More More Edwards speech

The last bit of the speech--on fixing corruption in (and modernizing) the military--was fantastic. It's below the fold.

But what about this:

Our military has three important missions: deterring and responding to aggressors, making sure that weak and failing states do not threaten our interests, and maintaining our strategic advantage against major competitors....

A third mission is maintaining our strategic advantage against major competitor states that could do us harm and otherwise threaten our interests.

He should elaborate. Who are these states, and what sort of strategic advantage is he talking about? Is he talking about China? Is he thinking in Cold War-like arms race terms? Probably not on the latter, but it's unclear. And something that important shouldn't be.

Update: As Yglesias notes, during the Q&A, Edwards also had a perfectly smart answer to the question of nuclear proliferation.

"Just as we need to get our national security budget in order, we must also reform our Pentagon budget. The Bush Administration has funneled an enormous amount of taxpayer money to private military contractors, many run by their political cronies. It's no surprise that we have seen rampant overruns in the cost of many weapons programs.

"I will respond to the overruns and cronyism strongly and directly. We need a modern-day equivalent of Harry Truman's famous Truman Committee, which traveled the country in the 1940's to find billions of dollars of waste in military spending. As president, I will direct my Secretary of Defense to launch a comprehensive, tough review of fraud, waste, and abuse—and put an end to it. One example is missile defense and offensive space-based weapons, which are costly and unlikely to work.

"We also need fundamental reform of our privatization policies. Almost half of Defense Department contracts are now awarded on a noncompetitive basis, giving companies like Halliburton with millions of dollars. To end this, I will direct my Secretary of Defense to overhaul the rules governing privatization, to punish mismanagement, and to reform DOD bonus policies to reward performance.

"Finally, I will challenge the military to continue to modernize for a new century. We need to ensure that the U.S. military is the most modern and capable fighting force on the planet. Modernization will also have other benefits. "Greening the military" will increase innovation, save millions of dollars, reduce reliance on vulnerable supply lines, and help America lead the fight against global warming."