What do you think?
Rate this book
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War
In this provocative book, Andrew Bacevich warns of a dangerous dual obsession that has taken hold of Americans, conservatives, and liberals alike. It is a marriage of militarism and utopian ideology--of unprecedented military might wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. This mindset, the author warns, invites endless war and the ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy. It promises not to perfect but to pervert American ideals and to accelerate the hollowing out of American democracy. As it alienates others, it will leave the United States increasingly isolated. It will end in bankruptcy, moral as well as economic, and in abject failure.
With The New American Militarism, which has been updated with a new Afterword, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War. Various groups in American society--soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture--came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s. The upshot, acutely evident in the aftermath of 9/11, has been a revival of vast ambitions and certainty, this time married to a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges us to restore a sense of realism and a sense of proportion to U.S. policy. He proposes, in short, to bring American purposes and American methods--especially with regard to the role of the military--back into harmony with the nation's founding ideals.
With The New American Militarism, which has been updated with a new Afterword, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War. Various groups in American society--soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture--came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s. The upshot, acutely evident in the aftermath of 9/11, has been a revival of vast ambitions and certainty, this time married to a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges us to restore a sense of realism and a sense of proportion to U.S. policy. He proposes, in short, to bring American purposes and American methods--especially with regard to the role of the military--back into harmony with the nation's founding ideals.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
51 people are currently reading
2003 people want to read
About the author
Andrew J. Bacevich
35 books368 followersAndrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He is the author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism and The New American Militarism. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. He is the recipient of a Lannan Award and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
April 20, 2017
Bacevich provides real insight into the relationship we have with our military; which for most Americans is only soundbites and "thanks for your service". I like to respond "thanks for paying your taxes" except that doesn't work so well any more.
Just as Kennedy was bamboozled with the non-existent "missile gap" we are being sold a bill of goods on what we really need to protect our country. There is a big difference between protecting our country and protecting our "interests" which in many cases are corporate interests.. Bacevich is a much more lucid version of Smedley Butler, the most highly decorated Marine a long time ago who fought in many banana wars.
I highly recommend this book, especially for those who are rah-rah for other people to go and fight.
Just as Kennedy was bamboozled with the non-existent "missile gap" we are being sold a bill of goods on what we really need to protect our country. There is a big difference between protecting our country and protecting our "interests" which in many cases are corporate interests.. Bacevich is a much more lucid version of Smedley Butler, the most highly decorated Marine a long time ago who fought in many banana wars.
I highly recommend this book, especially for those who are rah-rah for other people to go and fight.
July 4, 2012
Excellent. As a sequel to his previous work American Empire, written in light of the Iraq invasion and its disastrous aftermath, this is a passionate indictment of a dangerous trend in American culture, society, and government. Bacevich only touches lightly on the analogy between the U.S. and Rome, to which others have addressed whole books. However, when he does he makes the critical point that the transformation from a citizen-soldier military in which all classes of society served to the All-Volunteer Force which has existed since the end of the Vietnam war strongly resembles the change in the Roman army that accompanied Rome's devolution from republic to empire.
My only real beef with this book: as a former career Army officer, Bacevich at times has a parochial view and slights or completely overlooks the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. An example is when he states that West Point is to the American military as the Vatican is to the Roman Catholic Church; that view will no doubt come as a surprise to the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, which have their own parallel academies at Annapolis, MD, Colorado Springs, CO, and New London, CT respectively; and I certainly don't recall West Point getting much attention - let alone reverence - in the Marine Corps during my twenty years in that branch, which seems to get along nicely without a four-year academy of its own (although a number of Annapolis grads choose the Marines rather than the Navy, and the Marine Corps University at Quantico provides both entry-level officer training and grad-school-level courses.)
Regardless, the author does a solid job of tracing the development and cultivation of a strong militaristic streak in our country by the officer corps, the evangelical religious movement, and the leaders of the political right after Vietnam, each for their own reasons. He goes on to analyze the results in terms of our foreign policy and growing inclination to treat military intervention as our first response to problems abroad rather than as the last resort to which our leaders give lip service, and the resulting alienation of both ideological enemies and allies as well as the growing isolation of the military from mainstream U.S. society. In the best tradition of military initiative, he follows his rigorous presentation of a problem he believes threatens some of our most important values and traditions with a list of proposed solutions and his rationale for each.
A lot of what Andrew Bacevich wrote in this book several years ago has only become clearer and more true in the intervening time. I'd recommend this for any reader concerned with civil liberties within America, our relationship with the rest of the world, and the likely longer-term consequences (political, civil, and economic) of staying on our present course.
My only real beef with this book: as a former career Army officer, Bacevich at times has a parochial view and slights or completely overlooks the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. An example is when he states that West Point is to the American military as the Vatican is to the Roman Catholic Church; that view will no doubt come as a surprise to the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, which have their own parallel academies at Annapolis, MD, Colorado Springs, CO, and New London, CT respectively; and I certainly don't recall West Point getting much attention - let alone reverence - in the Marine Corps during my twenty years in that branch, which seems to get along nicely without a four-year academy of its own (although a number of Annapolis grads choose the Marines rather than the Navy, and the Marine Corps University at Quantico provides both entry-level officer training and grad-school-level courses.)
Regardless, the author does a solid job of tracing the development and cultivation of a strong militaristic streak in our country by the officer corps, the evangelical religious movement, and the leaders of the political right after Vietnam, each for their own reasons. He goes on to analyze the results in terms of our foreign policy and growing inclination to treat military intervention as our first response to problems abroad rather than as the last resort to which our leaders give lip service, and the resulting alienation of both ideological enemies and allies as well as the growing isolation of the military from mainstream U.S. society. In the best tradition of military initiative, he follows his rigorous presentation of a problem he believes threatens some of our most important values and traditions with a list of proposed solutions and his rationale for each.
A lot of what Andrew Bacevich wrote in this book several years ago has only become clearer and more true in the intervening time. I'd recommend this for any reader concerned with civil liberties within America, our relationship with the rest of the world, and the likely longer-term consequences (political, civil, and economic) of staying on our present course.
May 9, 2016
An eye-opening book, particularly as it debunks the myth that our military is just enough for defense (we spend as much as the next nine countries combined) and the propaganda that we Americans only fight when we have to (we -- both political parties -- love military might).
The chapters on the aftermath of Vietnam and its neoconservative effects on the American military, on the conflation of "values-based conflict" and "interests-based conflict", on the development of Bush as "warrior-president," and on Reagan's smooth work uniting evangelicals with the military "cause" are particularly powerful. The whole book will pop up uncomfortably in your mind as you hear (every few months) that whoever is US president has sent troops to "help out" somewhere else around the globe. Bacevich (a retired colonel whose son died in Iraq, lest you dismiss him as a pacifist hippie) even has some practical ideas for change.
A few of the especially painful quotes in this well-researched book:
"The best democracy program ever invented is the US Army." ~ Michael Ledeen"[Our goal is to] spread the American way of life, imposing the rule of law, property rights and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be." ~ Boot
[The Vietnam GI is a] "champion for Christ". ~ Jerry Falwell
"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people we are here to help them." ~ US Army battalion commander, Dec. 2003, Iraq
March 15, 2013
I really wanted to like this book, because I am a staunch non-interventionist and wish we could have an amendment to our constitution similar to Article 9 of the Japanese constitution or Article 11 of the Italian constitution. I absolutely despise people like Michael Ledeen, who is quoted as having said around the time of the Iraq invasion, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." That's outrageous.
Alas, while there is much good about the book, it was, in general, a disappointment. First is the title subhead: "How Americans Are Seduced by War." Um...no...the book is mostly about how the governing elites are seduced by war, not us ordinary folk who end up getting our lungs blown out through our rib cages fighting these endless, dumbass wars the elites get us into.
One of the problems I had with this book is that I had the impression that Bacevich fantasized that he was talking to Bill Moyers or Charlie Rose as he wrote, not to an ordinary reader like me. And although he is supposed to be a "conservative," his attitude and tone is that of the standard-issue east-coast establishment "progressive." For example, he talks about John Kerry's Vietnam service as it came up during the 2004 election campaign without once mentioning the so-called Swiftboating episode. In a book purporting to discuss the rise of military posturing in American political life, how could he not?
Bacevich also uses shakey statistical references to back up his arguments. Look at this particularly egregious example:
"Whereas 46 percent of the total civilian population has studied at the undergraduate level, only 6.5 percent of the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds filling the military's enlisted ranks have any college education."
What's that go to do with anything? How about a comparison of 18-to-24-year-olds not in the military with those in the military (and not just enlisted). Then break it down by officer and enlisted if you want. That statistic might be of some relevance.
Further annoying is that this tidbit is part of a passage where Bacevich is insinuating the standard leftie-weftie charge that "minorities" bear the burden of America's wars, which is not true and has been known to be not true for a long time; see, for example, the 2002 study by Aline Quester (Center for Naval Analysis) and Curtis Gilroy (Defense Department) on Vietnam War casualties. There are plenty more such studies.
But Bacevich chooses to perpetuate the "ghetto army" myth about our armed services. He says, for example, "In 2000, minorities comprised 42 percent of the Army's enlisted force."
Several problems with this. First and foremost is his implication that people only join the service as a last resort, because they have no other choices and that "minorities" have few better choices so they join up out of desperation. That's just hokum. The armed forces...yes, I suppose even the Army...can be a really good deal, whether just for one hitch or for a lifetime career. Elsewhere Bacevich actually acknowledges this, even exaggerates it (Saying how great the pay is, for example. Uh huh.). But in this passage he's all about how racially exploitative the services are, even saying that black female soldiers "easily" outnumber white females. The insinuation again being that white women have more and better civilian options or are shirking their duty to the nation (even if it is over-militarized). May I point out that two women have won the Silver Star in combat since World War Two--Leigh Ann Hester ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_An... ) and Monica Brown ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_B... ). Guess what--they are both white.
I call bull shit.
Anybody who has ever taken a look at the freely available data knows that blacks--not "minorities," blacks--disproportionately serve in Army combat-service support units, not combat units. The support units typically have more blacks than whites.
Blacks have for some years constituted only about nine percent of the infantry, compared to being about 12 percent of the age-eligible black civilian population. In contrast, about 80 percent of the infantry have been white, compared to being about 75 percent of the age-eligible white civilian population.
Whites prefer the combat arms, and really over-represent in units like the Rangers and airborne, not to mention in special operations, which are Ivory Soap white. Blacks prefer administrative and technical jobs. Everybody who has been in the service knows this. You don't have to look up the statistics--you see it.
As Mackubin Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College, has said, "Middle-class white kids, not minorities, are at the greatest risk in war, since they make up the bulk of the combat arms."
Bacevich was in the service. He had to have seen that. Yet he writes this crap. I don't see what the point of him writing it is, unless he wants to say: "Militarization of American society is bad--minorities hardest hit." It's like a parody of limousine liberal thought.
And Bacevich, why did you even drag this race stuff into your book? It's not relevant. These continual wars, the ever-bloated military budgets, affect all of us, whatever our race or ethnicity or whether we have served in the armed forces or what our occupation specialty might have been.
Sigh.
There were a lot of things in the book I thought were interesting, such has how the Moody Bible Institute changed the way evangelical Christians thought about war; or how Creighton Abrams locked the Army into using the National Guard to fight wars, with the belief that this would tie the government's hands and prevent us from getting involved in any more Vietnam-style conflicts; or how the neocons came to be so influential; or how we have gotten into more wars since the end of the Cold War than we did in the era from the end of World War Two to the end of the Cold War.
But then I thought: I don't know about this stuff; I don't really know how to find out about this stuff except by reading books like this one. But I already know the author has massaged at least some of his material and doesn't seem to hesitate to provide misleading information. So how do I know what he says in these chapters isn't bogus, too?
I so wanted this book to be good. I so agree with its general point of view.
But I don't trust it.
Alas, while there is much good about the book, it was, in general, a disappointment. First is the title subhead: "How Americans Are Seduced by War." Um...no...the book is mostly about how the governing elites are seduced by war, not us ordinary folk who end up getting our lungs blown out through our rib cages fighting these endless, dumbass wars the elites get us into.
One of the problems I had with this book is that I had the impression that Bacevich fantasized that he was talking to Bill Moyers or Charlie Rose as he wrote, not to an ordinary reader like me. And although he is supposed to be a "conservative," his attitude and tone is that of the standard-issue east-coast establishment "progressive." For example, he talks about John Kerry's Vietnam service as it came up during the 2004 election campaign without once mentioning the so-called Swiftboating episode. In a book purporting to discuss the rise of military posturing in American political life, how could he not?
Bacevich also uses shakey statistical references to back up his arguments. Look at this particularly egregious example:
"Whereas 46 percent of the total civilian population has studied at the undergraduate level, only 6.5 percent of the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds filling the military's enlisted ranks have any college education."
What's that go to do with anything? How about a comparison of 18-to-24-year-olds not in the military with those in the military (and not just enlisted). Then break it down by officer and enlisted if you want. That statistic might be of some relevance.
Further annoying is that this tidbit is part of a passage where Bacevich is insinuating the standard leftie-weftie charge that "minorities" bear the burden of America's wars, which is not true and has been known to be not true for a long time; see, for example, the 2002 study by Aline Quester (Center for Naval Analysis) and Curtis Gilroy (Defense Department) on Vietnam War casualties. There are plenty more such studies.
But Bacevich chooses to perpetuate the "ghetto army" myth about our armed services. He says, for example, "In 2000, minorities comprised 42 percent of the Army's enlisted force."
Several problems with this. First and foremost is his implication that people only join the service as a last resort, because they have no other choices and that "minorities" have few better choices so they join up out of desperation. That's just hokum. The armed forces...yes, I suppose even the Army...can be a really good deal, whether just for one hitch or for a lifetime career. Elsewhere Bacevich actually acknowledges this, even exaggerates it (Saying how great the pay is, for example. Uh huh.). But in this passage he's all about how racially exploitative the services are, even saying that black female soldiers "easily" outnumber white females. The insinuation again being that white women have more and better civilian options or are shirking their duty to the nation (even if it is over-militarized). May I point out that two women have won the Silver Star in combat since World War Two--Leigh Ann Hester ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_An... ) and Monica Brown ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_B... ). Guess what--they are both white.
I call bull shit.
Anybody who has ever taken a look at the freely available data knows that blacks--not "minorities," blacks--disproportionately serve in Army combat-service support units, not combat units. The support units typically have more blacks than whites.
Blacks have for some years constituted only about nine percent of the infantry, compared to being about 12 percent of the age-eligible black civilian population. In contrast, about 80 percent of the infantry have been white, compared to being about 75 percent of the age-eligible white civilian population.
Whites prefer the combat arms, and really over-represent in units like the Rangers and airborne, not to mention in special operations, which are Ivory Soap white. Blacks prefer administrative and technical jobs. Everybody who has been in the service knows this. You don't have to look up the statistics--you see it.
As Mackubin Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College, has said, "Middle-class white kids, not minorities, are at the greatest risk in war, since they make up the bulk of the combat arms."
Bacevich was in the service. He had to have seen that. Yet he writes this crap. I don't see what the point of him writing it is, unless he wants to say: "Militarization of American society is bad--minorities hardest hit." It's like a parody of limousine liberal thought.
And Bacevich, why did you even drag this race stuff into your book? It's not relevant. These continual wars, the ever-bloated military budgets, affect all of us, whatever our race or ethnicity or whether we have served in the armed forces or what our occupation specialty might have been.
Sigh.
There were a lot of things in the book I thought were interesting, such has how the Moody Bible Institute changed the way evangelical Christians thought about war; or how Creighton Abrams locked the Army into using the National Guard to fight wars, with the belief that this would tie the government's hands and prevent us from getting involved in any more Vietnam-style conflicts; or how the neocons came to be so influential; or how we have gotten into more wars since the end of the Cold War than we did in the era from the end of World War Two to the end of the Cold War.
But then I thought: I don't know about this stuff; I don't really know how to find out about this stuff except by reading books like this one. But I already know the author has massaged at least some of his material and doesn't seem to hesitate to provide misleading information. So how do I know what he says in these chapters isn't bogus, too?
I so wanted this book to be good. I so agree with its general point of view.
But I don't trust it.
November 19, 2011
The book is short: 226 pages plus footnotes. But it is packed with ideas and information. It is not a book to read casually; it demands your full attention. Bacevich looks at how the U.S. has fallen into the habit of seeing the military as the solution to all world problems. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he is not anti-military but says things have gotten out of control.
Bacevich argues against the uber-superiority that seems to be the goal of the military. He decries military overkill (We have nuclear weapons to destroy the world how many times?) with the best peacenik. Force or the threat of force as the way to spread The American Way of Life is highlighted.
And there is no one bad guy: both major political parties have contributed to the problem in recent decades. At the end of the book, there is a ten point plan to get back to using diplomacy rather then military might.
The book was published in 2005. A lot has happened since then. It ends at an awkward point in history but Bacewich has a new book The Limits of Power published in 2008 that brings us more into the present time.
Bacevich argues against the uber-superiority that seems to be the goal of the military. He decries military overkill (We have nuclear weapons to destroy the world how many times?) with the best peacenik. Force or the threat of force as the way to spread The American Way of Life is highlighted.
And there is no one bad guy: both major political parties have contributed to the problem in recent decades. At the end of the book, there is a ten point plan to get back to using diplomacy rather then military might.
The book was published in 2005. A lot has happened since then. It ends at an awkward point in history but Bacewich has a new book The Limits of Power published in 2008 that brings us more into the present time.
February 16, 2017
This book is a good study of how America has come to disproportionately rely on military prowess throughout the globe for our safety and comfort. I previously read Bacevich's The Limits of Power (2008) which has a broader focus. This book, written in 2005, focuses exclusively on the military. Where others blame George W. Bush for the direction the American military took after 9/11, Bacevich shows that America was already on this path decades prior to Bush. Rather than starting something new, Bush simply took the next step. Bacevich looks at this from many sides with chapters on the rise of neo-conservatives and the influence of evangelical Christians for example.
If you are tired of people exclusively blaming one political party or the other for whatever problems there are in the world, Bacevich is an author you would like because he demonstrates that many of our deepest problems have been caused by both Republicans and Democrats. He closes with a chapter filled with recommendations on how to move forward.
Bacevich writes, "Several decades after Vietnam, in the aftermath of a century filled to overflowing with evidence pointing to the limited utility of armed force and the dangers inherent in relying exclusively on military power, the American people have persuaded themselves that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword. Told that despite all of their past martial exertions, treasure expended, and lives sacrificed, the world they inhabit is today more dangerous than ever and that they must redouble those exertions, they dutifully assent. Much as dumping raw sewage into American lakes and streams was once deemed unremarkable, so today 'global power projection' - a phrase whose sharp edges we have worn down through casual use, but which implies military activism without apparent limit - has become standard practice, a normal condition, one to which no plausible alternatives seem to exist" (208).
He suggests we heed the intentions of the Founders who appreciated the need for military power while respecting its dangers, never intending the US to employ military power to remake the world in its image or police the entire globe. He also implores us to remember the separation of powers, realizing the Congress has failed to fulfill its responsibility in deciding when the US goes to war. Other suggestions are to view force as a last resort and thus to renounce preventive war, to enhance US self-sufficiency by taking steps to limit US dependence on foreign resources, to organize the military explicitly for defense by bringing troops home in places they are not needed (such as places that are more than capable of defending themselves) and to reduce defense spending in light of the fact that even a reduction in the tens of billions would still put us far ahead of the combined spending of many countries behind us. He offers other suggestions too, all very practical.
Overall, Bacevich writes well and cogently and provides a voice of reason and sanity.
If you are tired of people exclusively blaming one political party or the other for whatever problems there are in the world, Bacevich is an author you would like because he demonstrates that many of our deepest problems have been caused by both Republicans and Democrats. He closes with a chapter filled with recommendations on how to move forward.
Bacevich writes, "Several decades after Vietnam, in the aftermath of a century filled to overflowing with evidence pointing to the limited utility of armed force and the dangers inherent in relying exclusively on military power, the American people have persuaded themselves that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword. Told that despite all of their past martial exertions, treasure expended, and lives sacrificed, the world they inhabit is today more dangerous than ever and that they must redouble those exertions, they dutifully assent. Much as dumping raw sewage into American lakes and streams was once deemed unremarkable, so today 'global power projection' - a phrase whose sharp edges we have worn down through casual use, but which implies military activism without apparent limit - has become standard practice, a normal condition, one to which no plausible alternatives seem to exist" (208).
He suggests we heed the intentions of the Founders who appreciated the need for military power while respecting its dangers, never intending the US to employ military power to remake the world in its image or police the entire globe. He also implores us to remember the separation of powers, realizing the Congress has failed to fulfill its responsibility in deciding when the US goes to war. Other suggestions are to view force as a last resort and thus to renounce preventive war, to enhance US self-sufficiency by taking steps to limit US dependence on foreign resources, to organize the military explicitly for defense by bringing troops home in places they are not needed (such as places that are more than capable of defending themselves) and to reduce defense spending in light of the fact that even a reduction in the tens of billions would still put us far ahead of the combined spending of many countries behind us. He offers other suggestions too, all very practical.
Overall, Bacevich writes well and cogently and provides a voice of reason and sanity.
January 4, 2010
this dude manages to blame everybody from carter to reagan, evangelists to flower children, neocons and bleeding libs-and somehow stays true to his claims that he is a conservative. but best of all, after telling us why we suck (and proving very well that we do) he offers solutions that can't be labeled as unrealistic/idealistic. he's ex-military. ppl say he's jaded because his son was killed in iraq, check your dates and grow some sympathy, his son died 2 years after publication. he's just smart, and understands that america's military has morphed into something that threatens our democracy more than any outside force. yeah, he blames everybody, but throughout he expresses that he's just trying to use history for what it's worth-to learn lessons from others' mistakes....not just attack for the sake of attacking. he's no holier than thou pacifist either-he believes in the need for military and the need to protect sovereignty and human rights....just not the need for 21st C interpretations of the monroe doctrine and american exceptionalism. obviously....me likey:) and since i am a bleeding heart lib, trust me that he must be good. .
