President Barack Obama survived a tenuous economy and a toxic political environment to win re-election in 2012, but the bitter partisan divide in Washington survived as well. So did the countrys huge fiscal deficit. in this, the latest in a long line of Brookings Institution analyses of the defense budget, Michael OHanlon considers how best to balance national security and fiscal responsibility during a period of prolonged economic stress and political acrimony—even as the world remains unsettled, from Afghanistan to Iran to Syria to the western Pacific region. OHanlon explains why the large defense cuts that would result from prolonged sequestration or from deficit-reduction projects such as the Bowles-Simpson plan are too deep. But the bulk of his book represents an effort to look for greater savings than the Obama administrations 2012 proposals would allow. Praise for the work of Michael OHanlon _The Opportunity:_ ""A practical and hard-headed analysis of how another Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty might be achieved""— _Financial Times __The Science of War:_ ""Timely, thoughtful, and full of insight. A signal contribution to the field.""—General David S. Petraeus, U.S. Army _A Skeptics Case for Nuclear Disarmament: _""OHanlon expertly unravels the myriad threads of the often abstruse disputes about nuclear weapons and disarmament.""— _New York Times Book Review_