This week the Naval Diplomat wings his way to Honolulu for a "Track II" conference with Indian and Chinese delegations at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institution based within the U.S. Pacific Command. The theory behind Track II meetings is that unofficial diplomacy -- gatherings where the interlocutors are hostage to no political constituency and thus can speak their minds -- spurs creative thinking and debate.

Having exchanged views, participants then return home to act as opinion makers vis-a-vis their governments and fellow citizens. Track II negotiations at Oslo were widely credited with advancing the cause of Arab-Israeli peace during the 1990s. I'll let you know if we achieve peace in our time this week.

But I digress. Hawaii is fascinating not just for the obvious reasons -- the tropical setting and so forth -- but because of its eventful history, which owes much to its geostrategic value. It has captured attention even in China, where some sea-power pundits portray this Eastern Pacific feature as Asia's third offshore island chain. (I guess that makes the Americas the fourth.) During the 19th century, ambitious seafaring states -- the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and occasionally Germany -- jockeyed for power and influence in the archipelago.

Alfred Thayer Mahan mounted a tireless lobbying campaign in his writings, imploring the U.S. government to acquire the islands. In so doing, it could assure access to Honolulu while preventing some hostile power from acquiring the islands and, perhaps, denying access to American seafarers crisscrossing the Pacific Ocean. Mahan ultimately got his wish following the Spanish-American War, which wrought a revolution in American thinking about national power and purposes.

Congress had vacillated over whether to annex Hawaii, while President Grover Cleveland quashed a previous annexation bid. The defeat of Spain, however, delivered a modest Caribbean and Asia-Pacific empire into the republic's hands. Island acquisitions were suddenly a matter of expediency. Imperial management demanded way stations along the sea routes between North America and Asia. The "splendid little war" thus unclogged the political works in Washington, which proceeded with annexation in the months afterward.

In geopolitics as in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Hawaii occupies a particularly auspicious location some 2,400 miles southwest of San Francisco. It lies along the sea lanes linking Panama with Asia. That was a big deal for sea-power advocates who fretted about where to stage the main U.S. Navy fleet -- Atlantic or Pacific? -- and for officials charged with administering the Philippine Islands. It took months to combine the fleet for action in the days before the Panama Canal opened. In 1898, for instance, the Pacific-based battleship Oregon had to undertake an epic voyage around South America to get into the Caribbean fight. Reaching the combat theater was an ordeal in itself.

Hawaii also lies astride the sea lines of communication connecting North America with Australia. That accentuated the islands' importance during the age of British maritime supremacy, and of course during World War II. Ships transiting between Canada and Australia commonly tarried at Honolulu for provisions and, after the onset of the age of steam, to quench steam engineering plants' thirst for fuel. Admiral Chester Nimitz masterminded the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor.

The other reason Hawaii was a magnet for diplomats and strategists' attention was that it was the only geographic feature around. Mahan depicted it as a lonely outpost on a featureless plain hundreds of miles across. Competition for control of the archipelago was inexorably zero-sum, simply because warships and merchantmen had no alternative port of call.

So the Hawaiian Islands aren't all about sun, fun, and ukuleles. They're about politics and strategy.

So let me try out a hypothesis on you. This week was Vietnam (and Malay Emergency, and Huk Rebellion) week in our course. Each time I review or write about these historical cases, it strikes me afresh that you could sum up the insurgents' strategy in a bumper sticker: start cumulative, go sequential. As Admiral Wylie counsels, echoing Clausewitz, pounding away at enemy forces repeatedly -- landing blow after blow until they succumb -- is the key to victory. For Wylie and Clausewitz, then, it takes a sequential campaign to bring the ultimate triumph. Cumulative operations -- scattershot actions unrelated in time or space -- make a useful adjunct but are indecisive in themselves.

Or, put more simply, an opportunistic though weaker combatant does what it can, where it can, to whittle a stronger antagonist down to size while amassing the wherewithal to prevail. Over time the weak may weary the strong while building up sufficient strength to meet the adversary on his own terms -- and win.

Isn't that the gist of Maoist theory? Mao maintained that Japan commanded only one advantage during its prolonged war in China, namely military supremacy. Sounds like enough, doesn't it? But the Japanese army was strategically adrift, while China's defenders held all of the remaining cards. Territory, resources, manpower: these latent assets would all work in China's favor provided it had enough time to tap them. Mao foresaw long, grinding, intrinsically cumulative struggles against superior foes.

Chinese forces, that is, would deny the enemy a decisive battle while looking for opportunities to mount small-scale tactical engagements against isolated or otherwise outmatched enemy units. In the meantime insurgent captains would recruit manpower, establish base areas, accumulate supplies, and so forth. They would tauten the sinews of armed might. Ultimately the trendlines would come to favor the weaker side defending its home turf. Mao's Red Army would seize the offensive and defeat the once-superior, newly beleaguered foe in conventional -- sequential -- fashion.

Ergo, start cumulative, go sequential.

This helps explain the course of the Vietnam War. The U.S. war effort was largely cumulative in nature. Bombing campaigns such as Operation Rolling Thunder and Linebacker I and II were cumulative; so was hunting insurgents in the hinterland or urban areas; so even were conventional-seeming search-and-destroy operations, since the communist adversary determined when the vast majority of actions started and stopped. American commanders passed up their sequential options, such as invading North Vietnam, for sound political and strategic reasons. Doing so nonetheless left the United States and its South Vietnamese ally fighting at a disadvantage. They seldom lost on the battlefield but couldn't quite win the war, either.

So if the insurgents can keep it cumulative until they're ready to go sequential, what's the bumper sticker for the counterinsurgents? Alas, there doesn't appear to be one. The counterinsurgent should look for opportunities to force the campaign into sequential mode, the realm where conventional victory is attainable. Short of that, it has to fight on the insurgents' terms. There's no substitute for patrolling, ambushes, building and rehabilitating infrastructure, and all the myriad of cumulative tasks that befall an incumbent regime -- and its allies -- that wants to consolidate its legitimacy. And political legitimacy is what insurgencies and counterinsurgencies are all about.

Maybe that disparity helps explain the frustrations and setbacks are inherent in unconventional warfare.

Imagine, if you will, a congress of the League of Mad Strategists. Huddled around a world map in some nondescript, dark-paneled room are Prussian soldier and theorist Carl von Clausewitz, Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar Edward Luttwak, and intellectual gadfly Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Together the theorists debate the nature of international competition and warfare, and identify some solutions to -- or at least ways to think about -- timeless problems.

Clausewitz starts. He's the prophet of interaction, yet he's all about rationality. Indeed, the precept that cost/benefit analysis must govern any war effort lies at the heart of his landmark treatise On War. But events have a way of confounding the most level-headed soldier or stateman. That's because the enemy gets a vote in competitive endeavors, and he invariably casts it to thwart our goals.

Compounding this clash of wills is the inexorable human tendency to overextend oneself amid the throes of combat. Which is where Luttwak weighs in, invoking the "paradoxical logic" of competition. Combatants that press their advantage further than they should expose themselves to "ironic reversals" of battlefield fortune. Overextension results in a local mismatch of forces.

Even the strong are prone to ironic reversals. They attenuate their strength when fighting far from home. A weaker power defending its home ground can raise the costs to its adversary to prohibitive levels, or even prevail outright. But the defender is hardly immune to overextension. If it succumbs to temptation, the conflict takes on a seesaw character. That's why Clausewitz likens armed strife to a wrestling match on a grand scale. The belligerents grapple constantly for strategic advantage. The momentum lurches back and forth erratically, like mercury.

To take a real-world example, Luttwak believes China has let hubris -- outrageous arrogance that begets self-defeating behavior -- get the best of it. By picking fights with its neighbors simultaneously, he maintains, Beijing risks uniting a hostile coalition that can push back. I concur.