May 30, 2013
Excellent. I partly expected this to be a ranting polemic, but it wasn't at all. Bacevich makes a well structured, thorough, thoughtful argument about a complex phenomenon and doesn't try to oversimplify the issues or vilify ideological opponents. This is a very good book, and I think it's worth reading if you care about foreign policy or civil-military relations, even if you think you're likely to disagree with it.
July 11, 2007
Bacevich takes the specter of American militarism and deals with it with an even hand. He definitely points out the dangers very clearly, but gives logical reasoning behind the history of the problem. The rationality and evenhandedness is something that i've seen all too rarely on such a touchy subject.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
March 28, 2009
Prof. Bacevich offers coherent, systematic insights into why American citizens accept every larger defense expenditures as well as wars (by any other name) that are not in defense of the nation. He also offers ten suggestions about approaches to remedying our fascination with all things military. Essential reading, I believe.
December 28, 2015
Very good. Makes you rethink your view of war and our involvement in war. Really very good. Well written.
April 12, 2014
I think that Andrew Bacevich may currently provide some of the best—certainly the most readable—civil-military analysis available right now. In this particular book he admonishes the reader early on that when looking at national military and governmental problems the ad hominem attack—a.k.a. blaming a particular president—isn’t helping; it’s more effective to examine the national climate. For example, I would offer, people have been blaming LBJ for Viet Nam my entire life, but if you drill deeper into the bedrock of 1960s American politics and history (not to mention the people around LBJ—see McMaster’s “Dereliction of Duty” and Halberstam’s “Best and the Brightest”), you can see that the boat captain was responding to time and tide. No American President was going to risk being labeled soft on Communism after HUAC and Eisenhower’s “Domino Theory” ideal. Bacevich therefore says up-front that we need to quit going after POTUS and start looking at the mood of the U.S. electorate in analyzing the nation’s military issues and failures. Having made this assertion, he moves on to discuss the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine and Wesley Clark in a manner that demands the reader re-examine his perspective on both Powell himself (Bacevich is not a fan) and the air campaign over Kosovo. Clark, he writes, represents a start-point for an unhealthy trend in recent American civil-military relations: “…as the 2004 presidential campaign heated up, other senior military retirees followed in Clark’s footsteps. The Republican and Democratic parties engaged in a fierce head-to-head competition to see which could rally the larger and more distinguished contingent of admirals and generals to its standard. Numerous three- and four-star officers volunteered—formally endorsing one candidate in preference to the other, appearing at national conventions, even making television commercials—apparently oblivious to the way that such activities subverted the identity of the soldier as apolitical servant of the state.” We are, the author implies, dangerously adrift from the George C. Marshall paradigm of military professionalism. In Chapter 3, Bacevich takes a hard look at the Neocon movement and it’s hard to walk away from his analysis without the perspective that this is a utopian mindset hatched by people who have never volunteered for combat but have no qualms about marching other citizens toward the sound of the guns. His links this analysis to the observation that preemptive policy may work for Israel (since 1967, it is arguable that the policy has not worked anyway), but is hardly appropriate to the U.S., a nation surrounded by ocean rather than aggressors. I enjoyed the comparison of Ronald Reagan to FDR—each inherited a flaming bag from his predecessor and each stepped up to tackle the smelly problems in that bag—as well as his look at what American cinema pushed out in the ‘80s to back up Reagan’s stated ideals (“Hollywood seldom provides insights; its real business is to echo and amplify.” Full disclosure—while I always enjoy Tarantino’s famous soliloquy on what’s really happening in “Top Gun”, I think Bacevich’s is more appropriate to scholars and just as poignant.) I found interesting his assertion that the Cold War was World War III and we are currently embroiled in IV, which he deftly traces back to the Carter Doctrine and the response to President Carter’s 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech. The argument for balancing our DIME (Diplomacy-Information-Military-Economy) ratio, citing how much we spend at Defense (State could certainly use some more resources and this, in my opinion, is why the catastrophe at Benghazi occurred, Friends and Neighbors.) is visible in several other good sources, but in this book supports the author’s thesis well. His views on Professional Military Education are worth looking at, and his observations on the current Administration in the 2013 Edition are also provocative. The conclusion cleverly invokes the Peloponnesian War—a favorite of Realists in national security studies—and offers a warning: “In the Pentagon, an implicit new assumption prevailed: for the United States, war had become inescapable. The result was to invert the Melian Dialogue. The great historian Thucydides believed that with power came the possibility of choice while those lacking power were obliged to bend to circumstance. ‘The strong do what they can,’ he famously wrote, ‘and the weak suffer what they must.’ The U.S. military of the 21st century is ostensibly the worlds’s strongest; yet senior officers such as General Casey believe that it has become the nation’s fate to suffer permanent war. The United States apparently has no choice in the matter.” If freedom is, by definition, the presence of options, “The New American Militarism” implies that U.S. policy has curtailed one of our most precious values.
May 1, 2016
By now I'm hoping to get through all of Bacevich's books. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he has an undeniable talent for putting seemingly disparate pieces together in a convincing narrative. The basic argument is that militarism has saturated numerous aspects of our culture and foreign policy, leading to a foreign policy that uses the military reflexively but not very effectively. This militarism has combined with utopian ends about reshaping the world along American lines and interests to create an irresponsible foreign policy defined by overreach.
Bacevich beings by arguing that the US was not a militaristic society before the later 20th century. We may have been expansionist, imperialistic, and utopian, but we weren't romantic militarists for most of our history. We created huge armies when we needed them and had tiny constabulary forces when we didn't. We viewed large military forces a militarized perspective as inherent threats to democracy and freedom. This started to change in the later 20th century for a variety of factors. After Vietnam, the US military rebuilt itself as a high-tech, volunteer, conventional army, which proved its merit in Desert Storm just as the conversation about reducing the military should have been starting as the Cold War ended. Bacevich also looks at pop culture, the rise of neo-conservatives, Reagan, the religious right, limited war strategists and RMA advocates like Albert Wohlstetter who envisioned changing the nature of war, the Carter Doctrine and the reorientation of US foreign policy towards the Middle East. What we've ended up with is a society that worships the military (albeit in a superficial way) and grasps for hard power solutions to our foreign policy problems. The Bush Doctrine's assertion of the American right to launch preventative war makes a lot more sense when you examine how militarized we have become.
Two points stood out in this book for their originality. First, Bacevich makes a unique if not fully persuasive claim that America's reorientation towards the Middle East was mainly done because our leaders and society refused to make hard choices about our lifestyle. He praises Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech for calling on Americans to live within their means rather than be beholden to the whim of autocratic oil dons across the sea. Instead, the US under Carter (Carter Doctrine) and especially under Reagan chose to seek domination and eventually, under Bush II, the reshaping of the Middle East by force. Our inability to sacrifice and make tough decisions also contributed to the disasters in Iraq an Afghanistan because Bush II refused to make ordinary Americans bear any part of the burdens of these wars. Instead, he laid these burdens on the military, which was then stretched to the breaking point in two conflicts that could best be described as draws. Second, Bacevich duly notes that the NAM's worship of the military is actually hollow and self-serving. The US used to be a country in which military service was spread across the classes, but the creation of the volunteer force has now pushed the burden of service onto the poor, especially among minorities. When we say "Thank you for your service," we are often implying "Thank you for serving, so I didn't have to." Flag-waving patriotism is a sore substitute for actually understanding the conflicts we have thrown our young people into. I look forward to picking up on these ideas further in Breach of Trust.
