Arthur Herman is worried that Secretary Gates is poised to "re-hollow" the U.S. military. The piece is anchored in a somewhat odd conceit:
In a world in which the use of conventional armed force is no longer the last resort but instead an almost unimaginable option (unless the law of inertia is involved, as it was in Obamaâ??s decision to continue in Iraq and Afghanistan), itâ??s no wonder that the Pentagonâ??s fleets of warships, tanks, fighters, and bombers have come to seem an expensive luxuryâ??not to mention this nationâ??s overwhelming nuclear arsenal. Obama foresees a steadily shrinking role for American military force, and Gates finds himself cast as the man to make it happen.
I'm not sure what world Herman is talking about, because in the real one the use of armed force by the United States is a common place. As John Mearsheimer noted in his lecture about the rise of China, "America has been at war for 14 of the 21 years since the Cold War ended. That is 2 out of every 3 years."
Far from a last resort, the military is a tool that has been used routinely since the fall of the Soviet Union. And this is what's troubling about the Gates' cuts - not that they'd leave the U.S. dangerously exposed (they won't) but that Washington will make cuts while simultaneously insisting on maintaining an activist foreign policy, with an unnecessarily sweeping view of what America's core interests are. That would indeed attenuate our strength at a time when we should be shepherding it.
(AP Photo)
