Foreign Policy: Think Again: The Pentagon (The military's Chicken Littles want you to think the sky is falling. Don't believe them: America has never been safer.)
Monday, March 4, 2013 at 12:01AM 
MARCH/APRIL ISSUE
BY THOMAS P.M. BARNETT
"The Pentagon Is Always Fighting the Last War."
Just the opposite. The Pentagon, as former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates derisively pointed out, has a bad case of "next-war-itis." With Iraq now ancient history and Afghanistan winding down, all four of the major U.S. military services today prefer to imagine distant, future, high-tech shoot-'em-ups against China (er, well-equipped adversaries) over dealing with the world as we find it, which is still full of those nasty little wars. As Marine Corps general and outgoing Central Command boss James Mattis once told me, "I find it intellectually embarrassing that people want to hug the Chinese [and exclaim], 'Oh, thank God we have another peer competitor at last! Now we can go back to building the weapons that we always wanted to build.'"
Read the entire article at Foreign Policy.
Reader Comments (1)
If we are working to provide that there are no major obstacles to the expanding global economy, and to the global economy's ability to provide for world prosperity and peace,
Then must we be careful to address, not only the problems that are exceptionally common to the lesser and remaining states and societies but, also, the problems that are exceptionally common to great and rising powers?
Herein, such things as prevention of regional and/or great power war (through adequate preparations for and deterrence of same) seeming to play, by far, the most vital and most critical role?