Here’s a proposition: The death of Osama bin Laden brings a moment to talk about something other than threats — not because they don’t exist, but because for the country to see and speak of nothing else is mortally dangerous.

Col. Mark Mykleby, a senior advisor on strategy to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Capt. Wayne Porter of the Navy wrote a paper calling on the United States to focus on social policies, education and sustainability.

So listen for a moment to two military strategists, working at the highest level of government, as they turn to the subject of leaky air-conditioners in government buildings in New York. “Poorly fitted air-conditioners cost New York City 130 to 180 million dollars a year in extra energy consumption,” one of the strategists, Capt. Wayne Porter of the Navy, said Tuesday. “They generate 370,525 extra tons of carbon dioxide.”

Suppose, he says, you fixed them. And then you got the 40 states that waste the most electricity to match the 10 most efficient. The likely benefits are no surprise — less foreign oil, cost savings, job creation, decreased pollution.

Now follow that thread to “A National Strategic Narrative,” a paper written by Captain Porter and Col. Mark Mykleby of the Marines, which calls on the United States to see that it cannot continue to engage the world primarily with military force, but must do so as a nation powered by the strength of its educational system, social policies, international development and diplomacy, and its commitment to sustainable practices in energy and agriculture.

“We must recognize that security means more than defense,” they write. After ending the 20th century as the world’s most powerful country, “we failed to recognize that dominance, like fossil fuel, is not a sustainable form of energy.”

The two officers each have more than 20 years of service, and now work as special strategic assistants to Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their paper, which is not an official policy document, was published last month by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, and is available on the center’s Web site, wilsoncenter.org.

The killing of Bin Laden demonstrated a commitment to justice, Captain Porter said. “It was also a cathartic event for thousands of people around the world who have lost relatives to this sociopath,” he said. Yet both officers cautioned that the death of one man could easily be overestimated.

“When Saddam Hussein was discovered in his spider hole, everyone thought, ‘Hallelujah, the war is over,’ and it was really just beginning,” Colonel Mykleby said Tuesday by phone from his home in South Carolina. “The big, bad daddies, taking them out — it’s not the answer. It’s part of it. The job is not done yet. There are still bad guys who are out there, and it’s going to be part of the fabric of our world. This is a critical moment to talk about a narrative that isn’t just focused on threats.”

In their paper, the officers argue that the United States has to move from “containment” — the foreign policy established after World War II to limit the expansion and influence of the Soviet Union — to what they call “sustainment” or sustainability.

The first priority, they write, should be “intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth.” They go on to say that the country’s security may require “a hard look at the distribution of our treasure,” arguing that the historic focus on defense and protectionism has meant the neglect of international development and diplomacy. And with technology piercing the isolation of nations, they write that the United States has a stake in helping countries held down by illiteracy and poverty.

Finally, they write, the world population is projected to reach nine billion by midcentury and the country must face the demands for water, food, land and energy.

Colonel Mykleby said, “I was at the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, and said, ‘It’s a strategic liability to keep subsidizing our agribusiness model the way it is for any number of reasons — the decay of our soil, the health of our citizens, because our food is not healthy any more, etc., etc.’ ”

“Remarkably, it was very well received in the middle of corn country.”

Well before Bin Laden was killed, much of what he stood for had withered in the Arab-North Africa spring, Colonel Mykleby said. Grass-roots movements in Egypt and Tunisia made the case that they did not have to choose between police-state autocracies and seventh-century theocracies. The revolutionaries showed the power of nonmilitary strength and created a world of possibilities. It amounted to a rejection of the fundamentalists.

“Those are the values that caused them to attack New York,” Captain Porter said. “New York represents so much more than revenge, which is what you would have gotten somewhere else in the world, maybe. New York represents hope and modernity. It represents promise.”