America’s chattering classes seem at last to have awoken to the fact that the U.S. military ain’t what it used to be. Even the New York Times allows that “the Pentagon’s proposals to reduce the Army to pre-World War II levels” could “seem unsettling to a nation that prides itself on having the world’s most capable military.” It could also unsettle the world, and most of all those allies who rely on the United States to keep a variety of dangers at bay.

Indeed, the real news in last week’s budget announcements from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is that it’s finally news. After all, this is hardly the first time Barack Obama has cut military spending. When this president moved into the White House, he inherited a military that George W. Bush belatedly had expanded to conduct the Iraq surge and whose budget, outside of war costs, had made only the smallest dent in the drawdowns and the “procurement holiday” of the Clinton era. However, instead of addressing the “hollow buildup” of the Bush years, President Obama, with Robert Gates at the Pentagon’s helm, proceeded to cut some $400 billion more from the military’s planned spending—all of this coming before the Budget Control Act (BCA) and its nearly trillion dollars in mandated cuts.