My main problem with the argument is that Bacevich sees too much continuity between administrations and imposes a little too much of a grand narrative on recent US history. Although the book doesn't cover Obama, it would be tough to criticize Obama for being militaristic because he had to pick up the reigns of two wars from Bush, and could drop them. He somewhat overlooks the peculiarly pig-headed, arrogant, and Machiavellian crew that surrounded Bush and shaped US policy in the aftermath of 9/11. We certainly have become more militarized, but agency and responsibility must still be recognized among individuals. One could easily imagine a different president carving a very different post-9/11 trail. Furthermore, Bacevich discounts how valuable a significant US presence overseas is to upholding the international system of laws and norms established after WWII. The US may botch a lot of interventions, but the lack of our presence might cause enough competition, instability, and rule-breaking to outweigh the perils of our presence.
232 pages.
Bacevich beings by arguing that the US was not a militaristic society before the later 20th century. We may have been expansionist, imperialistic, and utopian, but we weren't romantic militarists for most of our history. We created huge armies when we needed them and had tiny constabulary forces when we didn't. We viewed large military forces a militarized perspective as inherent threats to democracy and freedom. This started to change in the later 20th century for a variety of factors. After Vietnam, the US military rebuilt itself as a high-tech, volunteer, conventional army, which proved its merit in Desert Storm just as the conversation about reducing the military should have been starting as the Cold War ended. Bacevich also looks at pop culture, the rise of neo-conservatives, Reagan, the religious right, limited war strategists and RMA advocates like Albert Wohlstetter who envisioned changing the nature of war, the Carter Doctrine and the reorientation of US foreign policy towards the Middle East. What we've ended up with is a society that worships the military (albeit in a superficial way) and grasps for hard power solutions to our foreign policy problems. The Bush Doctrine's assertion of the American right to launch preventative war makes a lot more sense when you examine how militarized we have become.
Two points stood out in this book for their originality. First, Bacevich makes a unique if not fully persuasive claim that America's reorientation towards the Middle East was mainly done because our leaders and society refused to make hard choices about our lifestyle. He praises Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech for calling on Americans to live within their means rather than be beholden to the whim of autocratic oil dons across the sea. Instead, the US under Carter (Carter Doctrine) and especially under Reagan chose to seek domination and eventually, under Bush II, the reshaping of the Middle East by force. Our inability to sacrifice and make tough decisions also contributed to the disasters in Iraq an Afghanistan because Bush II refused to make ordinary Americans bear any part of the burdens of these wars. Instead, he laid these burdens on the military, which was then stretched to the breaking point in two conflicts that could best be described as draws. Second, Bacevich duly notes that the NAM's worship of the military is actually hollow and self-serving. The US used to be a country in which military service was spread across the classes, but the creation of the volunteer force has now pushed the burden of service onto the poor, especially among minorities. When we say "Thank you for your service," we are often implying "Thank you for serving, so I didn't have to." Flag-waving patriotism is a sore substitute for actually understanding the conflicts we have thrown our young people into. I look forward to picking up on these ideas further in Breach of Trust.
My main problem with the argument is that Bacevich sees too much continuity between administrations and imposes a little too much of a grand narrative on recent US history. Although the book doesn't cover Obama, it would be tough to criticize Obama for being militaristic because he had to pick up the reigns of two wars from Bush, and could drop them. He somewhat overlooks the peculiarly pig-headed, arrogant, and Machiavellian crew that surrounded Bush and shaped US policy in the aftermath of 9/11. We certainly have become more militarized, but agency and responsibility must still be recognized among individuals. One could easily imagine a different president carving a very different post-9/11 trail. Furthermore, Bacevich discounts how valuable a significant US presence overseas is to upholding the international system of laws and norms established after WWII. The US may botch a lot of interventions, but the lack of our presence might cause enough competition, instability, and rule-breaking to outweigh the perils of our presence.
232 pages.
December 12, 2014
Ultimately this book ends up being slightly less than the sum of its parts. A conservative critique of unfettered American use of force, it is well written and engaging but somewhat unsatisfying. The critique of the first Gulf War, and the random bombings of Clinton are as brutal and compelling a critique of these normally celebrated eras as you will find. But after that fresh take, the ground becomes much more well trod. Perhaps it is a victim of its own gloomy predictions, in 2005 its fears were new and debatable, today they are self-evident truths. I've also read many a latter book which has picked up on some of its themes to varying degrees.
Perhaps for that reason I suspect this would have been stronger as a shorter book, such as a kindle single. While only 226 pages long, the chapters on the nuclear era strategists, conservative Christians and to a lesser extent neocons could have been shrunk and alluded to instead of directly targeted. Like many conservatives Bacevich also tends to have few ideas as to how to address the problem he identifies, beyond simply 'return to the constitution' or other idealistic paeans to the past. I also found the use of the WW IV construct contradictory to the overall argument of the book (afterall, if you're in a true world war, surely militarism has many strenghts)
Still, it ranks as one of the most sensible and serious critiques of the many mistakes of US policy since the end of the Cold War. It isn't just a left/right issue, it isn't just the fault of some fallen individual or insidious ideology. Were that it was so easy. Instead, the US needs a fundamental reconsideration of how it ensures its security in the world, both for its own sake, and those of its ideals. Because it can not afford another decade like the last. Nor the one before that...
Perhaps for that reason I suspect this would have been stronger as a shorter book, such as a kindle single. While only 226 pages long, the chapters on the nuclear era strategists, conservative Christians and to a lesser extent neocons could have been shrunk and alluded to instead of directly targeted. Like many conservatives Bacevich also tends to have few ideas as to how to address the problem he identifies, beyond simply 'return to the constitution' or other idealistic paeans to the past. I also found the use of the WW IV construct contradictory to the overall argument of the book (afterall, if you're in a true world war, surely militarism has many strenghts)
Still, it ranks as one of the most sensible and serious critiques of the many mistakes of US policy since the end of the Cold War. It isn't just a left/right issue, it isn't just the fault of some fallen individual or insidious ideology. Were that it was so easy. Instead, the US needs a fundamental reconsideration of how it ensures its security in the world, both for its own sake, and those of its ideals. Because it can not afford another decade like the last. Nor the one before that...
January 9, 2008
Well written, but wrong.
March 18, 2016
Addicted to War: George Washington could hardly be called naive about the use of military power. Yet he believed that an overgrown military establishment in the New World would replicate the errors of the Old one. Unfortunately, his concern has been largely ignored in the two centuries that have seen the US transform itself from a revolutionary experiment into the world’s only superpower.
As Andrew J. Bacevich argues persuasively in The New American Militarism, the roots of the change go deep and cannot be traced a single political party or administration. Yet, the problem was intensified by the disorientation that followed the Vietnam War, as well as illusions about the invulnerability provided by technology and a neoconservative argument that military power provides the “indispensable foundation” for the nation’s unique role in the world.
Coming from a left-leaning writer, such a conclusion would not be surprising. But Bacevich is a West Point graduate, veteran of Vietnam, and former Bush fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. As such, he watched the evolution of what he describes as an “ever-deepening militarization of US policy” that threatens to hollow out democracy and leave the country isolated and bankrupt, both morally and economically.
