A large number of prominent international security scholars (mostly political scientists) have signed an open letter to the Deficit Reduction Commission advocating budget cuts at the Defense Department. The whole letter is worth reading and doesn’t shy away from offering specific examples of where savings can be achieved without compromising national security. Here is the key conclusion:
[..] fiscal realities call on us to strike a new balance between investing
in military power and attending to the fundamentals of national
strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe savings in
defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power and
how, why, and where we put it to use.
There is an event today at Cato (open to the public) that further discusses these issues.