I have a general question. I do understand that it is politically extremely difficult to cut military spending. Is there, however, a path to gradual decrease in spending? I wonder.

Please give me your opinion of the following:

1) Cut military bases abroad. The US has a huge footprint all around the world. How about scuttling all the German bases, everything in western Europe should go. The British air bases should be just mothballed. How about removing most of what exists in Central Asia, with the exception of what serves Afghanistan. How about for that matter, removing everything from the Gulf.

2) Move gradually all American troops to Kurdistan. I know this sounds horrible, yet we have to be realistic. US troops will not be removed from Iraq. At least not all. The residual force (I assume 30.000) could stay in Kurdistan where local leaders have already indicated they want them. This keeps Turkey out of the picture and the Kurds in Iraq, allows Obama to say that he is keeping an eye on Iran, even as he invites Iran to play a constructive role in the rest of Iraq. Moreover, it allows the Obama administration to have a region on Iraq where it can bring journalists to witness true improvements in Iraqi life. The removal of US troops from Shia and Sunni areas should satisfy the leaders for a while, and the consolidation of US forces in just a few bases would dramatically help cut costs.

3) Missile defense: Cut

4) F-22: Cut

5) Littoral ships: Cut

6) Then slowly get into the tough business of cutting the attack and SLBM submarine fleet. It is not essential for the projection of power and there is really no enemy for them. 50% reduction should be fine to begin with.

7) Negotiate with Taliban and slowly get out of Afghanistan.

8) Cut contracts to Halliburton and Black water. Direct the money from those to the army to hire foot-soldiers, who will be expected to do what the overpaid contractors do for much less money.

Naturally I could find many more things to cut but this will take time and the military will not just sit back and lose its toys. I would cut 6 aircraft carriers out of the 11, including their support ships and carrier group fleets. But this will not happen immediately. First you need a concrete success abroad (like treaty with Iran, and agreement between Taiwan and China) before you propose that.

How much of this would even be possible. Barney Frank has supposedly been talking about 25% cuts in defense. How will he do it?

So maybe he could take this advice to hearth and start doing something. Can he?

Just another neo-CON economic wanker. He has become irrelevant.

Paul Krugman wrote a column (The Obama Agenda) on this recently, and I suspect that it will reflect the thinking of Obama's economic team.

Krugman's point is that you don't cut spending heading into an economic crisis. One of the big problems is going to be maintaining government spending at the state and local levels so that services don't collapse and jobs shrink even more, especially in essential areas.

Count on the right to suddenly get religion now that they are out of power. We are going to hear a while lot about tax-cutting and spending cuts for the next four years, since the conservatives have already decided to stick with these mantras that they just lost on. They are convinced that McCain didn't scream them loudly enough.

If - and this is a very big if - a decision could be made to move away from neo-imperialist policy, it might be possible to shift military money to other avenues. I don't see massive cuts across the board because the recipients of that money will put up one hell of a fight. Moreover, more of our economic activity is defense related than we'd all probably like to admit.

But if some of that money were shifted to space we might get some wiggle room. Many of the contractors are the same, but the benefits to the public at large are much greater.

Or, more generally, a repeat of Ike's highway trick where the money gets used for something that brings public benefit but can be finessed to call it "national defense".

I certainly agree with liquidating the empire and chopping up the defense budget, but i don't, unfortunately, see it happening before we either have no choice or someone cooks up an end run around it.