2) The Decline of 'Decisive Victory'

Since World War II, maybe even since Napoleon Bonaparte, the nations of the West have increasingly viewed the only satisfactory military victory as a total and decisive military victory. But this has not historically been the rule. We in the U.S. might assume that wars are about "winning," and that "winning" means so totally dominating our enemy that they have to do whatever we tell them to. This assumption was contributed, in part, to our failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan. For most of history, even the "winning" side of a war often fought just enough to force whatever concession they were after. For reasons that Jazon Fritz and Anne-Marie Slaughter explain beautifully, Obama's austerity cuts and reduction in ground forces (with a greater emphasis on naval and air forces) may return the U.S. to the historic norm, in which every military encounter need not be "decisive."

3) Europe Can Handle Its Own Security Now

It's sometimes easy to forget that, for most of modern history, Europe has been the center of warfare and conflict. Today, the Soviet Union is long gone, the European Union has made continental war unthinkable, and the armies of Europe and still so technologically advanced that outside invasion would be virtually impossible. After a generation of guaranteeing European security, the U.S. is getting out of that game, cutting our Army brigades there in half. The only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner.

4) Shifting to Asia, But Not Because We Fear War with China

The U.S. force size in Asia-Pacific will increase, part of Obama's long-planned pivot to Asia, which is increasingly a center of global economic power. The force increase is not to prepare for some Cold War-style showdown with a rising China, although deterrence is certainly part of it. Obama seems to mean it when he talks about America's "Pacific Century," and putting a military presence there is a great way to extend U.S. hard as well as soft power.

5) The Forever War Wages On

When Obama picked the CIA director as his new Secretary of Defense, he was making a statement about how he wanted the Pentagon to evolve. The U.S. military has increasingly emphasized a CIA-tinged strategy of drones, special forces, cyber attacks, and secret operations against threats from terrorists to Iranian nuclear scientists. It's a strategy meant to deter and manage threats, not eradicate them outright, and to be cost-effective. Wired's Spencer Ackerman explains that, under our new Pentagon, the "Shadow War" will be continuing, with military-led global surveillance programs actually increasing.

6) Another (Very) Small Step Toward a Nuclear-Free World

One of the plan's least discussed provisions is a decrease in spending on nuclear weaponry. It's not clear how much, and it's almost certainly a tiny fraction of what we could cut (the U.S. could still easily annihilate the globe several times over), but even a symbolic cut would be an important step toward Ronald Reagan's dream of eradicating all nuclear weaponry. We'll probably need to maintain some for deterrence purposes as long as China possesses warheads and Iran and North Korea pursue them, but there's no reason we need 5,113 warheads to deter one from Pyongyang. Extra warheads is an invitation to further proliferation from competitors and increases the likelihood of theft or an accident.

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