The new "strategic guidance" announced by Barack Obama on January 5th, has triggered a wide-ranging debate about the future of American military power. On the right, critics have lambasted it as "declinist", principally because, quite sensibly, it seeks to reconcile America's strategic priorities with the need to find around $500 billion of defence savings over the next decade. In particular, the retreat from the 60-year long assumption that America should be able to prevail in two different major ground wars at once has caused some angst. This is odd given that even with the huge defence budget increases that came after September nth 2001, America struggled to provide the resources to win in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter campaign suffering nearly terminal neglect because of the needs of the former.
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