AEI’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies will host Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter for a timely discussion of U.S. defense budgets, of the changing strategic landscape in the U.S. and the force that this landscape demands.

 It’s time for policymakers to man up about the fact that the missions heaped upon the military are growing as they pour resources into handouts for bad mortgages, unemployment and other entitlements. Those who pay most dearly wear the uniform. They will not be able to keep it up much longer. And we won’t be the America we think we are anymore.

Obama is not the first president whose personal popularity bolstered his campaign, but as seen by the decline of Carter, personality alone cannot hold together a coalition.

"Concurrency" in defense programs–that is, overlapping development and production of weapons systems–has long been a controversial Pentagon practice. Now the Obama Pentagon is threatening to rewrite the procurement rules in a way that would make it extremely difficult to have the option of concurrent development and production.

The fascinating departure from the usual pabulum from centrists who insist that they are neither right nor left is nothing less than a desperate abandonment of Obama and the Democratic party in order to preserve the credibility of the ideas driving Obama and the Democratic party.

The Obama administration is not the first to fail to articulate a post-Cold War strategy for the United States, but the farther this can is kicked down the road the more difficult the challenge becomes. Our ability to secure the Middle East gives us enormous leverage over potential rivals like China, and is equally critical to our Asian allies like Japan and South Korea.

Jimmy Carter, the pacific man of the moment, may soon find a difficult period of his presidency under scrutiny.

Giving Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize has subordinated science to hype.