Power Problem

Numerous polls show that Americans want to reduce our military presence abroad, allowing our allies and other nations to assume greater responsibility both for their own defense and for enforcing security in their respective regions. In The Power Problem, Christopher A. Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of this nation's military power; throughout, he makes the case that the majority of Americans are right, and the foreign policy experts who disdain the public's perspective are wrong.Preble is a keen and skeptical observer of recent U.S. foreign policy experiences, which have been marked by the promiscuous use of armed intervention. He documents how the possession of vast military strength runs contrary to the original intent of the Founders, and has, as they feared, shifted the balance of power away from individual citizens and toward the central government, and from the legislative and judicial branches of government to the executive. In Preble's estimate, if policymakers in Washington have at their disposal immense military might, they will constantly be tempted to overreach, and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest."Preble holds that the core national interest—preserving American security—is easily defined and largely immutable. Possessing vast military power in order to further other objectives is, he asserts, illicit and to be resisted. Preble views military power as purely instrumental: if it advances U.S. security, then it is fulfilling its essential role. If it does not—if it undermines our security, imposes unnecessary costs, and forces all Americans to incur additional risks—then our military power is a problem, one that only we can solve. As it stands today, Washington's eagerness to maintain and use an enormous and expensive military is corrosive to contemporary American democracy.

The Power Problem doesn't flinch from offering specifics as to what commitments the United States should keep and which it should shed. In addition to proposing criteria for using military force that are stricter than the old Weinberger-Powell doctrine—allied interests would no longer be treated as synonymous with American national interests—Preble suggests 'right-sizing' our military forces for the defense of American territory and the Western hemisphere.... Preble has started a debate where too often there has been a monologue., An important book, The Power Problem,... puts forth the case that American military power naturally invites excessive or irrelevant use, and that the habits of mind created by military supremacy have caused the United States to be less safe than otherwise, less free, more vulnerable, and less able to do the things that fundamental national security demands. Its author, Christopher A. Preble, is a former officer in the U.S. Navy and is head of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He argues, as many others do, that the United States has a level of military power that it doesn't need, that has limited utility against stateless enemies and insurgents, and causes confusion between military strength and national power, the latter being the ability to actually produce a desired effect. It is a good and lucid book and should be read., Christopher Preble compellingly argues that America's recent predisposition toward deploying force rather than more subtly using the mystique of limitless ability that only superpowers can wield is hurting its interests and place in the world. The Obama administration is inheriting a nation wounded by a 'power problem' after the exposure of key limits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Preble's book is must reading for the Obama team and others if they want to understand why American power is slipping and what can be done to reverse this worrisome reality., I recommend Christopher Preble's excellent new book, The Power Problem... which tackles the familiar justifications for American dominance head-on, and shows that the usual pieties about global stability or spreading democracy are far from airtight., I want to recommend a new book called The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free. The book's got a good explanatory subtitle, but to briefly sketch the thesis, Preble argues that our over-large military establishment isn’t just a waste of money, but actually harmful to our security.... If we had much less military capacity, we would have a much narrower definition of the strategic purpose of our military—to defend the country against threats—and would find that we were happy with that equilibrium. But the large military spawns a grandiose strategic concept that winds up writing checks that even a gigantic military can’t cash. I think this analysis is dead on.

Christopher A. Preble is Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and a former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy. He is the author of John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap and Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda.