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The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power.
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom.
In The Age of Illusions , bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom.
In The Age of Illusions , bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 2020
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889 people want to read
About the author
Andrew J. Bacevich
35 books369 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...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
August 30, 2019
The Age of Illusions is a book I wanted to really like, but it has a lot of trouble getting out of its own way. Andrew Bacevich looks at the Trump administration through the lens of the post-cold war era. This is the era the USA was supposed to dominate in toto and complete freedom as the world’s sole superpower. Instead, he shows, the three presidents who came immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall squandered that hard-earned advantage, and set the stage for the ascent of Donald Trump.
This is an interesting thesis, and when Bacevich finally gets around to it, it is with rip-roaring point after point. Unfortunately, it takes him 80 some pages — nearly half the book — of laborious groundwork before he finally starts to hit hard and score points.
At his most damning, he lists he ways that America devolved into a jellied mess since the cold war ended. In three pages of relentless one-liner stats, he lists 25 of the astonishing ways Americans have self-destructed, just since the 1990s. In the year of Trump’s election in 2016, 19 million were suffering from depression, 46,000 were killed by opioids, 35,000 by guns, 1 in 6 were binge drinking at least once a month, 45,000 committed suicide, 40% of adults were obese, plus another 19% of children. America climbed to the highest incarceration rate in the world, and its residents owned 46% of the world’s small arms – more than the next 25 countries combined.
This snapshot is not a list of causes, he says. It is just how America has spent the “peace dividend” when the USSR collapsed. The dividend also shows up on some 40% of those born after 1980 who have tattooed their bodies. Seems like a pretty poor payout, is the point. The return on investment is negative.
On the other hand, he says this is normal in the USA. It has always has been “a nation in which the needs of corporate capitalism take precedence over the common good.” 110
Bacevich shows that Clinton, Bush II and Obama were weak in nation-building. They had no vision for any sort of peace dividend. He resuscitates their election campaigns to prove it. Once in office, it was never even in the back of their minds, let alone front and center. Bush took the country to a state of permanent war, which neither Obama nor Trump have been able to quash. While he was at it, Bush declared the US edition of freedom to be the sole and global definition and everyone had to conform to it. If they didn’t, he reserved the right to pre-emptive war to impose it on them. He was prepared to spread the privilege of democracy by unilateral war, and of course, made good on his threat, numerous times. The peace dividend came and went and nobody noticed.
Bacevich is capable of insight and perception, including of himself. It was during the Bush II administration that Andrew Bacevich became an oft-employed talking head and developed enough perspective to understand what they paid him to talk about was not actually up for discussion. It was rather, in his choice of word, theater. Americans have only to flip among their news channels to see it is even more so today.
He quotes Norman Mailer of all people as declaring “Ours is a nation adrift and coming apart.” And so Bacevich proves.
What he does not do is use hindsight to say what should have been done. If America wasted 30 years of potential freestyle soaring, what should that have looked like, and where would the world be now? Astonishingly, at least for me, he never says. Which might or might not say – they did the best they could with what they faced. But readers will never know.
To Bacevich, Trump’s Make America Great Again is a longing for the cold war, where the USA had a life-threatening nuclear enemy, and everyone was much happier and less self-destructive. Apparently, Americans need a good war to focus on in order to stay on message. He does seem to be working hard to make that relationship real again. If not with Russia, then with China, Europe or Canada. It’s nice to have options.
David Wineberg
This is an interesting thesis, and when Bacevich finally gets around to it, it is with rip-roaring point after point. Unfortunately, it takes him 80 some pages — nearly half the book — of laborious groundwork before he finally starts to hit hard and score points.
At his most damning, he lists he ways that America devolved into a jellied mess since the cold war ended. In three pages of relentless one-liner stats, he lists 25 of the astonishing ways Americans have self-destructed, just since the 1990s. In the year of Trump’s election in 2016, 19 million were suffering from depression, 46,000 were killed by opioids, 35,000 by guns, 1 in 6 were binge drinking at least once a month, 45,000 committed suicide, 40% of adults were obese, plus another 19% of children. America climbed to the highest incarceration rate in the world, and its residents owned 46% of the world’s small arms – more than the next 25 countries combined.
This snapshot is not a list of causes, he says. It is just how America has spent the “peace dividend” when the USSR collapsed. The dividend also shows up on some 40% of those born after 1980 who have tattooed their bodies. Seems like a pretty poor payout, is the point. The return on investment is negative.
On the other hand, he says this is normal in the USA. It has always has been “a nation in which the needs of corporate capitalism take precedence over the common good.” 110
Bacevich shows that Clinton, Bush II and Obama were weak in nation-building. They had no vision for any sort of peace dividend. He resuscitates their election campaigns to prove it. Once in office, it was never even in the back of their minds, let alone front and center. Bush took the country to a state of permanent war, which neither Obama nor Trump have been able to quash. While he was at it, Bush declared the US edition of freedom to be the sole and global definition and everyone had to conform to it. If they didn’t, he reserved the right to pre-emptive war to impose it on them. He was prepared to spread the privilege of democracy by unilateral war, and of course, made good on his threat, numerous times. The peace dividend came and went and nobody noticed.
Bacevich is capable of insight and perception, including of himself. It was during the Bush II administration that Andrew Bacevich became an oft-employed talking head and developed enough perspective to understand what they paid him to talk about was not actually up for discussion. It was rather, in his choice of word, theater. Americans have only to flip among their news channels to see it is even more so today.
He quotes Norman Mailer of all people as declaring “Ours is a nation adrift and coming apart.” And so Bacevich proves.
What he does not do is use hindsight to say what should have been done. If America wasted 30 years of potential freestyle soaring, what should that have looked like, and where would the world be now? Astonishingly, at least for me, he never says. Which might or might not say – they did the best they could with what they faced. But readers will never know.
To Bacevich, Trump’s Make America Great Again is a longing for the cold war, where the USA had a life-threatening nuclear enemy, and everyone was much happier and less self-destructive. Apparently, Americans need a good war to focus on in order to stay on message. He does seem to be working hard to make that relationship real again. If not with Russia, then with China, Europe or Canada. It’s nice to have options.
David Wineberg
June 19, 2024
This book outlines something very important that far too few Americans are acknowledging or even thinking about: it took America two full centuries to achieve global hegemony and a mere two decades to squander it away.
February 19, 2020
This book is precisely what the title suggests: an appraisal of how the United States wasted the opportunity presented by the unipolar moment that came at the end of the Cold War. I find that many American elites have still not adjusted to the fact that such a world no longer exists, as Mr. Bacevich also argues. They are continuing to speak and act as though they can shape global events despite their diminishing relative power and repeated failures since 9/11. I do not foresee this attitude changing absent some significant shock to the system that makes their loss of power undeniable. You'd think the election of Donald Trump would be a significant enough shock but it doesn't seem to have altered much.
The themes of this work were familiar to me and should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the drift and futility of American policy during our generation. I've also read most of Mr. Bacevich's books and find that themes of this one are prefigured in his earlier writing. Nonetheless it is still a strong overview of the past few decades and includes some interesting reflections on his own life trajectory in comparison with that of Donald Trump. They were born a year apart but couldn't be more different expressions of American culture. I hope to interview Mr. Bacevich for an article in future.
The themes of this work were familiar to me and should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the drift and futility of American policy during our generation. I've also read most of Mr. Bacevich's books and find that themes of this one are prefigured in his earlier writing. Nonetheless it is still a strong overview of the past few decades and includes some interesting reflections on his own life trajectory in comparison with that of Donald Trump. They were born a year apart but couldn't be more different expressions of American culture. I hope to interview Mr. Bacevich for an article in future.
April 15, 2020
Always good to read books by ex-military men who see the problems like, “Terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States and never has. Terrorism is merely a tactic, and an ancient one at that.” Remembering that Bush senior was the last President to have served in the armed forces, can help one see how all Presidents since him, not only went illegally overboard militarily, yet did so with a child’s military experience. In England, Prince Harry did two tours of Afghanistan and was a crew member on a AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. In the United States, our leaders would take two tours of maybe Disneyland, and quit. Bacevich voted for Reagan twice, so don’t expect a critique about anything that happened during his two terms. Ross Perot during a debate said he wanted town halls but said the media hated it because they wanted to tell the people what to think. Ross was also wary about US military adventures abroad. Nice.
Trump with his strong opinions always made good copy before the election and so the press covered him. How to end a war? Trump said, “Declare victory and leave.” Bacevich believes Obama “tried” to stop racism on his watch, but I can’t see it. But then, Bacevich states of Obama, “He saved globalized neoliberalism” by bailing out Wall Street, not Main Street – and Bacevich says Obama gives the military “a new lease on life” and that “sustaining wars rather than ending them turned out to be his forte.” And he notes Obama starts a 1.2 trillion-dollar facelift on the military’s nuclear arsenal. As to Obama’s Hope and Change message, Bacevich subtly says “the key to normalizing war is to divert public attention from its continuing existence”. In Obama’s last year as President, “nearly 25,000 American bombs and missiles rained down on targets in various places on the planet.” Thanks to the man whose family always looks “classy” in pictures, Americans had happily made their peace (in complete apposition of the teachings of Jesus) with permanent war.
Today global leadership remains “largely synonymous with the use of force.” Today’s Pentagon loves data but good luck finding socioeconomic data on US military casualties now - that would show who is actually dying. Today’s military “all-volunteer force is not so much recruited as bought and paid for.” Once they sign they become “instruments of the state” subject to “involuntary participation”. Bacevich calls Trump, the second coming of Huey Long. Bacevich calls Bernie Sanders and my grandfather Henry A. Wallace revolutionaries. He says Wallace wanted US focus on poverty and racism while Truman wanted it on Communism (the nascent Cold War). Wallace’s campaign fizzles out because he was ahead of his time while Sanders campaign resonated with young people and “gauged the temper of his times” for Bacevich better than Hillary Clinton. Bacevich rightfully was appalled by Clinton’s sociopathic laughing on TV about Gaddafi being murdered by being bayonetted up the ass. He felt she could not be entrusted with executive responsibility, and that Clinton had also blatantly disregarded rules about classified material.
Trump’s enemies say he divided America, but Bacevich reminds us it was the division that brought us Trump in the first place. Bacevich says the way we are living under both parties is pushing the planet towards the brink of extinction. After the Cold War ended, we got “grotesque inequality, seemingly perpetual war, anomie on an epidemic scale - and Donald Trump.” “Real debate conductive to genuine change is unlikely to come from above.” Bacevich knows this means adoption of some economic system that replaces capitalism. If our leaders shirk their responsibilities, then it is up to us to work collectively, or we must expect more Trumps to arise. I hoped this book would be as good as the title, but this book was just good – kind of a yawner next to anything written by Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges. I’ve reviewed a few Bacevich books, but sadly this was the least exciting.
Trump with his strong opinions always made good copy before the election and so the press covered him. How to end a war? Trump said, “Declare victory and leave.” Bacevich believes Obama “tried” to stop racism on his watch, but I can’t see it. But then, Bacevich states of Obama, “He saved globalized neoliberalism” by bailing out Wall Street, not Main Street – and Bacevich says Obama gives the military “a new lease on life” and that “sustaining wars rather than ending them turned out to be his forte.” And he notes Obama starts a 1.2 trillion-dollar facelift on the military’s nuclear arsenal. As to Obama’s Hope and Change message, Bacevich subtly says “the key to normalizing war is to divert public attention from its continuing existence”. In Obama’s last year as President, “nearly 25,000 American bombs and missiles rained down on targets in various places on the planet.” Thanks to the man whose family always looks “classy” in pictures, Americans had happily made their peace (in complete apposition of the teachings of Jesus) with permanent war.
Today global leadership remains “largely synonymous with the use of force.” Today’s Pentagon loves data but good luck finding socioeconomic data on US military casualties now - that would show who is actually dying. Today’s military “all-volunteer force is not so much recruited as bought and paid for.” Once they sign they become “instruments of the state” subject to “involuntary participation”. Bacevich calls Trump, the second coming of Huey Long. Bacevich calls Bernie Sanders and my grandfather Henry A. Wallace revolutionaries. He says Wallace wanted US focus on poverty and racism while Truman wanted it on Communism (the nascent Cold War). Wallace’s campaign fizzles out because he was ahead of his time while Sanders campaign resonated with young people and “gauged the temper of his times” for Bacevich better than Hillary Clinton. Bacevich rightfully was appalled by Clinton’s sociopathic laughing on TV about Gaddafi being murdered by being bayonetted up the ass. He felt she could not be entrusted with executive responsibility, and that Clinton had also blatantly disregarded rules about classified material.
Trump’s enemies say he divided America, but Bacevich reminds us it was the division that brought us Trump in the first place. Bacevich says the way we are living under both parties is pushing the planet towards the brink of extinction. After the Cold War ended, we got “grotesque inequality, seemingly perpetual war, anomie on an epidemic scale - and Donald Trump.” “Real debate conductive to genuine change is unlikely to come from above.” Bacevich knows this means adoption of some economic system that replaces capitalism. If our leaders shirk their responsibilities, then it is up to us to work collectively, or we must expect more Trumps to arise. I hoped this book would be as good as the title, but this book was just good – kind of a yawner next to anything written by Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges. I’ve reviewed a few Bacevich books, but sadly this was the least exciting.