Pat Buchanan made a similar case in Where the Right Went Wrong (2004). However, Buchanan sees Ronald Reagan as a true conservative who would not have countenanced “regime change” and preventive war unless the evidence of an imminent attack was absolutely solid. Bacevich argues that Reagan romanticized the US military in order to boost defense spending and confront the Soviet Union, setting the stage of future militarization. More than anyone else, he writes, Reagan “conjured up the myths that nurtured and sustain present-day American militarism.”
On the other hand, he shows that the shift was underway before Reagan. Bacevich sees Jimmy Carter’s failures – including entreaties to end the US addiction to imported oil and turn toward self-sufficiency, as well as a disastrous covert mission to rescue hostages in Iran – as inadvertent persuasions, convincing people that a weak military was intolerable and thus playing into the agenda of the neoconservative movement.
After Reagan, Bacevich adds, Bill Clinton aided the project by backing military enhancements like “smart weapons” and “flexible power projection capabilities,” as well as intervening “with great frequency in more places for more varied purposes than any of his predecessors.”
Although neoconservatism can be traced back to 1960s attacks on the New Left and counterculture by Norman Podhoretz and others, it didn’t gain much traction until the Reagan years. The argument begins with the assertion that “evil” will prevail if those who confront it flinch from duty.
Furthermore, conservatives claim that the crisis is permanent and dire, and the only antidote is a heroic form of leadership Bacevich defines as a “weird homegrown variant of the Fuehrer Principle.” He holds back from using the word fascist, but as Willhelm Reich explained in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, identification with a “Fuehrer” forms the psychological basis of national narcissism. In pre-war Germany, “The structure of the fascist proved to be characterized by metaphysical thinking, piety, and the belief in the abstract ethical ideas and the Divine mission of the ‘Fuehrer’,” Reich explained. “These traits rested on a basis of a strong authoritarian fixation to a Fuehrer-ideal or the nation.”
In the United States, other factors assisting the rise of militarism include Hollywood and evangelical religion. The entertainment industry’s contributions include a series of influential films that have etched a romanticized vision of the military into popular consciousness. Bacevich focuses on three: An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), which suggests that becoming an officer is the way to move from a dead-end existence to status and respectability, “up where we belong;” the Rambo series (1982-88), which argues that soldiers aren’t given the respect they deserve at home and should be set loose to win abroad by any means; and Top Gun (1986), a feature-length recruitment poster that made combat look clean, technologically sophisticated, and highly cool.
As far as religion is concerned, a chapter titled “Onward” opens with the bold statement that the United States remains, “as it has always been, a deeply, even incorrigibly, Christian nation.” Noting that about 100 million people in this country define themselves as evangelicals, he states bluntly that they tend to be conservative and vote Republican. Beyond that, evangelical Christians also celebrate the military as a bastion of the values needed to stop the current slide toward perdition and thus have provided religious sanction to militarization. This links up nicely with neoconservative logic, offering support for the idea of striking the first blow.
With evangelicals leading the way, both within the military chaplaincy and the GOP, “Conservative Christians have conferred a presumptive moral palatability on any occasion on which the United States resorts to force,” Bacevich concludes. “They have fostered among the legions of believing Americans a predisposition to see U.S. military power as inherently good, perhaps even a necessary adjunct to the accomplishment of Christ’s saving mission. In doing so, they have nurtured the preconditions that have enabled American infatuation with military power to flourish.”
Bacevich also posits that the world is in the midst of World War IV, a battle to guarantee US citizens “ever-increasing affluence” which he says began when Jimmy Carter declared in January 1980 that, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” That was "the Carter Doctrine."
Once "the Doctrine" was in effect, Reagan ramped up the military’s ability to actually wage the new world war, cocking the trigger that George W. Bush ultimately pulled. What has allowed the crusade to proceed, Bacevich argues, is a combination of self-induced historical amnesia and a momentum for militarization that has been building since the national trauma induced by defeat in Vietnam .
Although suggesting that the country may be stuck with a “misbegotten crusade,” Bacevich does offer a series of alternative principles that might mitigate the effects. The list includes restricting military actions to those that truly reflect what the US Constitution calls “common defense,” forcing Congress to exercise its oversight concerning war, renouncing preventive war in favor of force as a last resort, limiting US dependence on foreign resources, reorganizing the military around defense rather than power projection, basing the military budget on what other nations spend (rather than a fixed percent of GDP), and more fully funding diplomacy to better communicate with the rest of the world.
He finishes with three ideas for reforming the military itself. Favoring the idea of “citizen soldiers,” Bacevich suggests that the current all-volunteer force should actually “mirror society” rather than becoming increasingly “professionalized.” Specifically, he calls for shorter enlistments, more generous signing bonuses, flexible retirement options, and free college education for anyone who serves. If the military is rooted among the people, problems that develop in any future interventions are more likely to be identified early and corrected, he believes.
Bacevich also calls for a reexamination of the role of the National Guard, along with its expansion. “We need more citizen-soldiers protecting Americans at home even if that means fewer professional soldiers available to assume responsibility for situations abroad.” And finally, he urges an end to the current painful and dangerous separation between the military profession and the rest of society. As a former military man, he sees war as part of the human condition, but wants to bind the profession to the “outside world” rather allowing it to keep the world at bay.
As Andrew J. Bacevich argues persuasively in The New American Militarism, the roots of the change go deep and cannot be traced a single political party or administration. Yet, the problem was intensified by the disorientation that followed the Vietnam War, as well as illusions about the invulnerability provided by technology and a neoconservative argument that military power provides the “indispensable foundation” for the nation’s unique role in the world.
Coming from a left-leaning writer, such a conclusion would not be surprising. But Bacevich is a West Point graduate, veteran of Vietnam, and former Bush fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. As such, he watched the evolution of what he describes as an “ever-deepening militarization of US policy” that threatens to hollow out democracy and leave the country isolated and bankrupt, both morally and economically.
Pat Buchanan made a similar case in Where the Right Went Wrong (2004). However, Buchanan sees Ronald Reagan as a true conservative who would not have countenanced “regime change” and preventive war unless the evidence of an imminent attack was absolutely solid. Bacevich argues that Reagan romanticized the US military in order to boost defense spending and confront the Soviet Union, setting the stage of future militarization. More than anyone else, he writes, Reagan “conjured up the myths that nurtured and sustain present-day American militarism.”
On the other hand, he shows that the shift was underway before Reagan. Bacevich sees Jimmy Carter’s failures – including entreaties to end the US addiction to imported oil and turn toward self-sufficiency, as well as a disastrous covert mission to rescue hostages in Iran – as inadvertent persuasions, convincing people that a weak military was intolerable and thus playing into the agenda of the neoconservative movement.
After Reagan, Bacevich adds, Bill Clinton aided the project by backing military enhancements like “smart weapons” and “flexible power projection capabilities,” as well as intervening “with great frequency in more places for more varied purposes than any of his predecessors.”
Although neoconservatism can be traced back to 1960s attacks on the New Left and counterculture by Norman Podhoretz and others, it didn’t gain much traction until the Reagan years. The argument begins with the assertion that “evil” will prevail if those who confront it flinch from duty.
Furthermore, conservatives claim that the crisis is permanent and dire, and the only antidote is a heroic form of leadership Bacevich defines as a “weird homegrown variant of the Fuehrer Principle.” He holds back from using the word fascist, but as Willhelm Reich explained in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, identification with a “Fuehrer” forms the psychological basis of national narcissism. In pre-war Germany, “The structure of the fascist proved to be characterized by metaphysical thinking, piety, and the belief in the abstract ethical ideas and the Divine mission of the ‘Fuehrer’,” Reich explained. “These traits rested on a basis of a strong authoritarian fixation to a Fuehrer-ideal or the nation.”
In the United States, other factors assisting the rise of militarism include Hollywood and evangelical religion. The entertainment industry’s contributions include a series of influential films that have etched a romanticized vision of the military into popular consciousness. Bacevich focuses on three: An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), which suggests that becoming an officer is the way to move from a dead-end existence to status and respectability, “up where we belong;” the Rambo series (1982-88), which argues that soldiers aren’t given the respect they deserve at home and should be set loose to win abroad by any means; and Top Gun (1986), a feature-length recruitment poster that made combat look clean, technologically sophisticated, and highly cool.
As far as religion is concerned, a chapter titled “Onward” opens with the bold statement that the United States remains, “as it has always been, a deeply, even incorrigibly, Christian nation.” Noting that about 100 million people in this country define themselves as evangelicals, he states bluntly that they tend to be conservative and vote Republican. Beyond that, evangelical Christians also celebrate the military as a bastion of the values needed to stop the current slide toward perdition and thus have provided religious sanction to militarization. This links up nicely with neoconservative logic, offering support for the idea of striking the first blow.
With evangelicals leading the way, both within the military chaplaincy and the GOP, “Conservative Christians have conferred a presumptive moral palatability on any occasion on which the United States resorts to force,” Bacevich concludes. “They have fostered among the legions of believing Americans a predisposition to see U.S. military power as inherently good, perhaps even a necessary adjunct to the accomplishment of Christ’s saving mission. In doing so, they have nurtured the preconditions that have enabled American infatuation with military power to flourish.”
Bacevich also posits that the world is in the midst of World War IV, a battle to guarantee US citizens “ever-increasing affluence” which he says began when Jimmy Carter declared in January 1980 that, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” That was "the Carter Doctrine."
Once "the Doctrine" was in effect, Reagan ramped up the military’s ability to actually wage the new world war, cocking the trigger that George W. Bush ultimately pulled. What has allowed the crusade to proceed, Bacevich argues, is a combination of self-induced historical amnesia and a momentum for militarization that has been building since the national trauma induced by defeat in Vietnam .
Although suggesting that the country may be stuck with a “misbegotten crusade,” Bacevich does offer a series of alternative principles that might mitigate the effects. The list includes restricting military actions to those that truly reflect what the US Constitution calls “common defense,” forcing Congress to exercise its oversight concerning war, renouncing preventive war in favor of force as a last resort, limiting US dependence on foreign resources, reorganizing the military around defense rather than power projection, basing the military budget on what other nations spend (rather than a fixed percent of GDP), and more fully funding diplomacy to better communicate with the rest of the world.
He finishes with three ideas for reforming the military itself. Favoring the idea of “citizen soldiers,” Bacevich suggests that the current all-volunteer force should actually “mirror society” rather than becoming increasingly “professionalized.” Specifically, he calls for shorter enlistments, more generous signing bonuses, flexible retirement options, and free college education for anyone who serves. If the military is rooted among the people, problems that develop in any future interventions are more likely to be identified early and corrected, he believes.
Bacevich also calls for a reexamination of the role of the National Guard, along with its expansion. “We need more citizen-soldiers protecting Americans at home even if that means fewer professional soldiers available to assume responsibility for situations abroad.” And finally, he urges an end to the current painful and dangerous separation between the military profession and the rest of society. As a former military man, he sees war as part of the human condition, but wants to bind the profession to the “outside world” rather allowing it to keep the world at bay.
February 15, 2025
He says that any criticism of Westmoreland is "cruelly unfair." Given that, as Nick Turse revealed in
Kill Anything That Moves
that Westmoreland was the leader of the West Point Protective Association that aided and abetted Ira Augustus Hunt and Julian Ewell get away with slaughtering 10,000 Vietnamese like Curt von Gottberg slaughtered tens of thousands of Belarusians, Bacevich's hagiography of Westmoreland puts him--as well as his fellow Westmoreland hagipographers Gian Gentile and Douglas Porch--in the exact same category as Franz Halder and all the other German Generals of the reine Wehrmacht school of apologia.
This is hardly a surprise given that this book begins Bacevich's trend of blaming American civilians for what is wrong with the military--just like Ludendorff did with his Dolchstosselegend.
Bacevich covers several wars several in this and other books, yet, in this and other books are very sparsely endnoted compared to Colonel Edward Westermann's Hitler's Ostkrieg And the Indian Wars (which only deals with two wars), and Rudolf von Ribbentrop's My Father Joachim von Ribbentrop and Mark Mazower's Inside Hitler's Greece bith of which deal with only ONE war. This indicates that Bacevich is a lazy historian and this book, and his other books are actually just personal opinions bolstered by a handful of historial references rather than actual, legitimate history books as Colonel Westermann, Rudolf von Ribbentrop and Mark Mazower wrote.
Moreover, there is not a single archive or piece of correspondence in his references, only newspaper articles and public speeches/other publicly accessible documents. In stark contrast, Rudolf von Ribbentrop, who does not have a PhD unlike Bacevich, has several references to archival materials, and he was not even writing a history book as such but rather a memoir.
This is hardly a surprise given that this book begins Bacevich's trend of blaming American civilians for what is wrong with the military--just like Ludendorff did with his Dolchstosselegend.
Bacevich covers several wars several in this and other books, yet, in this and other books are very sparsely endnoted compared to Colonel Edward Westermann's Hitler's Ostkrieg And the Indian Wars (which only deals with two wars), and Rudolf von Ribbentrop's My Father Joachim von Ribbentrop and Mark Mazower's Inside Hitler's Greece bith of which deal with only ONE war. This indicates that Bacevich is a lazy historian and this book, and his other books are actually just personal opinions bolstered by a handful of historial references rather than actual, legitimate history books as Colonel Westermann, Rudolf von Ribbentrop and Mark Mazower wrote.
Moreover, there is not a single archive or piece of correspondence in his references, only newspaper articles and public speeches/other publicly accessible documents. In stark contrast, Rudolf von Ribbentrop, who does not have a PhD unlike Bacevich, has several references to archival materials, and he was not even writing a history book as such but rather a memoir.
January 25, 2021
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War by Andrew Bacevich is an important book to read. Its reputation and its implications have long preceded my reading of this book, as his commentary informed the atmosphere of my studies at American University. At one point I believed I only started to read him at the beginning of last year, but this illusion did not survive first contact with this book's first chapter. As for the book itself, I found that it did not live up to my own expectations. Bacevich's infatuation with the citizen soldier comes across as quaint and outdated, while several of his arguments have either become anachronistic, or were not quite true at the time of his writing. The book's principal enemy is the utility of the use of force where the homeland is not directly threatened, or that force is not (as he puts an escape clause) being used to deter genocide. The text also assumes a certain dyadic relationship, which now no longer applies. He's also wrong too much to really be all that trustworthy. Even so, this book does seem to originate most of the talking points that I have encountered throughout my undergraduate education and beyond. For that alone he deserves a read. I am also being a bit too harsh on the book, as if you buy into the pedagogical framework, he comes across as nostalgically minded and very much in the right. Its only that I do not that his charm wears off a little.