Finally Taleb gets into the act. The keeper of the Black Swan -- the notion that human beings are linear thinkers highly susceptible to the unforeseen -- suggests a remedy for ironic reversals of fortune. Or rather, he suggests how leaders can arrange things so as to benefit from fateful, and unavoidable, turnabouts. His latest theory goes by the ungainly term "antifragile." Taleb points out that we usually assume the opposite of "fragile" is "robust," or "resilient," or some other synonym connoting the ability to withstand unexpected setbacks.

Not so, says this mad hatter of social science. In reality some systems actually benefit from Black Swans. Leaders sort through the wreckage, reflect, and improve. A fragile system shatters when struck a sharp blow; a robust system lumbers on; an antifragile system reaps positive gains. Big, ponderous, centralized organizations tend to be fragile. Decentralized, nimble organizations can recoup their mistakes, which are many but remediable. They adapt to and learn from Black Swans.

Memo to statesmen and commanders: decentralize your organizations, push authority down to junior people, and watch marvels commence.

Bearing in mind the old adage that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, the Pentagon's latest report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China is a worthwhile read. There's nothing especially new or scintillating in the report's review of PLA hardware or doctrine, but there are a few nuggets in its commentary on Chinese strategy. Herewith, my list of the Top 3 Takeaways from the Pentagon's China Report:

3. Windows can slam shut. The report's authors note that Chinese leaders see the early 21st century as a "strategic window of opportunity," and that they're in the habit of publicly promising to reach certain milestones by certain dates. They "routinely emphasize the goal of reaching critical and economic and military benchmarks by 2020" in particular. Now, any negotiations specialist worth his salt will caution political leaders not to commit themselves to definite achievements or timelines. Doing so raises popular expectations. It makes leaders look bad in their constituents' eyes when those constituents compare performance with promise and performance comes up short -- as it often does. Popular sentiment could goad Beijing into unwise actions in stressful times, as the leadership tries to uphold its pledges -- and maintain its credibility as the keeper of China's interests and aspirations. What will it do should the window appear to be closing?

One hopes China has genuinely reconsidered picking a fight with India, a great power with which it shares a long land frontier. Beijing has created headaches aplenty for itself through its conduct in the South China Sea and East China Sea. The last thing it should do is open another axis along which to disperse energy and resources. Why am I venting my spleen? Because last month a Chinese military patrol encamped several kilometers on the Indian side of the "line of actual control," which delineates the de facto border. It's doubtful the intrusion was a mistake. The patrol set up camp 10-20 kilometers on the Indian side of the line, depending on the news source. That's a heckuva navigation error.

The LAC is an artifact of a long-ago conflict, the 1962 Sino-Indian border war. The 1962 defeat is engraved on India's cultural memory. Chinese officials forever bemoan their century of humiliation; you'd think they would foresee the repercussions of dredging up bad memories among the Indian state and society. Yes, I understand neither Beijing nor New Delhi accepts the line of actual control as the precise boundary between the two countries. But that's beside the point, isn't it? The LAC represents a stable status quo. Neither side has any compelling interest in upending it. Yet China seemed intent on doing just that until Sunday, when the two governments agreed to pull back their forces.

Strategic theorists were probably turning over in their graves during the impasse. Given the rock-star status Alfred Thayer Mahan enjoys in China, decision-makers there should understand the perils of waging simultaneous strategic competitions on land and at sea. Mahan concedes that a nation can be a great sea power and a great continental power for awhile, but he also warns that the good times won't roll for long. China has mounted an impressive naval buildup precisely because it quieted disputes along its distended continental periphery. By reopening its territorial quarrel with India, Beijing risks having to redirect resources from sea power back to land defense. Needlessly draining your national treasury is self-defeating behavior.

Carl von Clausewitz expresses this commonsense idea -- conserve and focus your resources by conserving controversies and antagonists -- with his customary analytical rigor. The Prussian sets a high bar for opening new theaters or endeavors. Such an effort should be "exceptionally rewarding" without placing the main theater or enterprise in jeopardy. Before taking on a new commitment, therefore, statesmen and commanders should ensure they command "decisive superiority" at the places that matter the most. Again: don't multiply problems for yourself the way Clausewitz's and Europe's great enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte, did.