May 23, 2021
I picked many more highlights out of this book and pasted them in to this Goodreads forum that I normally do. This book is chock-full of soundbites. It was published in 2019 and since it is a look at our current history in politics in the US since the end of the Cold War approximately at the end of the 1980s, the book ends in the midst of events in 2018.
This author has been putting out books pretty frequently but not for a very long time. One of the things that this book covers is that we have now experienced Donald Trump. This author takes a point of view that I actually support which is that Mr. Trump is not the supreme bad guy but is simply a symptom of a bigger problem.
This author is may be an odd duck. He actually talks a little bit about himself briefly in a couple of spots in the book. I think he said he voted twice for Reagan and twice for Obama. He didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. He has a military background and graduated from West Point. I have to say that he makes a lot of sense to me. He seems to be a guy who follows his own inclinations rather than being married to one point of view or another.
This author has been putting out books pretty frequently but not for a very long time. One of the things that this book covers is that we have now experienced Donald Trump. This author takes a point of view that I actually support which is that Mr. Trump is not the supreme bad guy but is simply a symptom of a bigger problem.
This author is may be an odd duck. He actually talks a little bit about himself briefly in a couple of spots in the book. I think he said he voted twice for Reagan and twice for Obama. He didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. He has a military background and graduated from West Point. I have to say that he makes a lot of sense to me. He seems to be a guy who follows his own inclinations rather than being married to one point of view or another.
August 19, 2021
"Trump nu reprezinta boala in sine, ci doar un simptom repulsiv al unei afectiuni existente de mult, dar inca nediagnosticate."
February 5, 2020
For most people, the act of writing is as much an act of thought as one of transcribing prior thoughts. In the Age of Illusions you can see Bacevich thinking his way through the challenges of his time, resulting in an insightful book that gets far better as the book reaches its conclusion.
Bacevich identifies four primary illusions of modern American belief: Unfettered Globalization, Military Hegemony, Presidential Primacy and Unrestrained Freedoms. All four are core to the elite consensus of how to act following victory in the Cold War, and all four he charges, have led the nation badly astray.
One of the strengths of this book is the argument that President Trump is not a cause of America's current problems, but a grotesque symptom of them. The moment has called forth the man. One who manages to simultaneously embody the greed and absence of restraint that defines modern capitalism, with the ignorance and hatred that is too often found among those who feel excluded from modern life. He rightly notes the cooperation between pro and anti Trump forces to keep this symptom at the centre of public attention, rather than examining the causes and way out.
While the book finds its theme and message towards the end, the start is a little more uncertain. It comes across as grumpy conservative's take that too often offers a 'pox-on-both-your-houses' style dismissal while providing what is now a cliched (and therefore unhelpful) critique of hubris and need for measure and restraint. At the end of the book, Bacevich turns this on its head by recognising the potential for genuinely significant progress at times of crisis, and centres this push on the common struggle of climate change.
While I like much of his critique, I'm not entirely persuaded. The arguments offered sometimes try and have it both ways. Presidential Primacy is rightly condemned for the idea that one man should try and control it all, but then the willingness to submit America to global market forces is condemned for its unwillingness to place a steadying Presidential hand on the economic wheel.
Nor did I see much connection between his critique of the expansion of individual freedoms and the other three illusions or the change in America's position more broadly. While he offers useful points about declining senses of duty, service, moral purpose and responsibility, the link between say enabling gay marriage and America's present crisis is unclear. Indeed Bacevich tends to condemn advocates of these changes (especially Hillary Clinton) and the philosophy of individual freedom, while actually accepting the practical need to remove discrimination and make small and specific changes. For a book largely about foreign policy, this particular 'illusion' seems both unrelated and far less harmful than the other three.
This is a current affairs book that will disappear onto dusty library shelves as our times change. It does not point a way forward or say anything that has not been said elsewhere. Yet as an encapsulation of some core problems, and urge to directly engage those problems and find new solutions rather than worrying about surface level phenomena like Trump, it is a useful read.
Bacevich identifies four primary illusions of modern American belief: Unfettered Globalization, Military Hegemony, Presidential Primacy and Unrestrained Freedoms. All four are core to the elite consensus of how to act following victory in the Cold War, and all four he charges, have led the nation badly astray.
One of the strengths of this book is the argument that President Trump is not a cause of America's current problems, but a grotesque symptom of them. The moment has called forth the man. One who manages to simultaneously embody the greed and absence of restraint that defines modern capitalism, with the ignorance and hatred that is too often found among those who feel excluded from modern life. He rightly notes the cooperation between pro and anti Trump forces to keep this symptom at the centre of public attention, rather than examining the causes and way out.
While the book finds its theme and message towards the end, the start is a little more uncertain. It comes across as grumpy conservative's take that too often offers a 'pox-on-both-your-houses' style dismissal while providing what is now a cliched (and therefore unhelpful) critique of hubris and need for measure and restraint. At the end of the book, Bacevich turns this on its head by recognising the potential for genuinely significant progress at times of crisis, and centres this push on the common struggle of climate change.
While I like much of his critique, I'm not entirely persuaded. The arguments offered sometimes try and have it both ways. Presidential Primacy is rightly condemned for the idea that one man should try and control it all, but then the willingness to submit America to global market forces is condemned for its unwillingness to place a steadying Presidential hand on the economic wheel.
Nor did I see much connection between his critique of the expansion of individual freedoms and the other three illusions or the change in America's position more broadly. While he offers useful points about declining senses of duty, service, moral purpose and responsibility, the link between say enabling gay marriage and America's present crisis is unclear. Indeed Bacevich tends to condemn advocates of these changes (especially Hillary Clinton) and the philosophy of individual freedom, while actually accepting the practical need to remove discrimination and make small and specific changes. For a book largely about foreign policy, this particular 'illusion' seems both unrelated and far less harmful than the other three.
This is a current affairs book that will disappear onto dusty library shelves as our times change. It does not point a way forward or say anything that has not been said elsewhere. Yet as an encapsulation of some core problems, and urge to directly engage those problems and find new solutions rather than worrying about surface level phenomena like Trump, it is a useful read.
June 17, 2021
This book was a 200 page eye roll.
While Bacevich has an impressive grasp on US military history and national security policy, it’s prominence in the book serves as a crutch he uses to skirt around or outright avoid other variables that contributed to the election of 2016.
The book offers little more than a soapbox (an eloquently written soapbox, but a soapbox nonetheless) for an older, white, center-right leaning man to complain about the world while offering no solutions.
The book primarily focuses on the “what” has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall, while providing an astoundingly limited view as to “why” these things happened. Even more limited is his assessment of what comes next.
Bacevich provides his analysis of a quarter century of American history as if he were observing from 3000 ft in the air, leaning heavily into the “both sides-isms” as if that is helpful or even remotely accurate. A perfect example of this is his comparison of the Tea Party movement to the Occupy movement as if they are equals, with neither leaving “much of a lasting mark.” The same goes for his critique of the Clinton vs. Trump election: both sides are equally bad. In a not altogether surprising revelation, Bacevich informs the readers that he effectively didn’t participate in that election by writing “other” in the voting booth.
Bacevich is very clearly a moderate conservative, which is great in theory. But in 2021, that particular ideological stance frequently authors some sort of revisionist history that acts as if the Republican Party has been hijacked by Trump and not building carefully for this moment since Nixon. He spends very little time criticizing the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations for disastrous policies, foreign and domestic (that did far more damage to American society than the increase in Americans with tattoos by the way), while comfortably asserting the failure of Obama’s presidency without a single mention of Mitch McConnell’s uncanny ability as a Senator to not govern, but to halt the process of governing altogether.
Though, as moderate conservatives love to mention, he voted for Obama twice and I bet he “would vote for him a third time if he could!”
While Bacevich has an impressive grasp on US military history and national security policy, it’s prominence in the book serves as a crutch he uses to skirt around or outright avoid other variables that contributed to the election of 2016.
The book offers little more than a soapbox (an eloquently written soapbox, but a soapbox nonetheless) for an older, white, center-right leaning man to complain about the world while offering no solutions.
The book primarily focuses on the “what” has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall, while providing an astoundingly limited view as to “why” these things happened. Even more limited is his assessment of what comes next.
Bacevich provides his analysis of a quarter century of American history as if he were observing from 3000 ft in the air, leaning heavily into the “both sides-isms” as if that is helpful or even remotely accurate. A perfect example of this is his comparison of the Tea Party movement to the Occupy movement as if they are equals, with neither leaving “much of a lasting mark.” The same goes for his critique of the Clinton vs. Trump election: both sides are equally bad. In a not altogether surprising revelation, Bacevich informs the readers that he effectively didn’t participate in that election by writing “other” in the voting booth.
Bacevich is very clearly a moderate conservative, which is great in theory. But in 2021, that particular ideological stance frequently authors some sort of revisionist history that acts as if the Republican Party has been hijacked by Trump and not building carefully for this moment since Nixon. He spends very little time criticizing the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations for disastrous policies, foreign and domestic (that did far more damage to American society than the increase in Americans with tattoos by the way), while comfortably asserting the failure of Obama’s presidency without a single mention of Mitch McConnell’s uncanny ability as a Senator to not govern, but to halt the process of governing altogether.
Though, as moderate conservatives love to mention, he voted for Obama twice and I bet he “would vote for him a third time if he could!”
January 23, 2020
I was so excited to read this one and was still super excited after the intro and a third of the way through because he almost wrote a great book talking about how America Squandered its cold war victory or whatever it was he promised in his intro. Instead, it just falls apart into the same old (so tired!) narrative about how corruption created the Trump phenomenon and how both sides are bad yada yada. Not that I don't think it's true, but he says absolutely nothing new. He also rails against identity politics and how the left cared more about gay rights and feminism and social justice than the working class. (GAG) And then he reveals that he voted third party because he doesn't like either Trump or Hillary and then he just leaves off with some bland blah blah blah about unity and whatnot!
January 17, 2020
This could be alternatively titled “The Ultimate Boomer Guide to the Modern US State”. In it, the author rightfully complains about the post-cold war peace that was squandered by a succession of strategic mistakes made by the last 6 administrations. Irritatingly, the Obama administration takes a lot of the heat (even though “I voted for him twice, and met him on several occasions”) whereas the disastrous 8 years of Bush ineptness hardly musters the criticism it so richly deserves. The analysis such as it is prompts a lot of eye rolling: a litany of every typical center right complaint is aired (a lot of the social “ills” like gay marriage), without much offered up in the area of what could have been done differently or should be done differently today. The way that was paved for Trump is laid out through the author’s lens of historical events which would be nodded in unison by a lot of other boomers.
February 7, 2020
Growing up in the 1950s and 60s I enjoyed a sense of security knowing where to focus my fears and angst. The Soviet Union was the enemy and policymakers developed the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that carried us through threats like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fast forward to 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and my security blanket was gone – the Cold War was over. In what President George H.W. Bush referred to as the unipower world, Americans now have to decide who the enemy was, since it was hard to imagine a world without one.
Andrew Bacevitch in his latest book, THE AGE OF ILLUSIONS: HOW AMERICA SQUANDERED ITS COLD WAR VICTORY examines the post-Cold War period as American policymakers struggled with which direction US foreign policy should go. Bacevitch a retired army officer and graduate of West Point, in addition to being a professor emeritus from Boston University concludes that the path chosen carried a certain amount of hubris that led to numerous errors squandering our supposed victory that began when Boris Yeltsin faced down a coup attempt by elements in the Kremlin that could not accept defeat.
According to Bacevitch the United States chose the path of globalization or unrestricted corporate capitalism designed to create maximum wealth. Second, it fostered global leadership, or hegemony and empire. Third, we called for freedom, emphasizing autonomy. Lastly, presidential supremacy as the prerogatives of the legislative branch declined. In making his case, Bacevitch provides historical context for each and integrates a comparison of his own career with that of Donald Trump. In so doing Bacevitch seeks to explain how someone like Trump could be elected president and he will argue it could have been predicted based on events that took place in 1992 and after. For Bacevitch the villains who are responsible for basically continuing America’s path after the Cold War are the elites who pushed a consensus that raised expectations, and when they went unfulfilled, outraged voters turned to Donald Trump.
The election of 1992 is a watershed in American history as President George H.W. Bush despite overseeing the end of the Cold War, prevailing against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, gaining an 89% approval rating, and promised a “New World Order,” lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton. The election produced three insurgencies that directly relate to the election of 2016. Former Nixon speech writer and newspaper columnist Patrick Buchanan, and millionaire H. Ross Perot were both verbal “bomb throwers” who represented an “America First” approach to foreign policy and a populist economic message. Buchanan gave Bush a scare in the New Hampshire primary and Perot garnered 19% of the vote in the election. The third member of this insurgency was actually Hillary Clinton who worked to do away with white male domination in society as she put it, a vote for Bill Clinton was “two for the price of one.” Her battles in the White House reflect how Republicans, and right-wing political elements feared her.
Bacevitch’s analysis throughout the narrative is based sound logic and a very perceptive view of American society and the conduct of foreign policy. He takes the reader through the historically impactful ideas of Alfred Mahan, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Rudyard Kipling who explained the need for American expansion and nationalism. In his discussion of “thinkers,” he points to Francis Fukuyama who created a secular ideology to justify American hubris in the 1990s and after. Bacevitch also delves into the 1940-1992 period offering analogies that make a great deal of sense as he explains how the US emerged from WWII as the dominant power in the world, but shortly thereafter the Soviet Union became an ideological and military threat.
As one becomes immersed in Bacevitch’s narrative you begin to question the path the United States chose. The expectations of the American economy after the Cold War was extremely bullish. Globalization was seen as the key element to achieving economic domination and the spread of American values. Global leadership was seen as policing this new American economic empire and a vastly increased military budget would fund the military who would police the world and enforce American hegemony. As Colin Powell has written, “Our arms should be second to none.” As the US led the way in techno-warfare a large conventional force was no longer needed. Bacevitch discusses the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). “It purported to describe the culmination of a long evolutionary march to perfection. Globalization promised to reduce uncertainties that had plagued operation of the market. In a similar manner, the RMA was expected to reduce—and perhaps even eliminate—uncertainties that had long plagued the conduct of war and had made it such a risky proposition. The nation that seized the opportunities it presented would enjoy decisive advantages over any and all adversaries.” The problem with techno-militarism is that “smart bombs,” drones and other “toys” are not as precise and predictable as policy makers are convinced of. Washington also engaged in a “kulturkampf” as it tried to spread its values creating a backlash seemingly everywhere it went.
This approach led the United States to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, the support of numerous repressive dictatorships, a war in Afghanistan that continues today, and other policies that today is making the United States a pariah among its allies and a joke in relation to Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China. Bacevitch sums up the post-Cold War period very nicely, “the spirit of the post-Cold War era prioritized self-actualization and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice.”
Bacevitch saves his most trenchant remarks as he places the last three presidents under a microscope and renders the following judgements that make a great deal of sense. By the time Bill Clinton left the White House white males still ruled Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood still saw further power to be garnered and making money was king. Gays could neither marry nor serve in the military. Checks on corporate capitalism all but disappeared. Americans learned to take war in stride observing from a comfortable distance with the volunteer army that targeted a miniscule part of the population.
Under George Bush, the central theme of his administration was war, a complement to globalization and another means of bringing the world in line with American goals. Clinton may have dabbled in war, but Bush went at it whole “hog.” The Bush Doctrine argued after 9/11 that American prerogatives where beyond reproach. American values were universal, and compliance was almost compulsory as resistance was futile. When the US went to war, they did it with a sense of righteousness that was hard to fathom. We saw ourselves as the global peacemaker, but in reality, we categorized them, i.e.; “axis of evil” rather than engage them. Finally, Bush saw himself as a unitary executive and the world order that the Washington constructed was preordained.
Barrack Obama did not fair much better in Bacevitch’s estimation as he paved the way for a powerful backlash resulting in the election of Trump. He saved globalized neo-liberalism with his $787,000,000 bailout. His administration never reassessed globalization as a policy that caused the “great recession.” After Bush’s failures, Obama gave using the military a new lease on life. Obama vowed to win the war in Afghanistan and even promoted an Iraqi type of “surge” that was unsuccessful. Hostilities continued in Iraq, civil war decimated Syria and part of Obama’s legacy was the continuation of wars. Under Obama, the concept of “forever wars” took hold. “Hope and change,” became “more of the same.” He did become a cultural warrior celebrating diversity, empowering women, and exploring the variable nature of identity, but over all his administration was a missed opportunity.
One may disagree with Bacevitch’s assessment of the last few decades, but one must really think hard about the following. The wars that continue are working class wars with a volunteer army that the elites have little to do with. Globalization accelerated the de-industrialization of America as we exported more jobs than we created. The disparity in wealth and income is abhorrent as 43 million people are below the poverty level, credit card debt is $8377 per household, and most retirees have just $5000 in savings. After the Trump tax cut of 2018, the 1% keeps more and more of its wealth. In this situation it is understandable that economic populism has run rampant.
Bacevitch has written a very thought-provoking book that demands that we reexamine our pre-2016 policies to understand what has been transpiring in American foreign policy since Trump assumed the presidency. If the book has a weakness it is that Bacevitch’s criticisms are seemingly correct, but he never offers an alternative to what he criticizes.
Though the book appears to be a work that focuses on American foreign policy, it also shines a light on American social and cultural history. A chapter entitled, “Al, Fred, and Homer’s America – and Mine!” provides insights into American society in the late 1940s and 50s through movies and social class issues. There are constant references to literary works, the dismantling of our industrial base and how unwinnable wars tore apart our social fabric that bound all elements of society together. The references to cultural tools is used as a vehicle to explain in part the partisan divide that developed in our country and in the end all of these references be it to John Updike’s character, Harry Angstrom or others rests on the author’s belief that the United States had an opportunity to alter its path. However we chose not to and let the mistakes of the last 40 years continue to the point that even Trump with all his criticism and bombast about allies and wars has committed even more troops to the Middle East, and funded the techno-military component of the Defense budget to the maximum. Bacevitch is a harsh critic and does not hold back, but it would be nice to know exactly what policy changes he would make.
Andrew Bacevitch in his latest book, THE AGE OF ILLUSIONS: HOW AMERICA SQUANDERED ITS COLD WAR VICTORY examines the post-Cold War period as American policymakers struggled with which direction US foreign policy should go. Bacevitch a retired army officer and graduate of West Point, in addition to being a professor emeritus from Boston University concludes that the path chosen carried a certain amount of hubris that led to numerous errors squandering our supposed victory that began when Boris Yeltsin faced down a coup attempt by elements in the Kremlin that could not accept defeat.
According to Bacevitch the United States chose the path of globalization or unrestricted corporate capitalism designed to create maximum wealth. Second, it fostered global leadership, or hegemony and empire. Third, we called for freedom, emphasizing autonomy. Lastly, presidential supremacy as the prerogatives of the legislative branch declined. In making his case, Bacevitch provides historical context for each and integrates a comparison of his own career with that of Donald Trump. In so doing Bacevitch seeks to explain how someone like Trump could be elected president and he will argue it could have been predicted based on events that took place in 1992 and after. For Bacevitch the villains who are responsible for basically continuing America’s path after the Cold War are the elites who pushed a consensus that raised expectations, and when they went unfulfilled, outraged voters turned to Donald Trump.
The election of 1992 is a watershed in American history as President George H.W. Bush despite overseeing the end of the Cold War, prevailing against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, gaining an 89% approval rating, and promised a “New World Order,” lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton. The election produced three insurgencies that directly relate to the election of 2016. Former Nixon speech writer and newspaper columnist Patrick Buchanan, and millionaire H. Ross Perot were both verbal “bomb throwers” who represented an “America First” approach to foreign policy and a populist economic message. Buchanan gave Bush a scare in the New Hampshire primary and Perot garnered 19% of the vote in the election. The third member of this insurgency was actually Hillary Clinton who worked to do away with white male domination in society as she put it, a vote for Bill Clinton was “two for the price of one.” Her battles in the White House reflect how Republicans, and right-wing political elements feared her.
Bacevitch’s analysis throughout the narrative is based sound logic and a very perceptive view of American society and the conduct of foreign policy. He takes the reader through the historically impactful ideas of Alfred Mahan, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Rudyard Kipling who explained the need for American expansion and nationalism. In his discussion of “thinkers,” he points to Francis Fukuyama who created a secular ideology to justify American hubris in the 1990s and after. Bacevitch also delves into the 1940-1992 period offering analogies that make a great deal of sense as he explains how the US emerged from WWII as the dominant power in the world, but shortly thereafter the Soviet Union became an ideological and military threat.
As one becomes immersed in Bacevitch’s narrative you begin to question the path the United States chose. The expectations of the American economy after the Cold War was extremely bullish. Globalization was seen as the key element to achieving economic domination and the spread of American values. Global leadership was seen as policing this new American economic empire and a vastly increased military budget would fund the military who would police the world and enforce American hegemony. As Colin Powell has written, “Our arms should be second to none.” As the US led the way in techno-warfare a large conventional force was no longer needed. Bacevitch discusses the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). “It purported to describe the culmination of a long evolutionary march to perfection. Globalization promised to reduce uncertainties that had plagued operation of the market. In a similar manner, the RMA was expected to reduce—and perhaps even eliminate—uncertainties that had long plagued the conduct of war and had made it such a risky proposition. The nation that seized the opportunities it presented would enjoy decisive advantages over any and all adversaries.” The problem with techno-militarism is that “smart bombs,” drones and other “toys” are not as precise and predictable as policy makers are convinced of. Washington also engaged in a “kulturkampf” as it tried to spread its values creating a backlash seemingly everywhere it went.
This approach led the United States to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, the support of numerous repressive dictatorships, a war in Afghanistan that continues today, and other policies that today is making the United States a pariah among its allies and a joke in relation to Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China. Bacevitch sums up the post-Cold War period very nicely, “the spirit of the post-Cold War era prioritized self-actualization and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice.”
Bacevitch saves his most trenchant remarks as he places the last three presidents under a microscope and renders the following judgements that make a great deal of sense. By the time Bill Clinton left the White House white males still ruled Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood still saw further power to be garnered and making money was king. Gays could neither marry nor serve in the military. Checks on corporate capitalism all but disappeared. Americans learned to take war in stride observing from a comfortable distance with the volunteer army that targeted a miniscule part of the population.
Under George Bush, the central theme of his administration was war, a complement to globalization and another means of bringing the world in line with American goals. Clinton may have dabbled in war, but Bush went at it whole “hog.” The Bush Doctrine argued after 9/11 that American prerogatives where beyond reproach. American values were universal, and compliance was almost compulsory as resistance was futile. When the US went to war, they did it with a sense of righteousness that was hard to fathom. We saw ourselves as the global peacemaker, but in reality, we categorized them, i.e.; “axis of evil” rather than engage them. Finally, Bush saw himself as a unitary executive and the world order that the Washington constructed was preordained.
Barrack Obama did not fair much better in Bacevitch’s estimation as he paved the way for a powerful backlash resulting in the election of Trump. He saved globalized neo-liberalism with his $787,000,000 bailout. His administration never reassessed globalization as a policy that caused the “great recession.” After Bush’s failures, Obama gave using the military a new lease on life. Obama vowed to win the war in Afghanistan and even promoted an Iraqi type of “surge” that was unsuccessful. Hostilities continued in Iraq, civil war decimated Syria and part of Obama’s legacy was the continuation of wars. Under Obama, the concept of “forever wars” took hold. “Hope and change,” became “more of the same.” He did become a cultural warrior celebrating diversity, empowering women, and exploring the variable nature of identity, but over all his administration was a missed opportunity.
One may disagree with Bacevitch’s assessment of the last few decades, but one must really think hard about the following. The wars that continue are working class wars with a volunteer army that the elites have little to do with. Globalization accelerated the de-industrialization of America as we exported more jobs than we created. The disparity in wealth and income is abhorrent as 43 million people are below the poverty level, credit card debt is $8377 per household, and most retirees have just $5000 in savings. After the Trump tax cut of 2018, the 1% keeps more and more of its wealth. In this situation it is understandable that economic populism has run rampant.
Bacevitch has written a very thought-provoking book that demands that we reexamine our pre-2016 policies to understand what has been transpiring in American foreign policy since Trump assumed the presidency. If the book has a weakness it is that Bacevitch’s criticisms are seemingly correct, but he never offers an alternative to what he criticizes.
Though the book appears to be a work that focuses on American foreign policy, it also shines a light on American social and cultural history. A chapter entitled, “Al, Fred, and Homer’s America – and Mine!” provides insights into American society in the late 1940s and 50s through movies and social class issues. There are constant references to literary works, the dismantling of our industrial base and how unwinnable wars tore apart our social fabric that bound all elements of society together. The references to cultural tools is used as a vehicle to explain in part the partisan divide that developed in our country and in the end all of these references be it to John Updike’s character, Harry Angstrom or others rests on the author’s belief that the United States had an opportunity to alter its path. However we chose not to and let the mistakes of the last 40 years continue to the point that even Trump with all his criticism and bombast about allies and wars has committed even more troops to the Middle East, and funded the techno-military component of the Defense budget to the maximum. Bacevitch is a harsh critic and does not hold back, but it would be nice to know exactly what policy changes he would make.
February 19, 2020
"How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory:" "globalized neoliberalism, militarized hegemony, radical autonomy, and presidential supremacy." In his book Age of Illusions, Bacevich crystallizes his thesis on page 173 (of 202).
Two stars. Not horrible, but not really worth reading either.
Two stars. Not horrible, but not really worth reading either.
July 23, 2023
Why is it that so many Americans think it is all about America and them? When Francis Fukuyama tried to announce the End of History, many of us simply decided this man is a fool and didn’t bother to read his drivel. It seems however, that many Americans believed it and many other falsehoods about the end of the Cold War. Hence the need for books like Andrew Bacevich’s The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory. Although Bacevich doesn’t totally fall for this he does almost totally focus on America in his quest to show it how badly American foreign policy and foreign military interventions have gone since the end of the Cold War. His analyse is well reasoned and convincing and I did enjoy reading it. However, if America did win the Cold War (even thought it played the biggest role) it was not the only western power involved. Also when NATO expanded right up to the border of Russia, despite most people who have studied Russian history knowing the one thing Russia fears most is attack from the West, all of NATO made the decision and not just the US. So I recommend this to anyone who wants to read a well reasoned argument about Americas action during the last 30 plus years.
February 18, 2020
Essentially a recap of recent history--nothing surprising as I lived through it--and critique of politics centered around a shared set of assumptions held by both major political parties, which pose as polar opposites. The status quo favoring a minority of economic and academically favored elites must be, and is, maintained by both Democrats and Republicans. I did not really learn anything new there.
However Bacevich, a military veteran and retired academician, and I, retired, disabled letter carrier, agree on several topics. He touches upon income inequality and the rise of Bernie Sanders, but ends with climate change as what he thinks must be the transformative palliative. I tend to agree to a point. While fighting climate change with the urgency of fighting World War II can and will fundamentally alter the economy and, perhaps, the political landscape, the underlying foundations of the economy must also change.
And while Bacevich does not come right out and say it I get the impression he, like me, wants an end of the current all volunteer force (AVF) which has allowed the sons, and daughters, of the 1% Investor Class and Working Rich to evade service to the nation. The US military is more segregated by socioeconomic class than at any other time in its history--political opportunists such as Senators Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst and Rep Tulsi Gabbard notwithstanding.
This book, an extended op-ed, will be read primarily by those of a democratic socialist bent and, therefore, preaching to the choir. It needs to be read by those who idolize the current administration the most.
However Bacevich, a military veteran and retired academician, and I, retired, disabled letter carrier, agree on several topics. He touches upon income inequality and the rise of Bernie Sanders, but ends with climate change as what he thinks must be the transformative palliative. I tend to agree to a point. While fighting climate change with the urgency of fighting World War II can and will fundamentally alter the economy and, perhaps, the political landscape, the underlying foundations of the economy must also change.
And while Bacevich does not come right out and say it I get the impression he, like me, wants an end of the current all volunteer force (AVF) which has allowed the sons, and daughters, of the 1% Investor Class and Working Rich to evade service to the nation. The US military is more segregated by socioeconomic class than at any other time in its history--political opportunists such as Senators Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst and Rep Tulsi Gabbard notwithstanding.
This book, an extended op-ed, will be read primarily by those of a democratic socialist bent and, therefore, preaching to the choir. It needs to be read by those who idolize the current administration the most.
December 29, 2020
Pretty decent and short survey of American Economic and Foreign Policy post-Cold War. There are no striking revelations here, but I doubt that was the author's goal. Essentially using Francis Fukuyama's now (in)famous "End Of History" essay as a jumping off point, the author looks at the failures and pratfalls of the Presidential administrations that led to the 2016 election. The author is self-aware enough to recognize that we will still be combing through the wreckage even 100 years from now. But, for the uninitiated, the book is a great entry point to what may very well be the opening moments of steep American decline.
May 21, 2021
In The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory , Andrew Bacevich attempts to trace how the United States found itself adrift, with its citizens increasingly unmoored from a shared sense of purpose - something that the election of Donald Trump in 2016 made increasingly difficult to deny. For this reason alone, his book is worth reading. The question, however, is whether one can properly identify where and how we lost our way - an identification that would, in principle, allow us to correct course and avoid future deviations from it. Bacevich believes that this deviation can be identified with the end of the Cold War. And yet, the cleavages and divisions that Bacevich wants to understand in terms of what happened following America’s Cold War “victory” in fact precede it, with far reaching consequences for his argument. How so?
The end of the Cold War, according to Bacevich, “reignited long-smoldering divisions in American society” (76 - my emphasis). This implies, however, that these divisions were already there during the Cold War- something Bacevich doesn’t fully register. It is his failure to fully register this that allows him to consider, for example, a passage from Norman Mailer’s 1962 essay “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy” to be a “diagnosis” of our current predicament that is “devastatingly accurate,” even if it was “a half century premature” (187) at the time of its writing:
Bacevich, however, isn’t theoretically equipped to consider the possibility that the spaceship never quite came together. Whence his uncertainty concerning whether “the basic fabric of American life emerged largely intact” (193) after the first three years of Trump’s presidency, or if, as he claims only seven pages earlier, “ours is a nation coming apart at the seams” (186). What remains unthinkable, for Bacevich, is that what the adrift fragments “mourn,” to use Mailer’s language, never properly saw the light of day. What he misunderstands, in short, is history: he wants to locate the cause of the “drift” in history when in fact it is this drift that makes history itself possible. Put otherwise: he has to posit, in history, a moment of impact when the hitherto intact ship of state flies apart. If, however, the so-called “United” States was never done being hobbled together from the “wretched refuse” washed ashore from “ancient lands,” as Emma Lazarus’ puts it in “The New Colossus,” then such a positing inevitably confuses a prior state of fragmentation for one of wholeness. And, in so doing, it repeats the mistake of Trump himself, whose desire to sweep the “refuse” from the shore and return it to the “shithole countries” from which it came is justified in the name of a certain “America” that he all-too hastily takes to be the real one.
The ‘real’ America that Bacevich mourns is, to be sure, far more admirable than Trump’s. It is one where freedom was still married to responsibility. The story that Bacevich tells is one where a much needed critique of an unequally shared freedom ends up going too far, and removing all limits to freedom. In Bacevich’s telling, the dominant paradigm during the Cold War was one where “freedom was allowed to some, but not all. While conferring rights and privileges, freedom also established limits and imposed obligations” (127). After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and as a consequence of “the post-Cold War Kulturkampf” (76), this paradigm is displaced. The notion of freedom is expanded, such that its rights and privileges are no longer the exclusive purview of white, heterosexual men. This expansion was long overdue, and Bacevich by no means opposes it. But this freedom that is now free to everyone is also a freedom that is free in another sense: it comes at no cost. It imposes no obligations; exacting nothing for the nation as a whole, it is duty-free. For Bacevich, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, the example par excellence of this paradigm shift can be seen with respect to military service: historically-speaking, the white heterosexual men who enjoyed all of liberty’s privileges were also expected to take up arms in its defense. Now, however, military service is no longer a duty but is instead relegated to those with few, if any, other options. It is, in a word, those who enjoy the freedom bonanza the least who are most likely to die in defense of it - all while the rest of us behave like spectators to a bloodsport whose “warriors” we aggrandize like gladiators but to whose lives and deaths we remain largely indifferent.
And yet, sooner or later, one has to ask: is the story Bacevich tells true? In describing “the post-Cold War Kulturkampf,” Bacevich writes:
Where does that leave us? The problem at the heart of Bacevich’s book - a notion of freedom that has become so impoverished that it no longer entails any responsibility whatsoever - is an urgent one. It is central to all our problems, from the persistence of racism and income inequality to the lack of healthcare and affordable housing, to gun violence, to global warming, and to everything in between. We cannot address any of these if we insist on unconditional freedom at all costs, which is, in the final analysis, just a more palatable articulation of the law of the jungle: every man for himself. Such a “law,” however, marks not just the end of society; it marks the end of “man,” and not only because he devolves into a beastliness from which he perhaps never fully emerged to begin with, but because the problems confronting the world today don’t leave any corner of it untouched - including the jungle.
Where Bacevich is wrong is not in his identification of the problem. It is in his understanding of how it came about. “What Americans need,” he writes, “is not more freedom but truer freedom, grounded in something other than the reiteration of comforting clichés” (129). True enough. But this is an existential predicament as old as the hills, and not a national one that dates to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is, indeed, why Eisenhower, channeling the Rousseau of The Social Contract, cannot just say, in a passage quoted by Bacevich, “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith” but has to add: “and I don’t care what it is” (quoted by Bacevich, 81). The whole problem is contained in the tension between the need to ground freedom in some kind of faith, and the fact that, no faith presenting itself as unequivocally true, any faith will due. What matters, in short, is not the content of the belief, but just the act of believing. Put otherwise, to be Americans, we have to believe in the promise of America, whatever it may be. The problem, however, is that this promise is not taken by most people to be a merely formal one. Not only does it mean something, it means something different for all those who place their hopes in America.
Bacevich’s attempt to account for this groundlessness, this lack of a common faith or shared sense of purpose, in terms of the apparent ascendancy of the post-Cold War emancipatory politics of the left is, for this reason alone, inadequate. It is, moreover, only half right to claim that, “[f]or transcendent authority,” the right looks to God while the left “to the autonomous self” (79). In fact, the pervasive, though by no means exclusive, tendency of both the left and the right is to look to the autonomous self, even if they also both project the turn inward onto external surfaces (“religion,” say, or “science”). It is frequently - though, again, by no means always - on the basis of this unacknowledged belief in the self’s autonomy, its sovereignty, that the left often ends up championing a subject liberated from all apparently natural determinations, free to decide its gender, its sexuality, everything, it seems, but - and this “but” is worthy of an essay in its own right - its race. (And, to be clear, I agree with the left that gender and sexuality - and, I would add, race - are not gifts of nature. Yet that doesn’t mean therefore they fall under the decision of each individual subject). But it is also on the strength of the sovereignty of the subject that the right refuses, at times with suicidal tenacity, any limitations on “individual” freedoms, regardless of whether they are meant to curb a pandemic, gun violence, or the destruction of the world. The right might clothe its subject-centric turn in religiosity, and the left in reason, but both are belied by their reactions to Trump. It is the moral unmooredness of the right that allows it to place its faith in a man who is himself a moral vacuum, while it is the left’s own flailing for a moral center that leaves it in “a perpetual state of high dudgeon” (182), dependent on Trump for its next “hit” of moral outrage, even if each hit increasingly has only the longevity of a tweet. One sometimes gets the impression that if Trump didn’t exist to “fill” these moral voids, both the right and the left would have had to invent him - which may well begin to account, in fact, for how he came to be in the first place.
To rigorously account for what is happening today in America - and not just America - one needs to account for the emergence of this autonomous subject who usurps the place of transcendent authority and, in so doing, treats the world as little more than an occasion for the expression of its own freedom. The urgency of accounting for this emergence is, however, not new. Already, a century before Bacevich published The Age of Illusions, a German theorist named Carl Schmitt made many of the same arguments, often in very similar terms. “[T]he detached, isolated, and emancipated individual becomes,” he writes in Political Romanticism (1919), speaking of the romantic subject, “the middle point, the court of last appeal, the absolute” (99). Or, a few pages earlier:
The task, in any case, is to account for the romantic subject that few, if any of us, fail to be, at least at times. To do so, however, would require expanding one’s source materials, so to speak, from the last three decades to (at least) the last six hundred. Such a project is more akin to that of Jacques Derrida or Paul de Man than Bacevich’s - though his at least has the merit of pointing towards its necessity, especially for those who want to take not just their responsibility seriously, but their freedom too.
August 2020
The end of the Cold War, according to Bacevich, “reignited long-smoldering divisions in American society” (76 - my emphasis). This implies, however, that these divisions were already there during the Cold War- something Bacevich doesn’t fully register. It is his failure to fully register this that allows him to consider, for example, a passage from Norman Mailer’s 1962 essay “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy” to be a “diagnosis” of our current predicament that is “devastatingly accurate,” even if it was “a half century premature” (187) at the time of its writing:
Our tragedy is that we diverge as countrymen further and further away from one another, like a space ship broken apart in flight which now drifts mournfully in isolated orbits, satellites to each other, planets none, communications faint (quoted by Bacevich, 187).Yet was Mailer’s “diagnosis” sheer fiction when he wrote it? Was the spaceship “America” intact in 1962? It was, after all, a-not-unremarkable year. Not only did 1962 immediately precede the first presidential assassination in more than half a century, it was also the year American involvement in a small southeast Asian country called Vietnam began slowly but ineluctably to pick up speed. In addition, it was, as Mailer highlights, a year very much under the shadows of the disputed (if not outright stolen, thanks not to Russian meddling but the mob’s) 1960 presidential election and the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. This latter would itself contribute to the Cuban Missile crisis that in October 1962 risked triggering nuclear Armageddon. All was not well, in short, in 1962 America. It was because all was not well that a young black man named James Meredith had to brave a deadly riot in order to register for classes at the University of Mississippi in the fall of that year - a reminder, then, that, in 1962, racial segregation was enforced de jure south of the Mason-Dixon line, and de facto for the most part north of it. Yet a country that is segregated is by definition divided. And this division wasn’t new; rather, it echoed back to the nation’s “original sin,” one that, a century before Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, was literally tearing the country apart. What Meredith was implicitly protesting may not have been slavery in its most iconic form, but its logic was continuous with that of slavery: it was a logic that valued black lives at some small fraction of white. It is a logic that is, as recent events in Minneapolis underscore unambiguously, by no means a thing of the past - which suggests that, pace Bacevich’s claim that the Civil War “destroyed slavery” (200), something of slavery lives on still today. My point, in any case, is that it doesn’t take a lot of effort to see that the United States of 1962 was marked by divergences and fractures that not only justified Mailer’s “diagnosis” at the time, but, by harkening back to the nation’s “original sin,” might leave one wondering whether the “space ship” had flown itself apart or had simply never quite come together in the first place.
Bacevich, however, isn’t theoretically equipped to consider the possibility that the spaceship never quite came together. Whence his uncertainty concerning whether “the basic fabric of American life emerged largely intact” (193) after the first three years of Trump’s presidency, or if, as he claims only seven pages earlier, “ours is a nation coming apart at the seams” (186). What remains unthinkable, for Bacevich, is that what the adrift fragments “mourn,” to use Mailer’s language, never properly saw the light of day. What he misunderstands, in short, is history: he wants to locate the cause of the “drift” in history when in fact it is this drift that makes history itself possible. Put otherwise: he has to posit, in history, a moment of impact when the hitherto intact ship of state flies apart. If, however, the so-called “United” States was never done being hobbled together from the “wretched refuse” washed ashore from “ancient lands,” as Emma Lazarus’ puts it in “The New Colossus,” then such a positing inevitably confuses a prior state of fragmentation for one of wholeness. And, in so doing, it repeats the mistake of Trump himself, whose desire to sweep the “refuse” from the shore and return it to the “shithole countries” from which it came is justified in the name of a certain “America” that he all-too hastily takes to be the real one.
The ‘real’ America that Bacevich mourns is, to be sure, far more admirable than Trump’s. It is one where freedom was still married to responsibility. The story that Bacevich tells is one where a much needed critique of an unequally shared freedom ends up going too far, and removing all limits to freedom. In Bacevich’s telling, the dominant paradigm during the Cold War was one where “freedom was allowed to some, but not all. While conferring rights and privileges, freedom also established limits and imposed obligations” (127). After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and as a consequence of “the post-Cold War Kulturkampf” (76), this paradigm is displaced. The notion of freedom is expanded, such that its rights and privileges are no longer the exclusive purview of white, heterosexual men. This expansion was long overdue, and Bacevich by no means opposes it. But this freedom that is now free to everyone is also a freedom that is free in another sense: it comes at no cost. It imposes no obligations; exacting nothing for the nation as a whole, it is duty-free. For Bacevich, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, the example par excellence of this paradigm shift can be seen with respect to military service: historically-speaking, the white heterosexual men who enjoyed all of liberty’s privileges were also expected to take up arms in its defense. Now, however, military service is no longer a duty but is instead relegated to those with few, if any, other options. It is, in a word, those who enjoy the freedom bonanza the least who are most likely to die in defense of it - all while the rest of us behave like spectators to a bloodsport whose “warriors” we aggrandize like gladiators but to whose lives and deaths we remain largely indifferent.
And yet, sooner or later, one has to ask: is the story Bacevich tells true? In describing “the post-Cold War Kulturkampf,” Bacevich writes:
Culture warriors on the left, more often than not loosely affiliated with the Democratic Party, saw America as a place in which pervasive discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality allowed freedom for some - notably for white heterosexual males whose forebears came from northern or western Europe - while denying it to others. They demanded redress of these injustices, with unconditional freedom for all their ultimate goal.It is hard, however, to find this description terribly compelling, especially during the summer of 2020 when it is precisely the culture warriors of the right who insist on a freedom at once so absolute and so devoid of responsibility that they consider mask-mandates during a pandemic tantamount to tyranny. This fact alone suggests that the distinction between those for whom freedom carries an obligation and those for whom it doesn’t is not one that maps very well, or at all, on the left-right political dichotomy. What is especially noteworthy, however, is that a certain Bacevich himself recognizes this, albeit again without registering its implications for his book. In particular, he recognizes it in a discussion not of post-Cold War America but of the Vietnam War - a war that occurred at the very height of the Cold War:
Culture warriors on the right, broadly identified with the Republican Party, believed - indeed, were dead certain - that from its very founding the United States had been the ‘land of liberty.’ Yet whether interpreting scripture literally or metaphorically, they took seriously God’s warning in Genesis that fateful consequences awaited anyone tempted to reject all limits on the actual exercise of freedom. To disregard that injunction, as had Adam and Eve, was to open the floodgates of moral anarchy. In true freedom, self-restraint tempered self-indulgence (77).
From 1965 to 1972, when U.S. troops were fighting in Vietnam, the divide appeared to be between those who supported the war and those who opposed it or, within the ranks of the boomers, between those who served in Vietnam (as I did) and those who refused to serve. In retrospect, however, that pro-war/anti-war construct turned out to possess only transitory significance. The real split - the lasting one - occurred between boomers who saw Vietnam as an event requiring them to take a forthright stand, whether for or against, and those who saw the war as no more than an annoyance, not worth attending to except as a potential impediment to the pursuit of their own ambitions (18)The divide during the Vietnam War was not between those, like Bacevich, who felt a responsibility to take up arms, and those, like, for example, Noam Chomsky, who felt a responsibility to protest. It was between those who felt duty-bound to respond in one way or another, and those who felt no such responsibility whatsoever. People like, for example, Donald Trump:
[O]n the matter widely considered to be the defining issue of the day, Trump was a no show. Many of his contemporaries fought. Many others protested. He remained firmly on the sidelines, implicitly betting that, in the long run, the war wouldn’t matter (...). Trump was hardly alone in making that bet - and it turned out to be a shrewd one (18).What needs to be underscored here is that, in the 1960s and 70s, freedom had already “liberated” itself from any corresponding sense of responsibility. And this morally anchorless freedom, adrift in a world taken to offer little more than occasions for its exercise, can be said to have found, half a century ago, its champion in the figure of Donald J. Trump. For if Trump sat on the sidelines, a mere spectator to a bloodsport that was as real, or unreal, for him as would be his reality television show, or, for that matter, the presidency itself, he was, as Bacevich notes, by no means alone. Perhaps he was an abomination; but, already, right spank in the middle of the Cold War, “he was also very much a man of his time.”
Where does that leave us? The problem at the heart of Bacevich’s book - a notion of freedom that has become so impoverished that it no longer entails any responsibility whatsoever - is an urgent one. It is central to all our problems, from the persistence of racism and income inequality to the lack of healthcare and affordable housing, to gun violence, to global warming, and to everything in between. We cannot address any of these if we insist on unconditional freedom at all costs, which is, in the final analysis, just a more palatable articulation of the law of the jungle: every man for himself. Such a “law,” however, marks not just the end of society; it marks the end of “man,” and not only because he devolves into a beastliness from which he perhaps never fully emerged to begin with, but because the problems confronting the world today don’t leave any corner of it untouched - including the jungle.
Where Bacevich is wrong is not in his identification of the problem. It is in his understanding of how it came about. “What Americans need,” he writes, “is not more freedom but truer freedom, grounded in something other than the reiteration of comforting clichés” (129). True enough. But this is an existential predicament as old as the hills, and not a national one that dates to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is, indeed, why Eisenhower, channeling the Rousseau of The Social Contract, cannot just say, in a passage quoted by Bacevich, “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith” but has to add: “and I don’t care what it is” (quoted by Bacevich, 81). The whole problem is contained in the tension between the need to ground freedom in some kind of faith, and the fact that, no faith presenting itself as unequivocally true, any faith will due. What matters, in short, is not the content of the belief, but just the act of believing. Put otherwise, to be Americans, we have to believe in the promise of America, whatever it may be. The problem, however, is that this promise is not taken by most people to be a merely formal one. Not only does it mean something, it means something different for all those who place their hopes in America.
Bacevich’s attempt to account for this groundlessness, this lack of a common faith or shared sense of purpose, in terms of the apparent ascendancy of the post-Cold War emancipatory politics of the left is, for this reason alone, inadequate. It is, moreover, only half right to claim that, “[f]or transcendent authority,” the right looks to God while the left “to the autonomous self” (79). In fact, the pervasive, though by no means exclusive, tendency of both the left and the right is to look to the autonomous self, even if they also both project the turn inward onto external surfaces (“religion,” say, or “science”). It is frequently - though, again, by no means always - on the basis of this unacknowledged belief in the self’s autonomy, its sovereignty, that the left often ends up championing a subject liberated from all apparently natural determinations, free to decide its gender, its sexuality, everything, it seems, but - and this “but” is worthy of an essay in its own right - its race. (And, to be clear, I agree with the left that gender and sexuality - and, I would add, race - are not gifts of nature. Yet that doesn’t mean therefore they fall under the decision of each individual subject). But it is also on the strength of the sovereignty of the subject that the right refuses, at times with suicidal tenacity, any limitations on “individual” freedoms, regardless of whether they are meant to curb a pandemic, gun violence, or the destruction of the world. The right might clothe its subject-centric turn in religiosity, and the left in reason, but both are belied by their reactions to Trump. It is the moral unmooredness of the right that allows it to place its faith in a man who is himself a moral vacuum, while it is the left’s own flailing for a moral center that leaves it in “a perpetual state of high dudgeon” (182), dependent on Trump for its next “hit” of moral outrage, even if each hit increasingly has only the longevity of a tweet. One sometimes gets the impression that if Trump didn’t exist to “fill” these moral voids, both the right and the left would have had to invent him - which may well begin to account, in fact, for how he came to be in the first place.
To rigorously account for what is happening today in America - and not just America - one needs to account for the emergence of this autonomous subject who usurps the place of transcendent authority and, in so doing, treats the world as little more than an occasion for the expression of its own freedom. The urgency of accounting for this emergence is, however, not new. Already, a century before Bacevich published The Age of Illusions, a German theorist named Carl Schmitt made many of the same arguments, often in very similar terms. “[T]he detached, isolated, and emancipated individual becomes,” he writes in Political Romanticism (1919), speaking of the romantic subject, “the middle point, the court of last appeal, the absolute” (99). Or, a few pages earlier:
it is no longer God, something absolute and objective, that stands in the center. On the contrary, the individual subject treats the world as the occasio of his activity and productivity. For him, even the greatest external event - a revolution or a world war [or, say, the Vietnam War -EW] - is intrinsically indifferent. (...) [T]rue reality has only what the subject makes into the object of its creative interest. By means of a simple reversal, the subject has become the creator of the world (96-7).And finally:
Lacking all social and intellectual stability, they [the romantic subjects] succumbed to every powerful complex in their vicinity that made a claim to be taken as true reality. Thus lacking all moral scruples and any sense of responsibility other than that of a zealous and servile functionary, they could allow themselves to be used by any political system (106).Whence the “reality” of Trumpworld, which swerves violently from one truth to the next based on the whims of the real-estate developer at its center - or, rather, based on whatever “powerful complexes (...) ma[king] a claim to be taken as true reality” happen across his twitter feed or television screen. But whence also the “reality” of the world of so many who oppose Trump, people who awakened, as it were, the morning after Trump’s election to something that they didn’t think was possible but who, still today, refuse to recognize that this by itself means that they were asleep.
The task, in any case, is to account for the romantic subject that few, if any of us, fail to be, at least at times. To do so, however, would require expanding one’s source materials, so to speak, from the last three decades to (at least) the last six hundred. Such a project is more akin to that of Jacques Derrida or Paul de Man than Bacevich’s - though his at least has the merit of pointing towards its necessity, especially for those who want to take not just their responsibility seriously, but their freedom too.
August 2020
April 24, 2020
Bacevich provides a Conservative viewpoint on how the US gained and lost the opportunity afforded to it with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its rise to a prominent position in the global community. While Bacevich offers some detailed insight into the rise of Donald Trump, his commentary provides a very selective view that lacks any nuance of the subjects it covers as he traces the path to Trump's victory in 2016. Bacevich's commentary on the US military's fixation on "revolutions in military affairs" and on the pitfalls of globalization highlight these faults. Beyond this, Bacevich fails to address other views of Trump's rise, some of which have been covered with nuance and detail by others. Notably, Bacevich does not address how the Republican Party's cooperation with evangelicals and business interests over several decades have corrupted its ability to find middle ground with Democratic colleagues, much less govern in the interest of the people. Finally, Bacevich fails to provide any useful insight into what the US should have done differently or what we should do in the future. Overall, in attempting to combine an economic, political, historical, social commentary, Bacevich does not do service to any particular perspective.
Ultimately, Bacevich fails to address how conservatives themselves are complicit in the ability of Trump to be elected and govern. It is not particularly relevant that Bacevich clearly finds Trump detestable and voted for Obama twice, what matters more is that a large proportion of moderate Republicans failed to highlight and discredit the ideas that led to Trump being elected. Indeed, many moderate conservatives still find Trump preferable than any possible Democratic candidate, as signaled by their silence regarding endorsing Democratic candidates.
