Greg Mitchell says that a big Obama win will bring a marked shift to the left. That is common sense. But there will be no sea change in US foreign policy. Obama's advisers and words indicate that he is a typical liberal internationalist, one who agrees with Madeline Albright and Robert Kagan that ours is an indispensable nation. (I think what Charles De Gaulle said about indispensable men applies to nations). What we're probably in for is a kinder, gentler hegemony, as Andrew Bacevich points out.

Obama has said nice things about realists like George Kennan. That is cause for hope. But Kennan would not agree with Obama's claim that counterterrorism requires ending "hopelessness" around the world -- a plan likely to go about as well as George Bush's effort to end evil. I'm positive that Kennan would not agree with Obama about the need to extend NATO's defense guarantees to Georgia and Ukraine. Kennan would reject Obama's claim that US interests are at stake in Sudan's civil war.

Obama, in other words, is not going to depart from the bipartisan US foreign policy consensus that says that US interests require that we manage world affairs. He is not going to make our military budget a "defense" budget in the true sense of that adjective. Which is why his administration is unlikely to take up Barney Frank's call to cut the military budget by 25%. As I wrote earlier in this week, you don't get there by cutting the procurement budget, as Frank suggested. You need to cut force structure. That requires cutting commitments; doing less.

I'm glad to see that Naomi Wolf shares the Cato Institute's long-standing concern about the slow death of Posse Comitatus. The danger, however, is not a coup or overt suppression of liberty. Our military's commitment to civilian rule prevents these outcomes, even if people like John Yoo espouse a constitutional theory that says the President can do virtually anything during a war. The danger, instead, is a creeping authoritarian ethos that hands more and more tasks to the military.

I recently attended a luncheon here in Washington with General Victor Renuart, the head of Northern Command. He commands the troops that Naomi mentioned. Reunart ran through Northcom's activities -- stopping drug runners and refugees, protecting computer networks from hackers, helping clean up after storms, and more. No one there, other than me, expressed any concern about whether these were appropriate tasks for the military, let alone the federal government. No one questioned whether Northcom should even exist.