Michael and Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, discuss the military and the troop draw-down, implications for the budget and military expenditures, the OCO Budget, and many more things!

Preble opines, “[t]he first mission of any country’s military should be defense.  And, I think our military is ... eminently capable of defending the United States from direct threats.  Of course, they’re aided by geography, which still matters, and we, here, our fortunate to be separated from the east and west by wide oceans, and the north and south by relatively friendly and peaceful neighbors.  That’s always been the case.”  (9:43 )

“So much of our military now is geared to defending other countries that could defend themselves.”  (10:27 )  Preble advocates alliances and diplomatic relationships based not on the premise that we defend them, but that they defend themselves.  He preaches deterrence, including nuclear deterrence, but a scaling back of the nuclear arsenal.  He mentions some prior work on deterrence and the work of his colleague, Ben Friedman, on the Nuclear Triad, and also a collaboration between Preble, Friedman, and Matt Fay called “The End of Overkill, Reassessing U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy."