I love to say I told you so. 
TPM Barnett says that the US spends roughly half of the world's money in absolute terms, on military spending. That is to say 1.4 Trillion is expended per year, the US spends 700 Billion. That's a mere 3-4% of GDP.
Adding subtly to my geopolitical sophistication are two of TPM Barnett's terms, Functional Core and Non-Integrating Gap.
In this is a subtle change between older concepts like First World, Second World and Third World. In fact, it would be interesting to remind ourselves where those ideas came from in the first place. In addition, I have used 'Internal Third World' and 'Internal Second World' to make class distinctions between Americans, but there is a presumption of mobility within those classes.
Similarly, Barnett's Functional Core and Non-Integrating Gap represent some measure of national will int integrate into the global economy. Indeed we could think of the global economy as the planetary mainstream, except that it is perhaps not a popular majority of the human population. More importantly membership in the Functional Core represents the willingness of nations to be integrated and therefore share values, trade, culture with international movers and shakers. Membership represents a willingness to give up control of certain privileges heretofore assigned to national sovereignty. Nations are still Westphalian actors, but their ability and willingness to share responsibilities are more important.
Our interests going forward militarily then are to defend the global status quo and this is inherently a function of the values of nations and their orientation to globalism, thus core versus non-integrated. The US obviously fits in big time, and we can afford it.
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