In fact, the debates over missile defence and naval capabilities highlight the critical error in Gates's view that the most likely scenarios ahead are terrorism and guerrilla warfare. No one, of course, disputes the reality of these threats and the need to prepare for them. Indeed, even before 9/11, and before the Afghan and Iraq wars diverted and consumed the Bush Administration's attention, this reality was fundamental for much of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's strategy to change the Pentagon. And learning the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the continuing global war on terror, whose name Obama dare not pronounce, must be a high priority for any new Republican President.

But it is badly mistaken to conclude that terrorism or guerrilla wars are essentially the only risks ahead. Unfortunately, the most likely future is one where we will face threats across the full spectrum of potential enemies and conflicts. We are in not a time of certainty, as implied by Gates's analysis, but a time of radical uncertainty. 

The dangers range from lone-wolf terrorists all the way to the return of strategic confrontation globally with the likes of China, Russia and possibly others. In such a time of uncertainty, we need more capabilities, more options and more flexible responses for the President and his top policymakers, not fewer. That is the global reality, meaning, inevitably, even higher budgetary expenditures than required simply to restore the drastic Obama Administration cuts (removing from the expenditure baseline, for comparative purposes, amounts spent on Iraq and Afghanistan). Romney has vigorously campaigned for such an approach, but any post-Obama President will have difficulty, given the rubble left by Obama's cuts and his extraordinary domestic expenditure increases.  

In these circumstances, therefore, we should remember what we once took for granted but seem to have forgotten, namely the purposes actually served by force and the capability to use force.  George W. Bush's Administration described these purposes in strategy documents and speeches by the President and others, but they have subsequently disappeared in the fog of partisan warfare.  These analyses were well-reasoned and well-argued, but ironically not terribly new, innovative or controversial in days of yore. The eclipse of the Bush Administration outlook shows how far we have fallen, and the extent of the basic intellectual repair work that is needed. Considering how basic the Cold War doctrine of "peace through strength" once was, this constitutes a Recessional of the worst sort.

And the purposes of force? The first and most important is "dissuasion," often confused with its cousin, deterrence. Dissuasion implies convincing other states (or non-state actors) not even to think about challenging the US by developing new weapons capabilities, force levels or strategies. We often hear blithe comments that America's defence budget exceeds all other defence budgets in the world combined, implying ours is far too large. Leaving aside the honesty and transparency of other countries' budget presentations, the currency exchange rates/purchasing-power-parity issue, military salaries and other factors that tend to "overstate" US expenditures, why shouldn't the world's arsenal of democracy possess capabilities that shape others' thinking politically as well as militarily? That is clearly the best way to avoid war.