I wrote earlier about American defense policy here.  We saw there, and in my series of foreign policy posts, what war looks like from foreign and defense policy perspectives.  At this point, it’s useful to ask what defense policy principles we need to guide our defense behaviors and our force structure.  Defense policy itself drives, ultimately, defense strategy, and this drives, ultimately, force structure.  (I’ll not get into tactics in this series of posts; although strategy certainly does drive tactics as well as force structure.)  In this post, then, I’d like to get into some specific defense principles that I consider critical to our safety and future as they drive our defense policies.  In a later post, I’ll suggest some defense policies that both implement these principles and that give sound, concrete guidance to our defense strategies, and after that I’ll suggest some necessary force structures.

With this post, I continue a short series consisting of my analyses of the Republican candidates for the nomination for President.  To recap, I’m limiting my discussions to three candidates: Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry.  The structure of this series consists of a collection of posts concerning what I don’t like about the candidates and then a series of what I do like about them.  I’ll conclude with my endorsement of a single candidate.  At this point I’m in the series of what I like, and here I’ll talk about what I like about Governor Rick Perry.