This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 16, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. The United States

once consciously avoided entangling alliances around the globe.

Ben Friedman, a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato

Institute, says the United States should return to its strategy of restraint, cut the military

and quit making dubious promises to defend various regions of the world.

What does a strategy of restraint entail?

Several things.

Number one, it entails a lessening of our overseas alliances.

So we've learned during the Cold War that, or we think we learn to,

that our security depends on defending major industrial

regions of the world from something in the Cold War that was the Soviet Union

now it's rather unclear what it is China maybe a resurgent Russia, something like that.

So under a strategy of restraint, the United States would say to Japan and its allies in Europe,

its friends in Europe, that they're on their own, that they can be responsible for their own defense, that they're rich nations,

and that we're not going to tell them what to do,

but we're going to withdraw our troops from their shores and allow them to take care of themselves.

Korea also, we would withdraw our troops from Korea because Korea's GDP is 20 times,

South Korea's GDP is 20 times bigger than North Korea's GDP and its Army, South Korea's Army is far

more than capable of taking care of itself. Also under restraint we would lessen

our proclivity to get involved in civil wars so people talk about fixing failed states, nation building.

We would try to avoid that because we think those are basically problems of politics, foreign

politics and not problems that the United States has the answer to.

...