Navy, Offshore Balancing, and The National Interest

Here's an interesting post on The National Interest blog.  Benjamin Friedman is a Cato guy, so the CONCEPT of offshore balancing is obviously of interest to him.  Many libertarians see offshore balancing as THE answer to our nation's foreign policy challenges, though a precise and agreed upon definition of the term is problematic.  Some offshore balancers wish to remain engaged in the world--albeit with a much more shallow land-based footprint.  Some are flat out neo-isolationists.  The devil is in the details, and CNO's adoption of the terminology "offshore option" is a wise one given the muddled meaning of offshore balancing.  My sense is that in the strictly academic community, there is a relative consensus on what OB is as a grand strategy, and its maritime instantiation is close to what CNO espouses.  When the DC thinktank community attempts to apply OB, it starts to become more isolationist.

Be that as it may, despite Mr. Friedman's factual error (reference to the "...recently retired Chief Naval Officer..") his link-fueled assessment of the politics of service advocacy is worth reading. 

Bryan McGrath