Bacevich's book is also unburdened by any serious research. He does not seem to have done any interviews and asks that the reader simply take his word that the conventional wisdom he is describing is an accurate and fair perspective of US politics. Despite not doing any interviews, Bacevich still does not seem to have seriously reviewed the ideas of key Obama aides who have released books in the past four years. Perhaps interviews and deeper references than those reflected in similar books and the press would have yielded the same insight and judgments, but, personally, I find this unlikely.
Despite these faults, Bacevich still presents a useful and interesting question regarding how America has abandoned international leadership in the past 20-30 years, and the possible remedies. For all his thoughts on the issue, the answer is relatively simple. The US needs to live up to its professed values as leaders from both major political parties make a renewed effort to find common ground. Far-left and far-right politicians of either party should be marginalized for the sake of converging on a common consensus that the executive branch can take to the international community. Sadly, it is probably not too presumptuous to say that this will not happen.
Ultimately, Bacevich fails to address how conservatives themselves are complicit in the ability of Trump to be elected and govern. It is not particularly relevant that Bacevich clearly finds Trump detestable and voted for Obama twice, what matters more is that a large proportion of moderate Republicans failed to highlight and discredit the ideas that led to Trump being elected. Indeed, many moderate conservatives still find Trump preferable than any possible Democratic candidate, as signaled by their silence regarding endorsing Democratic candidates.
Bacevich's book is also unburdened by any serious research. He does not seem to have done any interviews and asks that the reader simply take his word that the conventional wisdom he is describing is an accurate and fair perspective of US politics. Despite not doing any interviews, Bacevich still does not seem to have seriously reviewed the ideas of key Obama aides who have released books in the past four years. Perhaps interviews and deeper references than those reflected in similar books and the press would have yielded the same insight and judgments, but, personally, I find this unlikely.
Despite these faults, Bacevich still presents a useful and interesting question regarding how America has abandoned international leadership in the past 20-30 years, and the possible remedies. For all his thoughts on the issue, the answer is relatively simple. The US needs to live up to its professed values as leaders from both major political parties make a renewed effort to find common ground. Far-left and far-right politicians of either party should be marginalized for the sake of converging on a common consensus that the executive branch can take to the international community. Sadly, it is probably not too presumptuous to say that this will not happen.
December 23, 2020
"The Age of Illusions" was the second 5 -star-worthy Andrew J. Bacevich book I read this year, after Twilight of the American Century last summer, a collection of essays which resonated deeply with me during this geopolitically tumultuous year. Unlike the earlier book, this one is one unified work seeking to explain the rise of Donald Trump, with some post-2016 analysis of his presidency included.
His argues that leaders squandered the post-Cold War moment by adopting an 'Emerald City consensus' based on neoliberal globalization, the militaristic maintenance of far-reaching global dominance, hyper-individualized negative liberties, and presidential supremacy (10-11). Various Presidents reinforced these elements. Before its emergence, Nixon and Reagan kept the post-World War II consensus together by adopting Keynesianism domestically (Nixon) and restoring a sense of moral optimism (Reagan, nevermind his acceleration of austerity and globalization, which Bacevich would do well to detail more--minor issue though).
After the 'Red Menace' fell, so did the unifying threat that kept a domestic compromise in place. The end of history was near a grand narrative useful to the Emerald City's entrenchment (55). Along came "unfettered capitalism plus unabashed American global dominion plus the unencumbered self plus visionary presidential leadership" (106). Problematically, few realized this package's shortcomings.
To it, George HW Bush contributed the idea of using force abroad as an easy solution, a "surgical, frictionless, postmodern" form of conflict (90). Bill Clinton followed him, pushing NAFTA through Congress with prideful economic determinism (chronicled in The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy). This shot was chased with bank deregulation and openness with China (both of which came back to bite) (117). Abroad, Clinton pursued tech-driven forms of warfare, which HW inaugurated, in the Balkans and elsewhere (121). After him, George W. Bush, backed by expansive conceptions of executive centrality, embroiled America in the Iraq War. Bacevich remarks that Bush arrogantly viewed it as a "complement to globalization" (130) and an extension of exceptionalism defined by militarism, zealotry, and nationalism (131). By 2008, the consensus looked broken at home and in Iraq. However, while hope surrounded Barack Obama's Presidency, Bacevich views it as a "missed opportunity" (156) in part because his greatest accomplishments were later dismantled. Additionally, Obama, he posits, propped up the Emerald City consensus and deepened its commitment to anomic freedom (145). By saving the economy without cracking down on those who ruined it, he "saved globalized neoliberalism" (146). By leaving Iraq yet sustaining lighter-casualty wars, he gave militarism a "new lease on life" (148). In so doing, he adopted the left's duty-free notion of freedom without sacrifice.
What this led to was nothing short of disastrous--an alienated, divided, lost country fighting wars all over the world. Bacevich lists harrowing statistics and notes that President Trump appealed most to those left behind by Emerald City. With this shallow militaristic freedom, a sense of duty was drained from society, and "for some, freedom meant alienation, anomie, and despair" (174). Bacevich correctly identifies Trump as symptomatic of a broader illness. He proceeds to explain the shortcomings of challengers in 2016, including Bernie Sanders' myopia on foreign policy, Hillary Clinton's hubris, Marco Rubio's boring retread of neoconservatism, and Ted Cruz's fervor. For him, Clinton simply lacked a vision, even if she had a million and one policy prescriptions (208). This is something I've noted too. 2016 was a rejection of a broken consensus, showing it to be defunct (219). Donald Trump proved unable or unwilling to make real change, and Bacevich expresses deep disappointment with his policy record.
Moving forward, the most important thing is a robust debate about alternatives to the Emerald City order. Indeed, the climate crisis presents an opportunity for this debate (237). Climate is a worldwide challenge requiring both local and global solutions. While something humans contributed mightily to, its scope should also remind us of our limits. To this platform, I would add the COVID-19 pandemic, which calls into question many of the assumptions about globalization leaders took for granted. The conversation must start now, and the time will come for it to happen on the Presidential debate stage. While 2020 was in many ways a referendum on Trump the man and his mishandling of the pandemic, 2024 looks like it'll be about broader visions, something Bacevich himself noted here.
While Bacevich voted twice for Barack Obama and doesn't regret it, his views are grounded in a conservative sensibility resembling my own. He laments the disregard for limits inherent in the Emerald City consensus and the shortfalls of the progressive worship of progress and technocracy, sounding downright Laschian (73). Discussing the "freedom" prominent in modern society, he notes that "the spirit of the post-Cold War era prioritized self-actualization and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice" (95). Indeed, Bacevich best outlines his ideology in one of my favorite TAC articles. His conservatism is a localist, environmentalist, humble one. It's not divisive backlash politics nor is it evangelical fervor. And it sure as hell isn't neoconservatism. Therefore, Bacevich lacks a clear voice in today's Republican party, being more Russell Kirk and less Charlie Kirk. He's also not a clear fit for the Democrats, having voted for a third party (or not voted) in 2016 after endorsing early dropout Jim Webb. While he falls short of articulating a new vision of freedom in this book, in calling for "truer freedom" (155) and individual freedom harmonized with the "common good" (238) Andrew strikes an almost post-liberal note. This is why I so enjoy his writing. He questions the underpinnings of politics with clarity and nuance, avoiding excessive polemicism. I look forward to his analyses of the Biden presidency over the next few years. Hopefully, Joe Biden is listening to thinkers like Andrew Bacevich.
His argues that leaders squandered the post-Cold War moment by adopting an 'Emerald City consensus' based on neoliberal globalization, the militaristic maintenance of far-reaching global dominance, hyper-individualized negative liberties, and presidential supremacy (10-11). Various Presidents reinforced these elements. Before its emergence, Nixon and Reagan kept the post-World War II consensus together by adopting Keynesianism domestically (Nixon) and restoring a sense of moral optimism (Reagan, nevermind his acceleration of austerity and globalization, which Bacevich would do well to detail more--minor issue though).
After the 'Red Menace' fell, so did the unifying threat that kept a domestic compromise in place. The end of history was near a grand narrative useful to the Emerald City's entrenchment (55). Along came "unfettered capitalism plus unabashed American global dominion plus the unencumbered self plus visionary presidential leadership" (106). Problematically, few realized this package's shortcomings.
To it, George HW Bush contributed the idea of using force abroad as an easy solution, a "surgical, frictionless, postmodern" form of conflict (90). Bill Clinton followed him, pushing NAFTA through Congress with prideful economic determinism (chronicled in The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy). This shot was chased with bank deregulation and openness with China (both of which came back to bite) (117). Abroad, Clinton pursued tech-driven forms of warfare, which HW inaugurated, in the Balkans and elsewhere (121). After him, George W. Bush, backed by expansive conceptions of executive centrality, embroiled America in the Iraq War. Bacevich remarks that Bush arrogantly viewed it as a "complement to globalization" (130) and an extension of exceptionalism defined by militarism, zealotry, and nationalism (131). By 2008, the consensus looked broken at home and in Iraq. However, while hope surrounded Barack Obama's Presidency, Bacevich views it as a "missed opportunity" (156) in part because his greatest accomplishments were later dismantled. Additionally, Obama, he posits, propped up the Emerald City consensus and deepened its commitment to anomic freedom (145). By saving the economy without cracking down on those who ruined it, he "saved globalized neoliberalism" (146). By leaving Iraq yet sustaining lighter-casualty wars, he gave militarism a "new lease on life" (148). In so doing, he adopted the left's duty-free notion of freedom without sacrifice.
What this led to was nothing short of disastrous--an alienated, divided, lost country fighting wars all over the world. Bacevich lists harrowing statistics and notes that President Trump appealed most to those left behind by Emerald City. With this shallow militaristic freedom, a sense of duty was drained from society, and "for some, freedom meant alienation, anomie, and despair" (174). Bacevich correctly identifies Trump as symptomatic of a broader illness. He proceeds to explain the shortcomings of challengers in 2016, including Bernie Sanders' myopia on foreign policy, Hillary Clinton's hubris, Marco Rubio's boring retread of neoconservatism, and Ted Cruz's fervor. For him, Clinton simply lacked a vision, even if she had a million and one policy prescriptions (208). This is something I've noted too. 2016 was a rejection of a broken consensus, showing it to be defunct (219). Donald Trump proved unable or unwilling to make real change, and Bacevich expresses deep disappointment with his policy record.
Moving forward, the most important thing is a robust debate about alternatives to the Emerald City order. Indeed, the climate crisis presents an opportunity for this debate (237). Climate is a worldwide challenge requiring both local and global solutions. While something humans contributed mightily to, its scope should also remind us of our limits. To this platform, I would add the COVID-19 pandemic, which calls into question many of the assumptions about globalization leaders took for granted. The conversation must start now, and the time will come for it to happen on the Presidential debate stage. While 2020 was in many ways a referendum on Trump the man and his mishandling of the pandemic, 2024 looks like it'll be about broader visions, something Bacevich himself noted here.
While Bacevich voted twice for Barack Obama and doesn't regret it, his views are grounded in a conservative sensibility resembling my own. He laments the disregard for limits inherent in the Emerald City consensus and the shortfalls of the progressive worship of progress and technocracy, sounding downright Laschian (73). Discussing the "freedom" prominent in modern society, he notes that "the spirit of the post-Cold War era prioritized self-actualization and self-indulgence over self-sacrifice" (95). Indeed, Bacevich best outlines his ideology in one of my favorite TAC articles. His conservatism is a localist, environmentalist, humble one. It's not divisive backlash politics nor is it evangelical fervor. And it sure as hell isn't neoconservatism. Therefore, Bacevich lacks a clear voice in today's Republican party, being more Russell Kirk and less Charlie Kirk. He's also not a clear fit for the Democrats, having voted for a third party (or not voted) in 2016 after endorsing early dropout Jim Webb. While he falls short of articulating a new vision of freedom in this book, in calling for "truer freedom" (155) and individual freedom harmonized with the "common good" (238) Andrew strikes an almost post-liberal note. This is why I so enjoy his writing. He questions the underpinnings of politics with clarity and nuance, avoiding excessive polemicism. I look forward to his analyses of the Biden presidency over the next few years. Hopefully, Joe Biden is listening to thinkers like Andrew Bacevich.
February 12, 2021
Bacevich is the kind of historian who, when I'm reading him, I nod vigorously on one page and shake my head on the next. I think his critique of the all-volunteer forces and the "wars of 9/11" as a betrayal of trust and an offloading of responsibility for military service onto a fraction of the population is tremendous. His work on a rising American militarism and unitary is also excellent. However, this book brings out some of the tendencies in his writing that I dislike, especially judgmentalism, both-sidesism, and a failure to appreciate the binds that leaders and policymakers have to deal with.