86/100
86/100
May 14, 2017
It's not a BAD analysis of why the US has become so militaristic -- it's just not a particularly new one. Part of the appeal of reading this for me was that Bacevich claimed to be a conservative, and, as a leftist, I thought it would be interesting to get a conservative military man's perspective.
Aside from a few kinda pointless jabs at the left, it's not any different than what leftists have been saying about militarism for years. TL;DR: we go to war because of our national interests (oil, specifically), because conservatives REALLY hate the peace movement (and especially the 60's), because post-Cold War American exceptionalism has infected both parties, because of the military industrial complex, because the religious right which has become increasingly influential believes that armageddon is inevitable anyway, and because Hollywood glorifies the military and violence.
He plays down the military industrial complex a bit (and to be fair, this was written before the end of the Bush era, so the privatization of the military may not have been as clear to the public at the time), but otherwise, this is what you hear from the left wing. It's still worth reading, especially if you're a conservative and this is your introduction to the problem of militarism, it's just not anything new for people who have maybe read more on the topic.
Aside from a few kinda pointless jabs at the left, it's not any different than what leftists have been saying about militarism for years. TL;DR: we go to war because of our national interests (oil, specifically), because conservatives REALLY hate the peace movement (and especially the 60's), because post-Cold War American exceptionalism has infected both parties, because of the military industrial complex, because the religious right which has become increasingly influential believes that armageddon is inevitable anyway, and because Hollywood glorifies the military and violence.
He plays down the military industrial complex a bit (and to be fair, this was written before the end of the Bush era, so the privatization of the military may not have been as clear to the public at the time), but otherwise, this is what you hear from the left wing. It's still worth reading, especially if you're a conservative and this is your introduction to the problem of militarism, it's just not anything new for people who have maybe read more on the topic.
June 17, 2021
Excellent book that really examines the way that Americans view themselves as a country, i.e. what makes America "America." In many ways, we define ourselves by our military might and over time, for better or for worse. The author talks about the increasing reliance upon the military instrument of power and the country's belief that the military is the primary way to advance our nation's interests. He also talks about the growing divide between the population at large and the people that serve in the armed forces. He attributes these problems not to one person or political party, but to a number of historical events and decisions dating back to the post-Vietnam era and proceeding up and through the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Overall, his observations deserve attention and and thought. He closes his book with a number of suggestions, some of them somewhat radical, in order to address these problems. This book is a good read not only for those that serve, but for anyone that is interested in how our nation seeks to advance its interests in the world.
May 31, 2022
I greatly admire Andrew Bacevich both for his service to our country and the personal tragedy to his family. There is much in this book that I personally disagreed but there is also much that I agreed. He lays out a very succinct and eminently reasoned argument for his conclusions. I doubt that our very politicized military leaders will read this book, but it should be required reading for anybody aspiring to military senior leadership. The best aspect of the book is that it provides a foundation for future thought. This country needs this type of discussion before we succeed in tearing ourselves apart. Whether veteran of nonveteran, liberal or conservative we need to decide what kind of military we want and need. I admire the author for having the courage to enumerate the issues specifically
in the armed forces but generally in society as a whole.
in the armed forces but generally in society as a whole.
November 22, 2017
Bacevich provides an insightful intellectual history about a difficult topic. The New American Militarism examines the rise of militarism in American politics and culture and provides a 10 step process on how to dilute it.
This work is very similar to Rachael Maddow's The Drift in terms of conclusions and arguments. However, Bacevich's military background comes off with more authority than Maddow's criticisms while his academic approach may leave the general reader in the dust. Either study will help American readers spot symptoms of a 21st Century "stab in the back" theory and the dangers of further distancing the military from civilian populations.
This work is very similar to Rachael Maddow's The Drift in terms of conclusions and arguments. However, Bacevich's military background comes off with more authority than Maddow's criticisms while his academic approach may leave the general reader in the dust. Either study will help American readers spot symptoms of a 21st Century "stab in the back" theory and the dangers of further distancing the military from civilian populations.
October 24, 2019
Much-needed critical analysis
Thankfully and a testament to the complexity of the issues here explored, Bacevich does not get into finger-pointing exercises where caricatures of anti-war pacifiers and Machiavellian oil barons reside. Instead there’s a nuanced look at the period from Vietnam onward showing the multiple strands of social and military influences wove together to create the present situation. That situation is contrary to a republic based on democracy and the principles of persuasive dialogue, where coercion of any form is discouraged. How we attempt to deal with the split between the 1% who serve and the rest of the public is a needed discussion to have.
Thankfully and a testament to the complexity of the issues here explored, Bacevich does not get into finger-pointing exercises where caricatures of anti-war pacifiers and Machiavellian oil barons reside. Instead there’s a nuanced look at the period from Vietnam onward showing the multiple strands of social and military influences wove together to create the present situation. That situation is contrary to a republic based on democracy and the principles of persuasive dialogue, where coercion of any form is discouraged. How we attempt to deal with the split between the 1% who serve and the rest of the public is a needed discussion to have.
December 21, 2019
Andrew Bacevich is one of my go-to credible sources for information about foreign policy.
This book was published in 2005 so it is quite dated at my reading but the clarity of its writing makes it still an invaluable source for understanding the history of America's relationship with its military since the middle of the 20th century.
I also strongly agree with his ten principles to realign our relationship our military. I think they are even more relevant now then they were 14 years ago.
I have sitting on my couch his newest book, "Twilight of the American Century" and I am really looking forward to the relationship, if there is one, of the two books.
This book was published in 2005 so it is quite dated at my reading but the clarity of its writing makes it still an invaluable source for understanding the history of America's relationship with its military since the middle of the 20th century.
I also strongly agree with his ten principles to realign our relationship our military. I think they are even more relevant now then they were 14 years ago.
I have sitting on my couch his newest book, "Twilight of the American Century" and I am really looking forward to the relationship, if there is one, of the two books.
September 18, 2017
a thoroughly interesting exposition of the continued exploits of the leaders of militarism in our country, acting through the Pentagon, the Department of Defense and the pressures of fear and panic of the American public to grow the budget and power of the military. In this successful effort, the President of the United States becomes a pawn, who has little or nothing to say about military policy.
December 12, 2019
Good and intelligent look at the trend towards militarism with in the American society. Bacevitch starts with the fallout of the Vietnam War and the 60's counter-culture wars upon the military itself and then upon American Society as a whole. While sometimes Bacevitch can be parochial and lets his personal views come into play, overall this is an intelligent and well drafted review of a dangerous trend - the gap between the all volunteer military and the society it protects.
May 20, 2017
Like Washington and Eisenhower in their respective Farewell Addresses, Bacevich brings the experience, eloquence, and insight of a combat veteran to his penetrating critique of America's over reliance on its military and the toxic consequences of said addiction. Engrossing and necessary reading. A public service.
December 9, 2019
This is a great read. Bacevich speaks from firs hand experience not from ivy league halls and books that he's studied. He is to be listened to and taken seriously.
I know he's written more since this one and I hope he digs deeper as he grows into his role of wiseman.
I know he's written more since this one and I hope he digs deeper as he grows into his role of wiseman.
December 7, 2017
About time
I hope that current and future politicians in USA will reed this and other books by Andrew B. He has changed my wew of America wich I had held in hi respect until I now.
I hope that current and future politicians in USA will reed this and other books by Andrew B. He has changed my wew of America wich I had held in hi respect until I now.
Read
January 4, 2018It is not good 👍on the first part
Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews