Stuart asked me a week ago what I thought about the new defense budget. I replied briefly to him with a link to Col. Lang, so let's start with him. First, Col. Lang says it's a good start (and I agree):

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.

And then Stephen Walt here explains why the US will continue to have an interventionist policy:

these changes do not herald a philosophical shift away from a highly interventionist outlook. The new DG says the United States will still "take an active approach to countering [terrorist] threats," meaning continued drone strikes, night raids, and various forms of covert action. The decision to "invest as required to ensure [our] ability to operate in anti-access and area denial environments" tells you that the U.S. intends to retain the capability to use force just about anywhere it decides it wants to. And although it declares that the U.S. "will continue to promote a rules-based international order," we will undoubtedly reserve the right to ignore any of those rules if they prove to be inconvenient.

He then goes on to discuss the difference between strategy and budgeting, which are, need I say, very different. Michael Brenner then makes a crucial comment regarding the new defense guidance:

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.

I've been harping on strategy for a very long time here at The Agonist. Nations have interests and what we need more than any budgetary legerdemain is a serious conversation about strategy in which we settle on national priorities that balances desires, resources, capabilities and risks. Like all three commenters, however, I am not sanguine about the possibility of having that conversation. The United States foreign policy establishment, by and large, does not inhabit a reality-based universe. Yet.