Amidst the useful back-and-forth over the issue of U.S. defense spending lies a more substantive issue: what America's role should be in the world. As Stephen Walt argues, it's hard to talk about the defense budget without situating the conservation in a discussion about American strategy:
Although it is mind-boggling to realize that five percent of the world's population (the United States) now spends more on defense than the other 95 percent put together, this situation is hard to avoid when you see threats emerging virtually everywhere and when you think all of them are best met by an ambitious and highly interventionst foreign policy. If Americans want to be able to go anywhere and do anything, then they are going to have keep spending lots of money...