Bacevich argues that the United States since WWII has been pursuing a strategy based on the assumptions of spreading liberal ideals, integrating the world into a vast open market, and a self-perception of total benevolence. This tendency toward universalism and leadership went into hyperdrive after the Cold War, the true age of illusions. SInce then, USFP has been defined by overreach, hubris about regime change and social engineering,
I think this argument is half-right. US foreign policy has overstretched, but it is mainly one administration (George W Bush) that did the overstretching, and this was mainly in Iraq, an unnecessary conflict that absorbed our attention and resources for the better part of a decade while destabilizing the Middle East. Clinton got involved in a bunch of places, but they were all comparatively brief, low-cost affairs compared to Iraq and Afghanistan (the latter, a necessary war left in neglect for Bush's entire turn because of the misguided turn to IRaq). Obama's foreign policy was half about cleaning up Bush's messes; something that he could only do in part. Even Trump failed to overreach the way that Bush did, although his presidency and foreign policy were damaging in other ways. Bacevich, however, thinks they were all serial overreachers who bogged the United States down in unending wars of empire. I think that's fundamentally wrong. This aspect of the book is also not terribly original. THere are other and more thorough arguments that the U.S. political establishment has lost its way and took the American people with it, including those by Fred Kaplan, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt.
What's more, Bacevich issues breezy judgments of things like Obama's LIbya intervention without even sketching out the scenario, why Obama decided to get involved, and what the complications were. Nope, to him it was simple: Obama is part of an establishment hopelessly devoted to America as the indispensable nation. Never mind that Obama had to choose between possibly letting a city be sacked and thousands be murdered (a LIbyan Srebrenica, potentially), or intervening in a chaotic and perilous civil war. One may criticize Obama for continuing the bombing well after Benghazi was safe, but Libya after Qadaffi was going to be a mess anyway, and I think Obama might the right sequence of decisions in intervening to save Benghazi but more or less staying out of the aftermath. For Bacevich, though, this is one of many breezy judgments he makes of leaders who have to choose between bad options, not between wise and foolish options. That's a tendency among academics (of which I consider myself a member) that I find troubling.
There is a side of this book I find very compelling, however, although I don't totally agree with it. Bacevich reframes modern U.S. history as a social contract that eroded and finally broke with the Trump administration. He doesn't downplay the racism, sexism, nativism, etc, but for AB the Trump election was the great revolt against the establishment, which had pursued global free trade, endless wars, and material gain regardless of the consequences to millions of Americans. For him, the social contract of the early post-WWII era didn't start to break in the 1960s, when blacks, women, and many other downtrodden people demanded equality, but in the 1990s, when the US embarked on course of neoliberalism and neoimperialism.
I think this reframing is quite interesting as a hypothesis, although you would need a much longer study to demonstrate it. Bacevich is excellent on the social and moral malaise of much of society, in which community and real human connection are declining. However, I also think that A. this framing partially legitimizes Trump and unfairly castigates the establishment and, more importantly B. ignores the fact that the Trump election was a sort of manufactured crisis, almost a pseudo-event created by fear, social media, right-wing media, and Trump himself. Bacevich points out many long-terms trends that seemed to be hitting a nadir in 2016, but he ignores things that were looking up: the economy was humming, illegal immigration was at a several year low, and America's commitment to overseas wars was down compared to 5 years earlier. But, by the echo chamber of conservative politics and media, America was in permanent decline: illegal immigrants were flooding in, the definition of a man or woman was being undermined, PC was out of control, a black Muslim foreigner was in the White House, and the America that millions of mostly white, mostly older Americans remembered, or thought they remembered, was at risk of being lost forever.
Was it really the objective faults of the establishment that prompted this revolt, or was it constructed out of anger, fantasy, and prejudice? I have no doubt it was a revolt, but I hesitate to offer it the complex intellectual shroud that Bacevich places upon it; it was, at best, a primal, irrational scream, a way to legitimize not a protest against the elite but one's hatred of them and all the people (minorities, LGBT people, women who didn't know their place) who were challenging the historical strictures and, yes, being helped by many in that same elite.
SO that's where I'm left with this book. As usual, it is a bold, challenging argument for Bacevich. Even though I disagree with him on his diagnoses of the problems facing us, I would happily wave a wand and make this grumpy iconoclast the president. He wouldn't do anything stupid, and I think he would give some real, direct talk to the American people.
Bacevich argues that the United States since WWII has been pursuing a strategy based on the assumptions of spreading liberal ideals, integrating the world into a vast open market, and a self-perception of total benevolence. This tendency toward universalism and leadership went into hyperdrive after the Cold War, the true age of illusions. SInce then, USFP has been defined by overreach, hubris about regime change and social engineering,
I think this argument is half-right. US foreign policy has overstretched, but it is mainly one administration (George W Bush) that did the overstretching, and this was mainly in Iraq, an unnecessary conflict that absorbed our attention and resources for the better part of a decade while destabilizing the Middle East. Clinton got involved in a bunch of places, but they were all comparatively brief, low-cost affairs compared to Iraq and Afghanistan (the latter, a necessary war left in neglect for Bush's entire turn because of the misguided turn to IRaq). Obama's foreign policy was half about cleaning up Bush's messes; something that he could only do in part. Even Trump failed to overreach the way that Bush did, although his presidency and foreign policy were damaging in other ways. Bacevich, however, thinks they were all serial overreachers who bogged the United States down in unending wars of empire. I think that's fundamentally wrong. This aspect of the book is also not terribly original. THere are other and more thorough arguments that the U.S. political establishment has lost its way and took the American people with it, including those by Fred Kaplan, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt.
What's more, Bacevich issues breezy judgments of things like Obama's LIbya intervention without even sketching out the scenario, why Obama decided to get involved, and what the complications were. Nope, to him it was simple: Obama is part of an establishment hopelessly devoted to America as the indispensable nation. Never mind that Obama had to choose between possibly letting a city be sacked and thousands be murdered (a LIbyan Srebrenica, potentially), or intervening in a chaotic and perilous civil war. One may criticize Obama for continuing the bombing well after Benghazi was safe, but Libya after Qadaffi was going to be a mess anyway, and I think Obama might the right sequence of decisions in intervening to save Benghazi but more or less staying out of the aftermath. For Bacevich, though, this is one of many breezy judgments he makes of leaders who have to choose between bad options, not between wise and foolish options. That's a tendency among academics (of which I consider myself a member) that I find troubling.
There is a side of this book I find very compelling, however, although I don't totally agree with it. Bacevich reframes modern U.S. history as a social contract that eroded and finally broke with the Trump administration. He doesn't downplay the racism, sexism, nativism, etc, but for AB the Trump election was the great revolt against the establishment, which had pursued global free trade, endless wars, and material gain regardless of the consequences to millions of Americans. For him, the social contract of the early post-WWII era didn't start to break in the 1960s, when blacks, women, and many other downtrodden people demanded equality, but in the 1990s, when the US embarked on course of neoliberalism and neoimperialism.
I think this reframing is quite interesting as a hypothesis, although you would need a much longer study to demonstrate it. Bacevich is excellent on the social and moral malaise of much of society, in which community and real human connection are declining. However, I also think that A. this framing partially legitimizes Trump and unfairly castigates the establishment and, more importantly B. ignores the fact that the Trump election was a sort of manufactured crisis, almost a pseudo-event created by fear, social media, right-wing media, and Trump himself. Bacevich points out many long-terms trends that seemed to be hitting a nadir in 2016, but he ignores things that were looking up: the economy was humming, illegal immigration was at a several year low, and America's commitment to overseas wars was down compared to 5 years earlier. But, by the echo chamber of conservative politics and media, America was in permanent decline: illegal immigrants were flooding in, the definition of a man or woman was being undermined, PC was out of control, a black Muslim foreigner was in the White House, and the America that millions of mostly white, mostly older Americans remembered, or thought they remembered, was at risk of being lost forever.
Was it really the objective faults of the establishment that prompted this revolt, or was it constructed out of anger, fantasy, and prejudice? I have no doubt it was a revolt, but I hesitate to offer it the complex intellectual shroud that Bacevich places upon it; it was, at best, a primal, irrational scream, a way to legitimize not a protest against the elite but one's hatred of them and all the people (minorities, LGBT people, women who didn't know their place) who were challenging the historical strictures and, yes, being helped by many in that same elite.
SO that's where I'm left with this book. As usual, it is a bold, challenging argument for Bacevich. Even though I disagree with him on his diagnoses of the problems facing us, I would happily wave a wand and make this grumpy iconoclast the president. He wouldn't do anything stupid, and I think he would give some real, direct talk to the American people.
August 2, 2021
I have liked Bacevich's writing in the past, but this one misses the mark. He's completely right that the post-Cold War consensus has failed and that Trump is the symptom rather than the disease. But Bacevich probably should have waited until Trump was out of office to assess the impact of his presidency. His determination to dismiss Trump as not that consequential fails in the face of the attempted coup in January 2021. He hand-waves away many of Trump's worst offenses by castigating those pundits who most frequently opposed him as being overwrought. But I wonder if he felt the same way on January 6, when Trump and his minions attempted a coup, or since, as they have continued to tell the Big Lie and as loyal Republicans have passed state laws that might make it easier for Republicans after Trump to steal elections they weren't able to win.
It's a worthy dissection of how ideas have trailed reality since the Berlin Wall fell. It's even a coherent explanation of how Trump, in the absence of any qualifications for the presidency or even dog catcher, could appeal to voters. But without the benefit of an accurate assessment of the meaning of Trump's presidency — because, again, it was written too soon to have one — it falls short.
It's a worthy dissection of how ideas have trailed reality since the Berlin Wall fell. It's even a coherent explanation of how Trump, in the absence of any qualifications for the presidency or even dog catcher, could appeal to voters. But without the benefit of an accurate assessment of the meaning of Trump's presidency — because, again, it was written too soon to have one — it falls short.
March 3, 2020
I'm not sure what I learned new from Bacevich's book. There was a recap of history starting with the Reagan presidency to the Trump administration. The author has a good analysis of the problems that each President faced and how successful they were in resolving them. But most of what I read, I pretty much knew and understood.
Bacevich also tracks the life of Donald Trump. What I found most interesting from this book was how Trump's views on foreign affairs, economics and politics changed over the years. Trump is a brand. He is not a political philosopher or even close to a deep thinker.
I would have viewed Barack Obama's presidency more favorably than Bacevich though the author did cite how intelligent and capable Obama was than Trump. He admitted to voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012. He did not vote for either Trump or Hillary in 2016. Bacevich is not a fan of the former First Lady and Secretary of State.
Bacevich also tracks the life of Donald Trump. What I found most interesting from this book was how Trump's views on foreign affairs, economics and politics changed over the years. Trump is a brand. He is not a political philosopher or even close to a deep thinker.
I would have viewed Barack Obama's presidency more favorably than Bacevich though the author did cite how intelligent and capable Obama was than Trump. He admitted to voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012. He did not vote for either Trump or Hillary in 2016. Bacevich is not a fan of the former First Lady and Secretary of State.
December 31, 2021
This is basically a book-length op-ed. Plus, there are some parts that can be described as "old man shouting at clouds": among other things, for example, he argues that leftists are partly to blame for the rise of Trump because they abandoned the working class by prioritizing gender and racial equality. Don't read this if you're looking for novel analysis.
January 15, 2020
Review: The Age of Illusions
Andrew Bachevich
Published 2020 - Metropolitan Books
I gave this book the highest rating.
Bachevich frames the discussion by observing that the U.S. "The West) ' won ' The Cold War. The U.S. emerged as the sole SuperPower in the early 1990's - yet one generation later he observes a great division within the U.S. and that "things are not right" for the majority of Americans.
Bachevich opens with a James Baldwin quote about an American assumption that ....'each generation is promised more that it will get...." These unspoken promises/social contracts about each successive generation becoming more materially prosperous have not been realized for the majority of Americans - and so anger, fear and alienation are very visible within the American landscape.
One basic issue relates to the "Operating Model" pursued by the U.S. to "Win the Cold War" - was more or less continued after the U.S.' victory in the Cold War - without much (if any) reflection or discussion by both political parties. Bachevich doesn't discuss the concept of "momentum for continued War by (Eisenhower's) Military-Industrial-(Now Congressional) complex.
Bachevich lists the major items within the Post Cold War "Operating Model"
#1. A push for the advancement of Global NeoLiberalism - or wealth creation - done by advancing policies that would NOT CONSTRAIN Corporate Capitalism. Little (if any) thought was given to assess the impacts of these policies - and to assist those who had been "left behind" economically by the Creative Destruction unleashed by these policies.
#2. If there were to be a Global Neoliberalism - there had to be a Global Leader - and that was to be the U.S. The U.S. would "enforce Globalization" with its Military and Economic (IMF, World Bank) policies. Little thought given to future impacts of this item.
#3. Freedom - a word or concept used -
A. Internal to the United States -
The U.S. culture exalted and emphasized the autonomy of the individual at the 'expense of the collective'. There was a removal of (moral and legal) constraints. Frames were created that maximized choice for the individual.
This results in a decline in respect for the "collective" - everything is framed around hyper-individuality. A concept that every right has an attendant responsibility has been lost.
