The nine-year war with Islamic extremists has driven al Qaeda and its associates into a largely disaggregated operational posture with diminished capabilities and even lower stature. With the al Qaeda threat lessened, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq targeted for wind-down by the Obama administration (and the Bush administration before it), the nation inevitably will turn to a debate about military-force posture appropriate to its long-term strategic goals.
That debate has to some extent already begun, though divorced from any overarching strategic context. In a Foreign Affairs article in early 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote, “As much as the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, for example, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined—and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners.”1 So it would appear that Secretary Gates is setting the stage for dramatic cuts in Navy force structure, a postwar pattern repeated several times in the United States since the end of World War II.
