Today marks the release of a new report that advocates cutting a little over 10% of the country's post-World War II record military budget. The report, A Unified Security Budget for the United States, proposes shifting at least half of the savings from reductions in Pentagon spending into diplomacy, economic development, fighting the effects of climate change, securing nuclear weapons against theft, and other measures that are far more likely to make us safe than buying more bombs, tanks, or missiles. The remaining funds could be devoted to domestic public investments or deficit reduction, as the political process dictates (note: I am member of the task force that produced the report). At a time when climate change, entrenched poverty, nuclear terrorism or epidemics of disease put more lives at risk than conventional military conflicts, this kind of spending shift makes good sense.

But over at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is pursuing a different kind of spending shift.

Gates's spending shift -- wrongly described as a "cut" in Pentagon spending in most press accounts -- involves cutting overhead and reforming wasteful practices to free up funds to spend more on weapons and weapons research. Although Secretary Gates himself has pointed to the United States's huge margin of superiority in key areas such as the size of our Navy and the numbers of advanced combat aircraft in our inventory, he's not prepared to give up one dollar more than he has to at a time when Pentagon spending is under increased scrutiny. As Gates noted in a recent speech at President Eisenhower's birthplace, Abilene, Kansas, "the gusher has been turned off," and the days of large and predictable annual increases in Pentagon spending are no more. That's a given, but we should be taking it one step further -- cutting military spending and investing in more effective ways of defending the country.

What makes more sense? Spending billions on unproven Star Wars anti-missile systems or increasing funds needed to secure "loose nukes" and bomb-making materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists?

What makes more sense? Building another C-17 transport plane that even the Pentagon doesn't want, or adding over 1,000 new Foreign Service Officers to our understaffed diplomatic corps?

What makes more sense? Spending billions on the dangerous and unneeded V-22 Osprey aircraft or doubling U.S. support for peacekeeping operations designed to keep conflicts from restarting in areas of tension?

There are many more comparisons where these came from. But the underlying question is whether America should continue to "lead with the military" in its relations with the rest of the world, or pursue a more balanced policy in which violence is truly a last resort, and the U.S. military isn't expected to go anywhere, fight any battle, and be spread across hundreds of bases in most of the countries in the world. But even short of a major policy change -- a new answer to the question of what the U.S. military is actually for -- there are plenty of funds available to invest in non-military tools of security. Of the over $700 billion that will be spent for military purposes this year, only about one-quarter involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that leaves hundreds of billions that can be scrutinized, rethought, reformed and reduced in favor of spending on more useful undertakings.

As Robert Gates said in another context, "our civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been undermanned and underfunded for far too long." Maybe it's time for his department to chip in some money to change that untenable situation.