of war and that – shockingly –the Iranians might be so inconsiderate as to fight back. This is strategy on a par with that of the Europeans who, pressured by Washington, announce a boycott of Iranian oil to be put in place on July 1 so as to give the EU time to make other supply arrangements - without imagining that the Iranians might impose an embargo at an earlier date more to their suiting. How can you trust people like that who aren’t good sports? Kafka indeed.

Four, our leaders are not doing their job by failing to conduct a systematic critical appraisal of what are real security needs in the emerging world environment. That failure of responsibility begins and ends in the White House. Mr. Obama seems content to substitute casual thinking for in-depth analysis. His latest source of wisdom is Robert Kagan’s new book which has become his constant travel companion. Kagan is a close adviser to Mitt Romney. Bipartisanship at work – as Mr. Obama doubtless sees it. Kagan consulted his fellow neo-conservatives and reached the predictable conclusion that the United States now and forevermore will be NO. 1 in the strategic equivalent of the BSC football poll. So no need to change anything – or do any serious critical rethinking of how the world is changing and our place in it.

Hence, the President in his State of the Union address gave ringing endorsement to the idea that “America Is Back.” I guess that means it’s ‘Morning In The Oval Office.” Unhappily, it’s Cold Dawn everywhere outside it.

Let us remember the words of Lao Tzu : Disordered times are full of loud patriots

There is no question that the defense budget is coming down. And not for the first time. Generally two factors lead to such a decline: a major international change that leaves us safer and attention to economic and fiscal issues at home. Both things are exogenous to the defense budget itself and have an impact from outside the defense stovepipe. And both are happening today.

First, the global change. Despite the fear mongerers, the US has never been as secure as it is today and its military forces have never been so dominant (with the possible exception of 1945, before we took 12 million out of the forces). The Cold War posed an existential threat; there is no such threat today. Terrorist organizations, which must be dealt with, pose a pin-prick threat (and there is precious little evidence that any of them have WMD). Fragile states and political change in the Middle East are certainly international problems, but the management tools only marginally involve the military.

The ambition of some Americans to remake other countries has floundered on the shoals of Iraq and Afghanistan, which demonstrate amply that from the outside, military forces can do little to remake anyone, and tend to create the very insurgents they combat, (Not a new lesson; ask the former imperial powers). And, quite honestly, China, for all its defense investment and rhetoric, is simply decades (plural) away from posing a major military threat to the US or its interests.

With the end of Iraq and the coming departure from Afghanistan comes an accompanying shift in roles and missions for the US military, embedded as they are, in broader American statecraft. And, let's see if common sense can agree on this, the current US military remains the only one with global reach and global communications, intelligence, logistics, and transportation. No other, I repeat, no other country has that reach or even pretends to.

And the other change is upon us, too. For those of us who worked through the last build down, fiscal and economic pressures on defense, as on other parts of the budget, are familiar things. The 1985 Gramm Rudman Hollings deficit reduction effort and the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act set off a build down. The Cold War changed the environment, but there is no question the first steps were budget-driven.

It was smartly managed. The ground forces shrank, force structure shrank, procurement programs were eliminated (just ask Dick Cheney, who eliminated most of them), operating dollars declined. And the US military remained dominant. It took down Saddam Hussein's forces twice - in 1990 and again in 2003, without breaking a sweat.

This build down has many of the same characteristics. It is clearly budget driven - we would not be having this conversation about strategy if resources were still generous. And, let's be equally clear, outside of combat operations, defense budgets are always impacted by the availability of resources. Heck, that's why they call it a "budget." As Bernard Brodie once wrote: "Strategy wears a dollar sign." So the idea that there is some strategy out there that is un-impacted by the availability of resources is just plain silly.

So with the wind of geo-political change at our backs and the fiscal sea surging beneath us, it is time to make choices, set priorities, and adjust the forces. Exactly what Adm. Mullen said on January 6, 2011 had been lacking for the past ten years at the Defense Department.

Secretary Panetta deserves credit for tackling this reality. Without wasting electrons to produce a fire-hose of detail, by and large, the choices outlined in the January 6 and January 26 documents begin to steer the ship of defense in the right direction. They accommodate fiscal realities, as all defense budgets must, and they make the kinds of choices every build down has made: shrink the ground forces (put more capability in a truly ready reserve and guard), and lower the procurement appetitie (while retaining some key programs and future technologies).

I can and probably will quibble with some of these choices. A new long-range bomber and the decision to forego a re-evaluation of US strategic forces and move away from a triad fly in the face of any sensible need for strategic nuclear capabilities - we are way in excess of what any sound concept of deterrence requires in the 21st century. We are certain to over-invest, as well, in the next slogan: "anti-access, area denial."

The real challenge the Pentagon faces is that this first round of build down is only a start. The Panetta decisions do not "cut" defense; they leave defense budgets flat, at around the FY 2008 level, by growing roughly with inflation. If history is any reliable guide, deeoer cuts are yet to come, but they will appear, year-by-year, requiring a continual readjustment of this plan. Every prior build down has seen the budget fall by roughly 30% in constant dollars; the Panetta changes take the base budget down only 8% from the previous plan (set out in the FY 2012 budget). And even with war costs, which were counted separately for the past decade, it only goes down slightly over 20%, still below the previous rates (and note that the last build down saw the defense budget go down 36% over 13 years, and it was all "base budget.")

So the future will bring fewer resources, probably even smaller forces, more procurement priorities, hopefully some hard pressure on the operations and maintenance accounts. For all of that, ten years from now we will look back and say "Wow, we took more than a trillion dollars out of the FY 2012 defense projection and we still have a globally dominant force."

It's not about the build down; it's about how you manage the build down. That's the challenge for Panetta, his successors, and the Congress.

I wish we could start the debate by just being honest....right, wrong, can't we at least start out by acknowledging this is a budget driven exercise? It’s laughable for anyone to argue with a straight face that the world has changed enough in the last few years to justify a half trillion dollars in defense changes. It is also incredible that anyone would argue these changes are not going to result in a more strained and less ready force. This military will likely be smaller than it was under Clinton and the force then strained to keep up with day-to-day tasks.