He presents a detailed plan breaking down the $350 billion cut already in the August 2011 budget agreement. At the top level, the U.S. military would be restructured to be able to fight one major war and support "several missions". From this flow force reductions, changes in military benefits, weapons systems cancellations and changes in the U.S. global presence (i.e. bases and naval deployments). He then totes up the resulting force and compares it to that required to deal with various scenarios: collapse of Pakistan, war on the Korean peninsula, and others, based on current planning. There's an entire chapter "stress testing" this concept against conflicts with China or in Iran. This is where it really gets interesting, because O'Hanlon argues that while the downsized military could handle these crises, it would be a close-run thing. This book argues that the $350 billion defense cuts should be a bright line, and that the $500 billion cut that will automatically take effect at the end of this year, thanks to the "supercommittee", would be a disaster. Here is where the conventional wisdom that America has to have the strongest military in the world runs smack up against the conventional wisdom that enormous budget cuts are absolutely mandatory right now, dammit. Want to be a superpower? Gotta pay up! As the defense budget is forced to absorb cuts -- and if politicians in Washington choose austerity to reduce deficits, defense obviously has to be cut -- Americans must make hard choices between the national defense we want and the one we can afford. The solution, which O'Hanlon briefly mentions in Chapter 3 -- while discussing the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction targets -- is simple. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Then we can afford to throw our weight around guarantee stability in the world. I know, the usual suspects inside the Beltway hate like anything to look on the revenue side of the budget equation, but there comes a time when you can no longer have your cake and eat it too. America has reached that point. For anyone interested in further reading on the subject of military spending and policy, I recommend Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace and Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country
, by William Greider. A couple of good counter narratives to conventional wisdom about foreign and defense policy are Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic , both by Chalmers Johnson. About the author of The Wounded Giant:  Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, specializing in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, homeland security and American foreign policy. He worked as a national security analyst at the Congressional Budget Office between 1989 and 1994.
He was signatory to two statements issued by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC - yeah, the people that brought you the Iraq war): the Second Statement on Postwar Iraq of March 2003, and Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces of January 2005. In 2001 he warned in the Washington Post how difficult an invasion of Iraq would be, and in the fall of 2002 argued at an AEI forum that the occupation of Iraq could last 5 years and take 150,000 troops. However, by early 2003 he was advocating for the invasion. Blogger Glenn Greenwald called O' Hanlon one of the biggest cheerleaders for the war. I mention this chapter of his career not as an attempt to impeach Dr. O'Hanlon's expertise on this subject or to automatically dismiss his conclusions, but because it is prudent to keep track of who wound up on the wrong side of the Iraq fiasco.  This review is part of that interesting new phenomenon, an online book tour. Click here to find other blogs on Michael O'Hanlon's virtual book tour.
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is aimed at readers with an interest in the defense budget, particularly in what can and should be cut from defense spending to meet the new, agressive deficit reduction goals without risk to our national defense. This is a rather specialized topic, but one with big implications for defense programs here in Alabama. All our members of Congress (or more realistically, a senior staff member) should have a copy. 
