By Dave Anderson:
From TPM's David Kurtz:
let's take note of Obama's clear-eyed understanding of America's role in the world and the real limits of American power as he just stated it in his press conference:
What we didn't do was pretend that we could dictate the outcome in Egypt -- because we can't. So we were very mindful that it was important for this to remain an Egyptian event, that the United States did not become the issue ...That's no small break with American foreign policy tendencies going back to, well, close to forever. It's also an explicit rejection of what have been considered immutable domestic political realities that force Presidents to appeal to Americans' distorted self-image
This is a nice statement that recognizes two things. First, there are limits to American power and influence. Secondly, not everything and not everywhere is a vital American interest. These two thoughts deeply influence all of my foreign policy analysis.
HOWEVER...
Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist sums up the defense budget that has been proposed by Obama as thus:
the defense budget, which runs at $553 billion as the baseline and another $118 billion for "overseas contingency operations," a.k.a. Iraq and AfPak. While reducing what DoD wanted by $78 billion, the approved budget is an increase over last year of $22 billion.
The profile for the defense budget isn't any different than over the past ten years. There's no change in the three-way split between the Army, Air Force, and Navy/Marines (the Army getting the least, the Navy/Marines getting the most). It's still a three-way split between operations and maintenance, R&D and procurement, and military personnel and other costs ($204B, $188B, $161B). I'm sure there are some new changes being proposed, but nothing too different here.
The budget funds a military that still assumes that everything, everywhere is an American interest. There are marginal changes, slight repointings and small quests for efficiencies, but the basic funding assumption is that the United States needs to have the ability to intervene anywhere, anytime for any reason.
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