Harvard professor Joseph Nye wrote a column not long ago pointing out that Russia and China don't grasp how soft power works. And how! If it keeps unsettling its surroundings, Beijing shouldn't be surprised in the future when nervous giggles -- instead of admiration and amity -- greet its efforts to court foreign audiences. Why Beijing deliberately junked a promising charm offensive ranks as one of the wonders of the age. Hopefully the end to the Himalayan standoff marks a real retrenchment in Chinese strategy -- not just a temporary tactical withdrawal.

Yes, I know this time last week I was admonishing you gloom-and-doom types out there not to take counsel of your fears. Mine is not a universal view. Washington Post pundit George Will jokes that it's good to be a pessimist: you're either right in assuming the worst, or you're pleasantly surprised. I reject that as a general rule for living the good life. Still, a measure of pessimism is prudent if not indispensable when practicing to combat fires, floods, or mass casualties. That's even truer in human conflict.

In a past life the Naval Diplomat served as fire marshal in a major surface warship. In port that meant overseeing the duty fire party. We drilled constantly while responding to any actual emergency that took place, fires and flooding being the most common. While underway it meant making sure ten repair parties were properly outfitted, installed fire-suppression systems were in working order, watertight fittings were actually watertight, you name it. But the job was mostly about the human dimension. Hardware is important. Skillful, motivated people are more important.

Even so, it's easy to fall into bad habits when designing and executing a training regimen. Scripted training projects the trainer's assumptions onto reality; it unwittingly tries to predict the future. But you know what they say about assumptions, while history is extraordinarily unkind to attempts at prophecy. Disasters are predictable only in their unpredictability. Fires erupt and spread in strange ways. People get hurt, potentially depriving a team of its leadership or of specialists in certain functions.

Accordingly, it behooves trainers to hold exercises at odd times, to change the exercise conditions in midstream, and, perhaps most importantly, to simulate casualties among the leadership so that more junior personnel get the opportunity to exercise leadership and improvise under strain. In short, training is about preparing for intrinsically mercurial situations. It's about preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. In short, it demands a pessimistic outlook.

Incidents in which there's an adversary are doubly difficult. Stressful events have a way of defying the best-laid plans, whether through ill fortune, friction, or the intervention of Murphy's Law. In the case of military operations, law enforcement, or counterterrorism, human drive and determination come into play. Natural disasters or equipment failures are indiscriminate; an adversary actively tries to make things worse. An interactive clash of wills is a tough problem because the opponent keeps innovating in his effort to win or cause mayhem. Scripted training does even less good under such circumstances than it does when the "enemy" is an impersonal force like a fire.

Realistic training, then, ought to assume the worst. If the worst doesn't befall us, let's reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised along with George Will.

There's wisdom in science fiction. The conceit behind the reboot of the sci-fi epic Battlestar Galactica was that networking military forces exposes them to disaster unless commanders and weapons designers think ahead to the repercussions should an enemy exploit or break the network. The mechanical Cylons, arch foes of humanity, are able to crush the humans' battle fleet and bombard their home worlds with nukes by insinuating viruses into networked computers. They sever contact between capital ships and their fighter forces, and they shut down the fleet's and planets' defenses. Having lost the habit of fighting without networked systems, human crews make easy pickings for Cylon predators. The Galactica escapes only because its commander, a throwback to a low-tech age, refuses to permit networked computers on board. Any viruses are quickly compartmented and create little mischief.

Sci-fi aside, interrupting networks or other connections among fighting units is nothing new. For instance, my colleague Williamson Murray and his coauthor Alan Millett relate how in 1940 the invading German Army seeped through weak spots in French defenses, leaving "clots" of nearly intact units that nonetheless found themselves isolated and combat-ineffective. French soldiers and their gear remained; the French Army was gone. The same goes for scattered naval bases. There's a symbiosis between bases and the deployed forces they support. Unless a base can provide for itself, it depends on resupply by air or sea. Cut the air and sea routes, and it withers on the vine. That sad fate befell Japanese defenders during the Pacific War, when U.S. forces leapfrogged past their island redoubts. In its effort to cordon off vast swathes of the Western Pacific, Tokyo overtaxed the capacity of its merchant fleet to support forward outposts, and of its navy to protect merchantmen shuttling between rear areas and the defense perimeter.

