In January, Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution wrote an epic-length cover story for the Weekly Standard urging that not only should military spending not be cut, but that it should be increased.

I disagreed, and responded with an article in the April 2011 issue of the American Conservative that is now available online. Here’s the basic gist:

[Kagan’s] argument centers on three claims. First, [he] alleges that America faces a dire threat environment in which a more restrained strategy would only amplify the dangers. Second, he argues that cutting military spending can’t solve our fiscal dilemma. And finally, he asserts that America simply cannot change its grand strategy, for we have always been interventionists.

Each claim is wrong: America could make substantial changes to its grand strategy that would save hundreds of billions of dollars per year without endangering our national security.

Read for yourself and see if you think I moved the ball forward at all. We debate, you decide.

P.S.: I have a polemical side, but the “Beltway brigadier” trope in the subhead was not mine — in case anyone at the, uhh, “National Institute for Civil Discourse” is concerned.