The QDR seems to not have a great deal to say about China. This the most extended discussion that I can seem to find, on page 60:

China’s growing presence and influence in regional and global economic and security affairs is one of the most consequential aspects of the evolving strategic landscape in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. In particular, China’s military has begin to develop new roles, missions, and capabilities in support of its growing regional and global interests, which could enable it to play a more substantial and constructive role in international affairs. The United States welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater global role. The United States welcomes the positive benefits that can accrue from greater cooperation. However, lack of transparency and the nature of China’s military development and decision-making process raise legitimate questions about its future conduct and intentions within Asia and beyond. Our relationship with China must therefore be multidimensional and undergirded by a process of enhancing confidence and reducing mistrust in a manner that reinforces mutual interest. The United States and China should sustain open channels of communication to discuss disagreements in ordert o manage and ultimately reduce the risks of conflict that are inherent in any relationshop as broad and complex as that shared by these two nations.

I think that’s all easy enough to accept as far as it goes. But I think it also illustrates that for all the vastness of its budget, the Department of Defense has a limited relevance to the international relationships that really matter. When you think about the impact of China on the lives of Americans, the complicated interplay between trade flows, budget deficits, and currency value is far, far, far more significant than this business about how China’s defense budget isn’t fully transparent. But that’s all the Treasury Department’s problem.

This in turn highlights the fact that it seems pointless to try to draw a budgetary distinction between “security” and “non-security” agencies. Our interests around the world are inherently connected to the impact of the world on events inside our borders.

I think John Boehner has a reasonable take on the question of bipartisanship:

Despite White House overtures for congressional Republicans to work with Democrats, the top GOP official in the House said Sunday that such opportunities are limited.

“There aren’t that many places where we can come together,” House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”

Republicans were elected to stand by their principles, and those principles are different than the “leftist proposals” offered by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, Boehner said.

I think that’s right, and it’s reflected in the fact that the US House of Representative is a fairly well-functioning legislative body. It’s a body organized around two major political parties that outline competing, somewhat coherent agendas that command large-scale support from their own members and little support from the opposition. Some issues scramble the coalitions and leave the door open to large-scale bipartisanship, but the bulk of the legislative terrain consists of systematic disagreement on important issues. There are biannual elections at which the American people put either one party or the other in charge, and having won an election the winning party attempts to govern in a way that maintains the confidence of the voters.

It’s a perfectly good system. Sometimes a majority sees its margins trimmed (1996, 1998, 2000) other times it sees its margin enhanced (2002, 2008) and sometimes a majority is replaced by a rival majority (1994, 2006) and the House’s policy agenda changes accordingly. Boehner’s ideas are different from Nancy Pelosi’s ideas, and if he wants his ideas to prevail he needs to assemble a majority prepared to support him. That’s his responsibility as an opposition leader, whereas Pelosi’s responsibility is to frame a successful governing agenda that maintain’s the public’s faith in her co-partisans. It’s a system where power aligns with responsibility, and where those with power are held accountable for their use of it.

The Senate, by contrast, is a mess.

The final version of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review is now out and about on the Internet for your reading pleasure. The idea of the QDR is that it both serves as a statement of intent, indicating what high-level DOD policymakers tend to pursue in terms of budget objectives and resource-allocation, and also that it functions as high-level guidance for career personnel as to what their bosses want everyone to do.

Robert Farley makes the case for why these debates are worth delving into. I’m with Farley that the primary change in overall strategy seems to be that they’ve dropped the totalizing conceit of a “Long War” and not really replaced it with anything. I think that’s the right call. It’s good to have a unifying strategic theme, but it’s not at all good to be so devoted to coming up with one that you embrace an idea that doesn’t make sense. The fact of the matter is that the US Department of Defense is routinely asked to engage in a rather miscellaneous set of undertakings. My preference would be to pare back this set of undertakings to something more modest and coherent, but insofar as that’s not on the table at the moment it’s better to try to be clear-sighted rather than delusional.

In brass-tacks terms, this all seems to be very good news for people who make helicopters.

More details are emerging:

The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which begins in October, will identify the winners and losers behind Mr. Obama’s proposal for a three-year freeze of a portion of the budget. Many programs at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department are in line for increases, along with the Census Bureau.

Among the losers would be some public works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers, two historic preservation programs and NASA’s mission to return to the Moon, which would be ended as the administration seeks to reorient the space program to use private companies for launchings. Mr. Obama is recycling some proposals from last year, including one to end redundant payments for land restoration at abandoned coal mines; Western lawmakers blocked it in 2009. Mr. Obama will propose a total of $20 billion in such savings for the coming fiscal year.

Based on what we’ve heard so far, Obama’s sense of priorities within the budget appears sensible to me. The OMB team seems to be doing a good job of identifying which programs are worth spending money on and which have lower value. But this raises the question of how the specifics will relate to the overall freeze. If it turns out that “western lawmakers” once again block cuts in “reduntant payments for land restoration at abandoned coal mines” is the White House going to pare back its planned increases in NIH programs? That, it seems to me, would be very bad policy. The case for an overall freeze is weak in macroeconomic terms. Cutting bad programs is fine, but given the current economic situation funding good ones is more important.

From an interesting NYT piece on JD Salinger:

Depending on one’s point of view, he was either a crackpot or the American Tolstoy, who had turned silence itself into his most eloquent work of art.

Tolstoy was a great novelist, but wasn’t he also a crackpot?