Lesson: take a skeptical view of military hardware or doctrine that promises to choreograph the actions of ships and aircraft scattered across broad distances, clear away the fog of war, or exempt one side from harm. Sometimes revolutionary innovation delivers; it often doesn't. Part of my objection is philosophical, I suppose. If an innovation claims to strip battle of its essence -- combatants striking blow after blow against one another, inflicting pain and death in pursuit of political gain -- I apply an extraordinarily high standard of proof. That's mainly because the enemy gets a vote. Even successful schemes and technologies can be undone by determined adversaries. As Clausewitz teaches, opponents are not inert masses on which we work our will. They are thinking beings who deploy their own energies and ingenuity to balk our efforts.

That being the case, methinks a fatalistic attitude toward high technology is the healthy attitude. Let's embrace gee-whiz technology. But let's do so while trying to foresee how an opponent might frustrate GPS and other capabilities in combat, and while practicing doing without them. We may have to when it counts.

On Thursday the Naval Diplomat will have the privilege of moderating a roundtable featuring Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, a former commander-in-chief of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force fleet, and Admiral Sureesh Mehta, a former chief of naval staff of the Indian Navy. That's distinguished company for your humble scribe to keep. The panel will take place at this year's China Maritime Studies Institute conference, which is probing "China's Evolving Surface Fleet." That should make for a bracing mix of perspectives on the PLA Navy.

Think about the asymmetries between the two seafaring Asian states. Japan faces China across the congested Yellow Sea, an operating ground for both the JMSDF and PLA Navy fleets. The island state also lies well within striking range of shore-based Chinese sea power, manifest in tactical aircraft, antiship cruise missiles, and antiship ballistic missiles. The PLA Navy surface fleet is a beneficiary of extended-range fire support from Fortress China -- and all mariners know a ship's a fool to fight a fort. The JMSDF, then, executes its daily routine under the shadow of an unseen but imposing arsenal.

Geographic distance affords India time -- sort of. India is remote from China by sea. Ships must undertake tortuous voyages through the Malacca, Sunda, or Lombok straits to reach the Indian Ocean from East Asia (or vice versa), or else detour around the South China Sea rim, or else steam way, way around southern Australia. China also has abundant business to tend to in the China seas, limiting the forces it can spare for South Asia. India thus enjoys some leisure to build up its seagoing capacity, whereas Japan already finds itself in the thick of strategic competition with China. On the other hand, the two continental powers share a contested land frontier. They can apply pressure on one another without even putting ships to sea -- much as Chinese troops have done along the "line of actual control" in recent days. Bilateral encounters, then, can unfold along direct or indirect axes, on land or at sea.

Nor do the differences stop at geography. Japan is an established naval power of decades' standing. The JMSDF boasts a world-class fleet featuring such platforms as light aircraft carriers, Aegis-equipped destroyers, and diesel-electric submarines. India is a sea power on the rise, albeit one with proven capabilities such as naval aviation. Whatever New Delhi's travails with the Admiral Gorshkov/Vikramaditya carrier project and indigenous flattop construction, naval aviation has a long pedigree in the Indian Navy. Indeed, seamanship and tactical excellence appear to be virtues common to Japanese and India seafarers. For now the human factor appears to work in their favor vis-à-vis the PLA Navy. Whether that will remain true as China's navy matures remains to be seen.

