The report itself is predicated on a vision of a Pax Americana, a unipolar doominance in which the Empire Americana proudly protects the planet from any self-determination which exceeds certain bounded limits. To do this, one of the goals the paper calls for is to prevent the emergence of any comparable major power, such as China. It also calls for the capability of the United States to fight major theaters simultaneously. To support this it requires (natch!) a major increase in levels of funding for DoD expansion and development from the then-average of 3%, which has surely increased since 2000 for obvious reasons. They want to raise defense spending to 3.8%, which would increase it -- get this -- by $15-20 billion dollars per annum US.

It is an interesting slip that while the body of the paper articulates the goal of being able to fight multiple simultaneous wars, ("Second, the United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars")the Executive Summary on page 11 cites the "Core Mission" as "fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theater wars". Leads one to wonder which goal the Administration is actually pursuing, eh?

Interesting paper -- the Worldview of the Hawk. I would really like to see a paper of comparable effort on the American investment in promoting civil and human rights and the social mechanisms designed to ensure they are preserved. If we spent a billion dollars a year on genuine goodwill efforts and PR campaigns designed to bring amenable mindsets about on the part of the leaders and populations of other nations, we would probably do much more good.

What this paper overlooks or leaves out of its scope is that establishing might without the gurantee of justice scares the bejesus out of poeple and people who are scared of you to that extent may cooperate, but they don't make good allies and they don't promote your goals; they start renegotiating in a thousand covert ways. THis is one of those lessons that only experience brings.

I am all for a competent premiere defense department. But it hould never be the centerpiece of our foreign relations strategy, let alone the totality of it! That's is both stupid and wasteful.

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