Contradictory defense outlook?

On Monday, President Obama laid out his fiscal year 2011 budget. The Pentagon also released the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which is in sum an assessment of the U.S. military, its goals and its strategy.

Policy experts at AEI seem to think the President’s budget and the QDR are contradictory.

The simultaneous release today of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report and the Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposal reveals the underlying contradiction at the heart of the Obama Administration’s national security policy.  As the second sentence of the QDR states, “first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war.”  But the remainder of the report and, more critically, the long-term budget, reflect an administration more interested in ending wars than winning them, and ready to “manage” American decline rather than preserving American leadership.

The last sentence could be flushed out in much more detail in regards to International Relations Theory – something I would like to do, but I don’t see how it’s possible considering I don’t have an IR class this semester. In brief, liberals (President Obama) make the argument that a hegemon isn’t needed to maintain the International system. Hegemonic realists, however, would argue quite the opposite. The exit question is this: is President Obama seriously “managing” American decline?

I seriously doubt any President or for that matter any American is with serious vigor thinking about managing the U.S. decline to less than the world’s only superpower – either relatively or in absolute terms. At least, I hope not.

Without further digression, I think President Obama does face the conflict of reconciling his approach to international relations with that of the broad American populace. I think it’s the commonsense view, if only because it has for so long been the only view, that if one person grows stronger, we grow weaker. President Obama defiantly declared in China that all countries could grow the pie together.

To conclude, it’s interesting to note the difference between the opening paragraphs of the QDR and what has been seemingly President Obama’s track on international relations and the role the U.S. military will play in the future. Certainly, President Obama is interested in ending our wars abroad. Does that mean he’s not committed to winning them? Not necessarily – that is entirely based on one’s definition of victory. I think the QDR most likely reflects a more “true to life” version of President Obama’s international relations theory.