And then there's the American factor.  Japan and the United States are the closest of allies, bound together by a security pact that dates from 1951. (One hopes it doesn't retire at 65.) Japan is also home to the U.S. Seventh Fleet, meaning that the PLA Navy must reckon with a combined fleet, not the JMSDF alone. India and the United States have concluded no formal alliance. Nor are they likely to, in light of India's nonaligned tradition, suspicions of the United States that linger from the Cold War, and proprietary attitudes toward the Indian Ocean region. In all likelihood New Delhi would make common cause with Washington if under extreme duress. Still, there's no automatic commitment akin to the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Debating whether to join forces would introduce unknowns during times of crisis, a hothouse environment where uncertainty is high, options narrow, and the pressure to act intensifies.

I could doubtless push this comparison much further but will stop here (for now). America should wish Japan and India well in their seaborne ventures. More than that, it should keep working with them to hone the skills and interoperability crucial to any combined fighting force. That keeps options open for policymakers.

Eeyore is an unworthy metaphor for superpower diplomacy. Of  late, nonetheless, the lovable yet perpetually downcast donkey from E. E. Milne’s classic Winnie the Pooh books and films seems to encapsulate the American national mood. The national-security establishment in particular is in a funk that makes Eeyore look upbeat. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone weeping and gnashing teeth over the budgetary "sequester," I could retire a rich man. The topic came up repeatedly at our Fletcher School roundtable last week, and that gathering was far from atypical on this count. Is some pain in the offing? Sure. But as Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter pointed out recently, sequestration amounts to "temporary budget turbulence imposed by the Congress." Bravo! The cuts imperil neither the strategic pivot to Asia nor other pressing priorities.

Atttitudes have consequences. It’s been said decline is a choice. So is declinism, the deep-seated pessimism that holds that one's day in the sun is slipping irresistibly into nightfall. Indeed, I would say the latter is the deadlier sin by far. Decline implies misallocating resources. It's correctable. Great powers can bounce back. Classical Athens rebuilt its maritime empire scant decades after a crushing defeat at Spartan hands. Great Britain and its Royal Navy reached a nadir in 1781, losing to the French Navy at the Battle of the Virginia Capes, only to smash the same fleet the next year in the West Indies. Britain went on to a triumph over Napoleonic France that ushered in a century of nautical mastery. The U.S. Navy rebounded from the "dead apathy" (Mahan's term) of the post-Civil War years, from the ravages of Depression-era economics, and from the "hollow force" of the post-Vietnam years. Material decline can be put right with grit and determination.

Declinism connotes despair, the sort of spiritual rot that invites real-world repercussions. Thinkers from Clausewitz to Schelling depict national strength as a product of power and resolve. And others have to believe in U.S. power and resolve. Few foreign governments, whether allies, opponents, or bystanders, will take seriously a superpower that's constantly kicking the dirt. Declinism could embolden competitors while prompting allies and friends to look elsewhere for support.

Fortunately, Asians seem cheerier about American staying power than Americans are. Over at Foreign Policy, University of Southern California professor David Kang touts low defense spending figures in Asia as proof that no one fears China. But many Asians do fear China. Try walking down the streets of Manila and asking about Beijing's conduct at Scarborough Shoal, or quiz the man on the streets of Tokyo about the Senkaku Islands. We could just as easily interpret Kang's numbers as a token of confidence in U.S. fortitude and maritime might. Asian governments, that is, see little need to spend more on defense so long as a trustworthy protector remains nearby. If there's a problem, it's that Asians repose excessive confidence in the U.S. military. Discouraging free-riding is a diplomatic chore to which Washington must apply itself. But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

So buck up, all you Eeyores out there.

Editor's Note: Yesterday, The Diplomat in partnership with Tufts University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Fletcher Forum hosted a panel discussion on U.S. Foreign Policy. The following remarks were delivered by our own Naval Diplomat.

The question I’ve been asked to venture a few thoughts on is, can the U.S. military pivot during the sequester? My answer: yes, if it rediscovers habits of mind that come with tight budgets. I am a seaman and view the world through a seaman’s eyes, so my remarks have a saltwater flavor. The good news is that operating on a shoestring used to be second nature for the U.S. Navy. Ours wasn’t a two-ocean navy until World War II, within living memory.

