Joby Warrick. Washington Post, 06 December 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120402607.html

Excerpt:

There is no military solution. . . If a country is bombed, you give them every reason — with the support of everybody in the country and outside the country — to go for nuclear weapons, and nobody can even blame them.

as prepared for presentation at West Point, full text as provided by the White House to the Los Angles Times, 01 December 2009.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/obama-speech-text-afghanistan.html

Miriam Pemberton. Institute for Policy Studies, 18 November 2009.
http://www.ips-dc.org/getfile.php?id=461

Excerpt

Because [the Obama administration's 2010] military budget is larger, in real terms, than any of its Bush administration predecessors, 87 percent of our overall security resources are still allocated to the tools of military force. And because of this, the increases in spending on defense and prevention, as important as they are, amount to deckchair arranging on the ship of security spending. The goal of rebalanced security, as a budgetary matter, remains to be realized.

Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley. Center for American Progress, 18 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HQ6hXZ

Council on Foreign Relations, November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HiOnep

Project website — http://www.cfr.org/thinktank/iigg/pop/

Excerpt:

Publics around the world—including in the United States—are strongly internationalist in orientation. They believe that global challenges are simply too complex and daunting to be addressed by unilateral or even regional means. In every country polled, most people support a global system based on the rule of law, international treaties, and robust multilateral institutions. They believe their own government is obliged to abide by international law, even when doing so is at odds with its perceived national interest. Large majorities, including among Americans, reject a hegemonic role for the United States, but do want the United States to participate in multilateral efforts to address international issues.

Michael T. Klare. Tom Dispatch, 26 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HGy9yD

Excerpt:

How much longer will Washington feel that Americans can afford to subsidize a global role that includes garrisoning much of the planet and fighting distant wars in the name of global security, when the American economy is losing so much ground to its competitors? This is the dilemma President Obama and his advisers must confront in the altered world of 2025.

article references http://www.comw.org/wordpress/dsr/global-trends-2025

Spencer Ackerman. The Washington Independent, 22 October 2009.
http://washingtonindependent.com/64830/state-dept-project-signals-big-foreign-policy-change

Melvin A. Goodman, truthout, 20 October 2009.
http://www.truthout.org/1020095

Gordon Adams. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 08 October 2009.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/gordon-adams/afghanistan-and-pakistan-the-graveyard-us-foreign-policy-plannin

Michael A. Cohen. Dissent, Fall 2009.
http://spi.typepad.com/files/arms-for-the-world.pdf

Excerpt:

… the defining characteristic of U.S. foreign policy and national security policy in the post–cold-war era is the extent to which America’s foreign policy agenda is being crafted and implemented by the military. …Whether it’s waging the war on terror or the war on drugs; nation-building in post-conflict environments; development, democracy promotion, or diplomacy; fighting cyber-criminals or training foreign armies, the global face of the United States today is generally that of a soldier.

Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), DoD, 29 September 2009.
http://www.dsca.mil/programs/CPO/DSCA_StratPlan_2009-2014.pdf

Glenn Kessler. Washington Post, 19 September 2009.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091803739.html

Chuck Hagel. The Washington Post, 03 September 2009. Posted on the Atlantic Council Website.
http://acus.org/new_atlanticist/limits-force

Marc Lynch. The New ForeignPolicy.com, 31 August 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HiHVoy

Rebecca Williams. Budget Insight, 12 August 2009.
http://thewillandthewallet.squarespace.com/blog/2009/8/12/us-and-british-governments-concerned-about-overstretching-re.html

Hillary Rodham Clinton. Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 15 July 2009. Audio and video available.

Hillary Rodham Clinton. U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, 15 July 2009.

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009.

Comment:

Andrew Krepinevich (“The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009) writes that “the military foundations of the United States’ global dominance are eroding,” compromising the nation’s “unmatched ability to project power worldwide.” He would have us believe that unless reversed, this trend will produce dire consequences.

The problem with Krepinevich’s argument lies in its assumptions that “global dominance” is possible and that global power projection by the United States offers the most effective way of ensuring international peace and stability. Recent events call both assumptions into question.

Krepinevich claims that U.S. dominance, expressed through the projection of hard power, has produced a “long record of military successes.” Yet this contention is difficult to sustain given episodes such as those experienced by the U.S. military in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq (both in 1991 and since 2003) — not to mention the devastation of 9/11. It would be more accurate to say that force — even when wielded by the seemingly strong against the nominally weak — continues to be an exceedingly uncertain instrument. The United States’ penchant for projecting power has created as many problems as it has solved. Genuinely decisive outcomes remain rare, costs often far exceed expectations, and unintended and unwelcome consequences are legion.

A decade ago, some argued that the key to achieving permanent dominance could be found in “transformation,” a radical reconfiguration of the U.S. military meant to exploit the potential of advanced information technology. Krepinevich writes, disapprovingly, that this proposed new American way of war “faced stiff resistance” from dissidents within the military and that “the price for such willful ignorance can be steep.” Actually, it was the price of taking the bogus promises of transformation seriously that proved steep, as the debacle in Iraq amply demonstrated. These days, with transformation retaining about as much credibility as “unregulated markets,” the skeptics have come off looking a lot better than the proponents.

In fact, the pursuit of military dominance is an illusion, the principal effect of which is to distort strategic judgment by persuading policymakers that they have at hand the means to make short work of history’s complexities. Krepinevich argues that there is “a compelling need to develop new ways of creating military advantage.” As much as I respect his general acumen, however, on this point he is fundamentally wrong. The real need is to wean the United States from its infatuation with military power and come to a more modest appreciation of what force can and cannot do.

~ Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History, Boston University

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65233/andrew-j-bacevich/the-limits-of-power-projection