Conventional wisdom is that after previous conflicts the U.S. has cut defense spending too much. As President Obama said in 2012: “We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past – after World War II, after Vietnam – when our military policy was left ill prepared for the future.” In the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia historian Melvyn Leffler, a Cold War specialist, would beg to differ.