Measuring the Spin of Our Pivot

I've said that our pivot to the Pacific is more style than substance and that the actual amount of forces being focused on the Pacific is fairly small. Further, defense spending cutbacks might leave us with less in the Pacific post-pivot than we had before. Amazingly, the Brookings Institution has my back on this assessment:

In round numbers, the rebalancing may be in the process of swinging $10 billion to $12 billion or a bit more in annual Pentagon expenditures to the Asia-Pacific region.

Mind you, the flourish of highlighting our pivot combined with what should be a no-brainer on getting our Air Force and Navy fighting jointly in the Pacific (Air-Sea Battle) does serve a useful purpose of convincing our allies and neutrals that we won't be pushed out of the western Pacific by China.

So I don't dismiss the pivot. But let's not fool ourselves about what the pivot means in concrete terms.