ANDREW BACEVICH was interviewed in the Boston Phoenix on Wednesday. Mr Bacevich, the former Army colonel, Boston University professor and "paleo-con" critic of American militarism, has a new book out arguing for a thoroughgoing revision of American foreign and security policy. In the interview, he characterises America's longstanding foreign policy as resting on a "trinity" of principles:

Let's take an alternative to the sacred trinity. I think one principle ought to be that US forces exist to defend the vital interests of the United States, not to police the world. The second principle ought to be that the principal duty-station of the American soldier ought to be America, and that we should abandon our empire of bases scattered around the world. And the third principle ought to be—and this is very much contrary to Bush doctrine of preventive war—the United States should use forces for defensive purposes and only as a last resort.

I'm eager to read Mr Bacevich's book. One thing I hope it contains is an estimate of how much could be cut from America's defence budget if we were to adopt a security policy along the above lines, and how that would affect long-term deficit projections. If not, someone should do the math. Our structural budget deficit is in the range of 3% of GDP. Cutting defence spending from the current 4% of GDP to a robust European norm of 2.5% of GDP could take care of about half of that.

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