One thing seems clear: if resources are going to shrink, the United States must either shed secondary commitments or keep these commitments through economy-of-force measures. Safe parts of the globe can be entrusted to local allies or to small, low-end military contingents. But here’s a theoretical question for us to ponder: it appears that great powers have a hard time letting go of longstanding commitments, no matter how compelling the logic for doing so appears. Maybe you can help me puzzle out why.

Let me call in some intellectual fire support. Our patron saint at the War College, Clausewitz, teaches that there is no higher or simpler law of strategy than to concentrate resources at decisive places on the map at the decisive time. This is somewhat less true in peacetime, when we have to disperse forces within theaters to perform a variety of missions. But the underlying logic remains. We should match power with purpose in as few theaters as possible, lest we attenuate our military resources into irrelevance.

How do we know when to shed a commitment? Well, Clausewitz offers two thoughts. First, he notes that the value we assign our political goals dictates the magnitude and duration of the effort we put into obtaining those goals. That is, it determines how many lives and resources, and how much treasure we’re prepared to expend on behalf of our objectives, and for how long. The corollary is that when an endeavor starts costing more than it’s worth, we should look for the exit. We should cut the best deal we can and get out.

Second, he sets a rather high bar for undertaking secondary theaters or commitments. Such a theater should pay off disproportionately without risking too much in the theaters that matter the most. Again, we should be choosy about taking on new commitments, and flexible about shucking off old ones. And indeed, top-level strategic guidance seems to abide by Clausewitzian cost/benefit logic. Our 2007 Maritime Strategy, for instance, focuses attention on the Western Pacific and the greater Indian Ocean.

But if you read it closely, it also instructs the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard to remain prepared to seize control of any body of water on the face of the earth—unilaterally if need be. Again, retrenchment is hard. Why is that? Let me offer a few candidate explanations. First, Thucydides depicts fear, honor, and interest as the prime movers that drive human actions. Interests are largely subjective. Consequently, fear and honor color how we measure the importance of interests as well as ideals. As a result, we may fret about losing credibility with allies, or we may simply worry about the unintended consequences of changing the status quo.

Second, powerful constituencies agitate on behalf of particular regions or commitments. For instance, Europe-first is a tradition with a long pedigree in U.S. foreign policy. Entrusting safe zones like Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to local guardians in order to free up resources for Asia is tougher than Clausewitz makes it sound.

Third, allies fear American abandonment. The concept of free-riding has bad connotations, but it says something true about coalition maintenance. If an external provider of security has been there for decades, it’s hard to ask your taxpayers to take on the burden of supplying this international public good—even if you inhabit a region where threats are minimal.

And finally, bureaucratic culture plays some part. The idea of allocating the entire surface of the globe to some regional command or another is engraved on the culture of the U.S. national-security community. Google our Unified Command Plan if you doubt me. Thus a strong bureaucratic interest may lobby against drawing down in what appears to be—to them—a critical place on the map.

What to do? There are no simple answers. As I suggested up front, one thing U.S. practitioners and pundits should do is rediscover an older way of thinking about strategy and forces. To return to a naval example: before the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940, U.S. decision-makers never assumed they can manage events everywhere. Our fleet was big enough to oversee events in the Atlantic, or the Pacific, but not both. That’s why thinkers like Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt worried incessantly about where to station the fleet, and whether to divide it between coasts. They had to think in terms of managing risk. So must we, if our navy keeps shrinking.

Do I wish we had the resources to sustain our current posture as guarantor of the international system? Of course. But Congress makes strategic decisions when it makes budgetary decisions. If lawmakers decide we will have fewer naval and military resources, it only makes sense to cut back on overseas commitments—keeping ends, ways, and means in sync. That will be even more true if climate scientists have it right and a new maritime theater—the Arctic Ocean—opens to shipping in the 2030s. The Arctic washes against our shores, contains natural resources, and will provide convenient shipping routes for part of the year. We can hardly ignore that theater—and it will tax military forces that are already in short supply.

Bottom line, we need to start relearning how to execute a strategy of relative naval and military poverty. And time’s a-wasting!