| 23 October 2008
I became familiar with the work of Dr. Andrew Bacevich about a year and half ago - not knowing this was after the recent death of his son, First Lt. Andrew Bacevich Jr., while serving in Iraq. Despite his staunch opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Bacevich felt that he and his son were both “doing their duty” to the best of their ability. Dr. Bacevich is a graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran. He earned his PhD from Princeton and retired from the army as a Lt. Colonel. He is currently a professor of International Relations at Boston University. His new book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, released just as the current economic crisis was coming into the public view, is more poignant now than anyone could have imagined.
Broken down into five parts - Introduction: “War Without Exits”, Chapter 1: “The Crisis of Profligacy”, Chapter 2: “The Political Crisis”, Chapter 3: “The Military Crisis”, and Conclusion: “The Limits of Power” - The Limits of Power is a surprisingly short book. Don’t be fooled by its length (less than 200 pages), this book packs more than a few punches. Building on themes he laid out in his book The New American Militarism, Bacevich holds nothing back in diagnosing the problems that have long plagued the nation but are only now manifesting themselves to the public.
Those looking for a simple “Bush-bashing” text will be severely disappointed. Bacevich in no way lets Bush off the hook, but he understands that the problems we are currently facing were not caused by our current president - though his policies, foreign policy in particular, have done much to exacerbate them.
Profligacy and Power
Bacevich’s opening salvo decries the “empire of consumption” that the American Republic has become. While there is no definitive point where the turn was made and freedom became synonymous with self-gratification, Bacevich points to the 1980 election as a pivotal point. It was preceding his race against Ronald Reagan that President Jimmy Carter made what came to be known as his “Malaise Speech.” In this address to the nation Carter laid out a scenario where the U.S. government and people both needed to engage in “belt-tightening” - that we could no longer continue to spend the way we have been either as a government or as a society. Reagan, who had so thoroughly trounced Carter in their 1980 electoral contest, countered by giving the American people the impression that “Credit has no limits, and the bills will never come due” (36). Bacevich believes, “No doubt Reagan spoke from the heart, but his real gift was a canny knack for telling Americans what most of them wanted to hear” (38).
The Free World’s “victory” over Communism in the late 1980s/early 1990s only served to accelerate this process. “The collapse of the Soviet Union appeared to offer an opportunity to expand and perpetuate that empire, creating something akin to a global Pax Americana” (2). Flush with its triumph over the “Evil Empire” America did not cash in its “Peace Dividend” - it did not, as former United Nations Ambassador and neoconservative Godmother Jeane Kirkpatrick suggested, become once again a “normal nation in a normal time.” The 1990s saw Operation Desert Storm serve not merely as a means to expel Saddam Hussein’s ill-considered occupation of Kuwait, but also as an invitation to President Bill Clinton’s administration to intervene wherever it saw fit and extend America’s “benign hegemony.” Bacevich is quick to remind us, though, that, “Even in the best of circumstances, imperial policing is a demanding task, requiring not only considerable acumen but also an abundance of determination” (2).
During the 1990s “The institution nominally referred to as the Department of Defense didn’t actually do defense; it specialized in power projection” (3). As we continue to spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on “defense” we are perhaps less safe than we have ever been in terms of real security. The money spent in the Pentagon’s budget is not dedicated to protecting the American people but instead perpetuating the idea that the U.S. military is the toughest kid on the block. It is reflexively accepted that the United States must spend as much as the rest of the world combined to keep its citizens safe. Bacevich cites the idea of “Missile Defense” - derisively referred to as “Star Wars” during the 1980s because of its fanciful proposal to use space-based lasers to deflect ballistic missiles - as the ultimate example of the political establishment’s desire to provide the illusion of invulnerability. He says,
“Star Wars, in short, introduced into mainstream politics the proposition that Americans could be truly safe only if the United States enjoyed something akin to permanent global military supremacy” (41).
9/11 and Fighting Evil
Bacevich says, “Prior to World War II, [Reinhold] Niebuhr wrote, ‘No simple victory of good over evil in history is possible’” (81). But after the attacks of September 11, 2001 a simple victory of “Good” over “Evil” was exactly what the Bush Administration proposed be the ultimate purpose of the nation. The Global War on Terror has become a global war against cartoon “evildoers” instead of the actual perpetrators of the deadliest terrorist attack in history. With two wars being fought at a cost of nearly $13 billion a week, Bacevich lays out exactly how this idea is neither realistic or remotely possible.
Of course, this has not been a syndrome confined merely to the Bush Administration and its neoconservative backers. Liberal internationalists are just as keen on the idea the America is “the greatest force for good the world has ever seen.” Bacevich says, “For Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as for George W. Bush, the actions of the United States during World War II and ever since refute that claim” (81).
The victory over Hitler’s Germany - a leader and a state most would agree was evil - has enshrined in the American national myth the idea that America’s military can and should destroy every monster hiding under the world’s collective beds. This, of course, is a foolish and dangerous delusion. What people seem to forget is that the United States military was allied with the military of a leader who was, at the very least, as evil as Hitler - Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin. But that fact does not stand in the way of those looking to spend the money of America’s troops and money of its citizens chasing the next would-be “Hitler” wherever they believe him to be.
Military Overstretch
The fight against evil and the determinant of American power for many has been the United States military. But, Bacevich tells us, “If the global war on terror has produced one undeniable conclusion, it is this: Estimates of U.S. military capabilities have turned out to be wildly overstated” (126). He goes over the supposed lessons that the military will learn from the seemingly inevitable failure of the Global War on Terror. These lessons, though, will only be germane to the failures of the last war and not preparations for or prevention of the next. Will a counterinsurgency be the next battle the American military must face? That is still to be seen, but, as Bacevich notes, if it is then it is likely that no lesson has been learned. Counterinsurgency campaigns are those looking to subdue an indigenous population - i.e. imperial wars.
The American political establishment has relied on its military for all sorts of tasks in no way related to defending the American people. It has come to be seen as a means to spread America’s goodness around the globe. Bacevich believes,
“Confidence in military prowess both reflected and reinforced a post-Cold War confidence in the universality of American values. Harnessed together, they made a seemingly unstoppable one-two punch” (127).
Limits are Necessary
Limits of Power is a must-read. It is incumbent upon the American people to arm themselves with the knowledge of what is happening to their country and what they can do. Recognizing our limits is important and is ultimately the first step. Dr. Bacevich sums it up neatly saying,
“To hard-core nationalists and neoconservatives, the acceptance of limits suggests retrenchment or irreversible decline. In fact, the reverse is true. Acknowledging the limits of American power is a precondition for stanching the losses of recent decades and for preserving the hard-won gains of earlier generations going back to the founding of the Republic” (176).
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