WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is preparing top-to-bottom changes, including a push to limit the growth of military pay, as it adjusts to steep budget cuts and the winding down of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday.

In a speech on U.S. defense priorities, Hagel said that as the Obama administration preserves the military's strength it will make it a less prominent tool of foreign policy. That's not a new goal but one Hagel said is more achievable now that the U.S. is ending more than a decade of foreign conflict and the public is weary of war.

He sketched a future focused on investments in space and cyber technologies, missile defense and a strategy that assumes the world will not soon resolve challenges posed by terrorism and "heavily armed" states like North Korea.

He advocated a more humble U.S. approach to foreign policy.

"We must also make a far better effort to understand how the world sees us, and why," he said. "We must listen more." Cautioning against national arrogance, the former Republican senator from Nebraska and Vietnam combat veteran said "the insidious disease of hubris can undo America's great strengths. We also must not fall prey to hubris," nor to the idea of American decline.

Hagel said that since he took office in February he has been intent on finding ways to adapt the nation's defense priorities to the realities created by a rancorous budget debate in Washington that has undermined the Pentagon's ability to plan ahead. He warned of the impasse's dangers, including the prospect of nearly $500 billion in defense cuts over 10 years as a result of the forced budget reductions known as sequestration. And he noted that this would be in addition to $487 billion in cuts already in motion.