Defense secretary Robert Gates is expected to step down next month. In what may have been his final policy speech last week, he leveled a warning to Congress and the White House — deep cuts in the Pentagon’s budget will mean both a smaller military, and a diminished U.S. role around the world. In a column at ForeignPolicy.com, Stephen Walt argued, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: “We should be focusing a lot more attention on long-term capacity building than fighting costly wars in places that don’t matter very much (like Afghanistan).”

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