The Hill News

The new U.S. Defense Strategy, personally released this morning by President Obama, marks a dramatic change for defense policy. Previous national security strategies have been defined, to a large degree, by the need to fight two major wars simultaneously. The new strategy, which also cuts ground forces to reorient the military on an air-sea battle in the Pacific, removes that old two-war requirement. What does this mean?

The old cliché that the military is always fighting the last war is truer than ever: the Obama administration thinks the limited intervention in Libya was a resounding success (even if the fate of Libya remains very much in doubt), and wants to replicate other successes with a sea-basedairpower conflict. The most obvious target for this goal is China, and in the new defense strategy there is a lot of language detailing the “threat” of a competition in the Pacific Ocean.

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