The other day I called Biden pro-war, which might seem a little harsh. How would the U.S. actually go about reducing its military commitments, if it wanted to? I think the starting point is to realize that other countries are actually afraid of us. We have the world’s most powerful (most expensive anyway) military, and we use it frequently. The confrontations we are involved in with Russia and China tend to happen very close to those countries’ borders, and yet our rhetoric treats them as the aggressors.

Here is one set of ideas from the Defense Priorities think tank. Now, this think tank is funded by libertarian ideologues like Rand Paul, who just want to starve the government until it goes away, and corporate plutocrats like the Kochs, who just want to starve the government so they can keep all the money in their own pockets. Any money they save would not be reinvested in, say, Social Security if they were in charge. It would just be diverted to the rich and powerful. Nonetheless, the actual ideas for shrinking military commitments seem to be serious, and various factions who normally don’t agree might be able to come to a consensus in the short term, then argue about how to reinvest the proceeds later.

First step is to bring troops home from the Greater Middle East, from Afghanistan to Africa. Obama won a Nobel Prize just for saying he was going to do it. he didn’t do it. Trump said he was going to do it, and he also was not able to do it. Not only that, we blundered into conflicts in Libya and Syria under their administrations that seem intractable and have no obvious benefits, to us or to the people actually in those countries. It’s time to just announce dates for withdrawal and then withdraw.

Second step is to say NATO is done expanding. In retrospect, trying to expand NATO (starting under Bill Clinton) was very threatening to Russia, and we quickly lost their trust and cooperation. The nations of Europe are much more powerful technologically and economically than Russia. We can pull troops back while still supporting them with training and equipment (either giving or selling these things to them, the latter keeping the military-industrial complex here at home happier and less nervous.)

Similarly, in Asia we can pull troops back while supporting with training and equipment. South Korea and Japan are incredibly powerful countries that can fend for themselves day-to-day with some assurance that we would ride to their aid if actual armed conflict breaks out.

Terrorist threats can still be dealt with through intelligence and law enforcement operations. Arguably, our foreign military adventures have probably inspired more potential terrorists than if we had never gone on those adventures. We can make it clear that we are not a threat to other sovereign nations, and then we can spend a decade or two practicing what we preach so that they might actually start to believe what we say.

I might add to this negotiating hard for nuclear arms reductions and nonproliferation, and leading by example on these. Also reengaging and trying to reinvigorate the United Nations. Not being a military threat to other sovereign nations doesn’t mean we ignore human rights abuses within their borders. It means we work in concert with the world community to apply pressure to solve these problems.