B. Externally - when we had (or created) the opportunity - the U.S. wanted to reform the Middle East in its own image Never Ending wars are a result where the U.S. has wasted $'s, lives, prestige and etc. to no avail. Little reflection/learning has been documented - in fact there is a percentage of the U.S. population who support these wars/engagement. No discussion-dialogue-emerging consensus in this area within the U. S.
#4. Presidential Supremacy -
In order to run this "Operating Model" - you need a President with quasi-monarchical powers. Both parties are guilty of this - Congress has (gladly?) given up its rights & responsibilities to various Presidents since WWII. One is reminded that the Roman Senate existed during the Roman Empire - having given away its powers - once the Roman Senate gave away power to the Roman Emperor - these powers were never recovered.
This "Operating Model" isn't working for he average American - and probably isn't suited to address a future where (at least) three challenges are barely discussed - much less a U.S. consensus reached on going-forward policies.
Three upcoming challenges-needing going forward policies:
#1. The rise of China/India economically, politically indicate that the Idea of the superiority of Western Civilization may be drawing to a close. There are other demonstrated economic and political models that have served their populations - the West doesn't have/isn't destined to have ..."all the answers"...
#2. Technological advances have plusses - but also have minuses - economic, social and political impact of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Social Media Privacy issues - job losses - have not shown themselves to the U.S. population yet - what will any policy response be if and when this Technology impact is felt within the U.S. population?
#3. Response to Climate Change - A large portion of the U.S population still believe Climate Change to be a...." Chinese led Hoax".
I read from Bachevich - that on these issues some nation-wide discussion-dialogue, emerging consensus on policy and implementation of policy need to be forthcoming. In the book Bachevich reposes no solutions.
A very serious book, a valid framework for analysis and discussion - documenting 25 lost years of U.S. Government policies without serious input, feedback or accountability from those being served. Much work to be done should the U.S. wish to "right itself" and clear its collective head from these and other illusions.
Carl Gallozzi
cgallozzi@comcast.net
Andrew Bachevich
Published 2020 - Metropolitan Books
I gave this book the highest rating.
Bachevich frames the discussion by observing that the U.S. "The West) ' won ' The Cold War. The U.S. emerged as the sole SuperPower in the early 1990's - yet one generation later he observes a great division within the U.S. and that "things are not right" for the majority of Americans.
Bachevich opens with a James Baldwin quote about an American assumption that ....'each generation is promised more that it will get...." These unspoken promises/social contracts about each successive generation becoming more materially prosperous have not been realized for the majority of Americans - and so anger, fear and alienation are very visible within the American landscape.
One basic issue relates to the "Operating Model" pursued by the U.S. to "Win the Cold War" - was more or less continued after the U.S.' victory in the Cold War - without much (if any) reflection or discussion by both political parties. Bachevich doesn't discuss the concept of "momentum for continued War by (Eisenhower's) Military-Industrial-(Now Congressional) complex.
Bachevich lists the major items within the Post Cold War "Operating Model"
#1. A push for the advancement of Global NeoLiberalism - or wealth creation - done by advancing policies that would NOT CONSTRAIN Corporate Capitalism. Little (if any) thought was given to assess the impacts of these policies - and to assist those who had been "left behind" economically by the Creative Destruction unleashed by these policies.
#2. If there were to be a Global Neoliberalism - there had to be a Global Leader - and that was to be the U.S. The U.S. would "enforce Globalization" with its Military and Economic (IMF, World Bank) policies. Little thought given to future impacts of this item.
#3. Freedom - a word or concept used -
A. Internal to the United States -
The U.S. culture exalted and emphasized the autonomy of the individual at the 'expense of the collective'. There was a removal of (moral and legal) constraints. Frames were created that maximized choice for the individual.
This results in a decline in respect for the "collective" - everything is framed around hyper-individuality. A concept that every right has an attendant responsibility has been lost.
B. Externally - when we had (or created) the opportunity - the U.S. wanted to reform the Middle East in its own image Never Ending wars are a result where the U.S. has wasted $'s, lives, prestige and etc. to no avail. Little reflection/learning has been documented - in fact there is a percentage of the U.S. population who support these wars/engagement. No discussion-dialogue-emerging consensus in this area within the U. S.
#4. Presidential Supremacy -
In order to run this "Operating Model" - you need a President with quasi-monarchical powers. Both parties are guilty of this - Congress has (gladly?) given up its rights & responsibilities to various Presidents since WWII. One is reminded that the Roman Senate existed during the Roman Empire - having given away its powers - once the Roman Senate gave away power to the Roman Emperor - these powers were never recovered.
This "Operating Model" isn't working for he average American - and probably isn't suited to address a future where (at least) three challenges are barely discussed - much less a U.S. consensus reached on going-forward policies.
Three upcoming challenges-needing going forward policies:
#1. The rise of China/India economically, politically indicate that the Idea of the superiority of Western Civilization may be drawing to a close. There are other demonstrated economic and political models that have served their populations - the West doesn't have/isn't destined to have ..."all the answers"...
#2. Technological advances have plusses - but also have minuses - economic, social and political impact of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Social Media Privacy issues - job losses - have not shown themselves to the U.S. population yet - what will any policy response be if and when this Technology impact is felt within the U.S. population?
#3. Response to Climate Change - A large portion of the U.S population still believe Climate Change to be a...." Chinese led Hoax".
I read from Bachevich - that on these issues some nation-wide discussion-dialogue, emerging consensus on policy and implementation of policy need to be forthcoming. In the book Bachevich reposes no solutions.
A very serious book, a valid framework for analysis and discussion - documenting 25 lost years of U.S. Government policies without serious input, feedback or accountability from those being served. Much work to be done should the U.S. wish to "right itself" and clear its collective head from these and other illusions.
Carl Gallozzi
cgallozzi@comcast.net
March 25, 2020
Much of what Andrew Bacevich says in this timely book is not surprising. I have read several of his books before and have enjoyed his assiduous style and precision in laying out cogent and coherent arguments.
In "The Age of Illusions" he maintains his rigor and narrative and shines a light on the changing American consensus from the era of Al, Fred and Homer (characters from the William Wyler movie "The Best Days of Our Lives", which represented a high-flying American spirit following the end of the World War II to the post-Cold War era (1989 to 2016). Bacevich first explores the competing threads of the US spirit between the idealized past represented by "The Best Days of our Lives," the stern and cautionary vision promoted by John Foster Dulles, especially regarding the Soviet Union, and the mass consumption appeal of Henry Luce's "Life"magazine.
These tropes give way to a new ideology born out of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The new thinking focused on a more militarized view of American dominance and its role in the world and a new sense of freedom (radical autonomy). Like a stern school teacher, Bacevich does not hold back on the red ink as he evaluates Presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, while also analyzing the elements that came to play that allowed Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the US.
He concludes by citing an eclipse that occurred after 1989, that has taken several forms: 1) Western primacy is gone...we see this with the rise of China (and for that matter the other BRIC nations); 2) the era where technological benefits outweigh the adverse effects is ending; and 3) "the era in which 'taming' nature translates directly into human benefit has not run its course." Bacevich postulates that from these three new trends, we can all collectively work together in a way that we have not seen since the days of Al, Fred and Homer.
For the most part Bacevich's writing and presentation is seamless and smooth, but there is one part where he stumbles. When he discusses Trump he tries to minimize the deleterious effects the man has had on the US and the world. First, it is far too soon to really provide an accurate assessment of the damage #45 has/will have done. What Bacevich is trying to do here is similar to what sports writer Mike Lupica did when he published his book "Summer of 98" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) not longer after the conclusion of the famous season where Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battled each other in their chase of the Roger Maris home run record. It was too soon after the fact for such a compendium to be published.
The problem I had with Bacevich's argument is that he downplays Trump's isolationist approach to US policy. On page 190 he writes, "And then there was the great 'bugaboo'of 'isolationism'. When Trump became president, various foreign policy experts predicted that the United States was about to turn its back on the world and abandon its self-assigned role as keeper of order and defender of democracy. Yet isolationism is the last word one would use to characterize foreign policy since Trump became president." Oh, really? In a form of "airport cosmopolitanism" Bacevich cites Trump's decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Trump's withdrawal from the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action (Iran) as examples of his "internationalism". Yet, he does not mention the US withdrawal from UNESCO, the murder of US journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy, nor does he list Trump's decimation of the foreign service corps and the drastic cuts to the State Department budget, nor his hiring of Mike Pompeo (the antithesis of anything international) to lead it. He also, inexplicably, fails to mention Trump's infamous September 25, 2018 speech at the United Nations, where in a wave of logorrhea he spewed out this statement: "We reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism. " (Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/9/25/1790108...). There you have it, folks, straight from the horse's mouth: he clearly states that isolationism is a big part of his policy initiatives. As I write this review we are all in quarantine as the US struggles with containing the COVID-19 virus. What would Bacevich make of the 45th president's us of the term "China virus" to describe it? Would Bacevich consider that "internationalist" or "racist"?
Until I got to this part of the book, I thought it was masterfully written. But this was just a hiccup in an otherwise pleasant drive through the landscape of modern-day US.
This is worth reading as the US considers how, in the days after Trump, it should move forward.
In "The Age of Illusions" he maintains his rigor and narrative and shines a light on the changing American consensus from the era of Al, Fred and Homer (characters from the William Wyler movie "The Best Days of Our Lives", which represented a high-flying American spirit following the end of the World War II to the post-Cold War era (1989 to 2016). Bacevich first explores the competing threads of the US spirit between the idealized past represented by "The Best Days of our Lives," the stern and cautionary vision promoted by John Foster Dulles, especially regarding the Soviet Union, and the mass consumption appeal of Henry Luce's "Life"magazine.
These tropes give way to a new ideology born out of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The new thinking focused on a more militarized view of American dominance and its role in the world and a new sense of freedom (radical autonomy). Like a stern school teacher, Bacevich does not hold back on the red ink as he evaluates Presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, while also analyzing the elements that came to play that allowed Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the US.
He concludes by citing an eclipse that occurred after 1989, that has taken several forms: 1) Western primacy is gone...we see this with the rise of China (and for that matter the other BRIC nations); 2) the era where technological benefits outweigh the adverse effects is ending; and 3) "the era in which 'taming' nature translates directly into human benefit has not run its course." Bacevich postulates that from these three new trends, we can all collectively work together in a way that we have not seen since the days of Al, Fred and Homer.
For the most part Bacevich's writing and presentation is seamless and smooth, but there is one part where he stumbles. When he discusses Trump he tries to minimize the deleterious effects the man has had on the US and the world. First, it is far too soon to really provide an accurate assessment of the damage #45 has/will have done. What Bacevich is trying to do here is similar to what sports writer Mike Lupica did when he published his book "Summer of 98" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) not longer after the conclusion of the famous season where Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battled each other in their chase of the Roger Maris home run record. It was too soon after the fact for such a compendium to be published.
The problem I had with Bacevich's argument is that he downplays Trump's isolationist approach to US policy. On page 190 he writes, "And then there was the great 'bugaboo'of 'isolationism'. When Trump became president, various foreign policy experts predicted that the United States was about to turn its back on the world and abandon its self-assigned role as keeper of order and defender of democracy. Yet isolationism is the last word one would use to characterize foreign policy since Trump became president." Oh, really? In a form of "airport cosmopolitanism" Bacevich cites Trump's decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Trump's withdrawal from the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action (Iran) as examples of his "internationalism". Yet, he does not mention the US withdrawal from UNESCO, the murder of US journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy, nor does he list Trump's decimation of the foreign service corps and the drastic cuts to the State Department budget, nor his hiring of Mike Pompeo (the antithesis of anything international) to lead it. He also, inexplicably, fails to mention Trump's infamous September 25, 2018 speech at the United Nations, where in a wave of logorrhea he spewed out this statement: "We reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism. " (Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/9/25/1790108...). There you have it, folks, straight from the horse's mouth: he clearly states that isolationism is a big part of his policy initiatives. As I write this review we are all in quarantine as the US struggles with containing the COVID-19 virus. What would Bacevich make of the 45th president's us of the term "China virus" to describe it? Would Bacevich consider that "internationalist" or "racist"?
Until I got to this part of the book, I thought it was masterfully written. But this was just a hiccup in an otherwise pleasant drive through the landscape of modern-day US.
This is worth reading as the US considers how, in the days after Trump, it should move forward.
March 16, 2020
Easily the most thought provoking book I have read in a couple years.
Full disclosure: I have read other books by B and his columns in the Boston Globe. I also attended a talk 12 years ago when he was gaining recognition for his political, cultural, and military insights. I find his research complete, his reasoning impeccable, and his conclusions clear. And because I believe I share his fundamental values (as he describes them in his books), there is no cognitive dissonance for me when he prophetically explains how really screwed-up our culture and values are in the US.
Overview:
- B explains how we got to Trump starting with the end of WWII
- Trump is a symptom not the cause of everything we (progressives) think is wrong today
- consumerism, immediate gratification is destroying our souls and the environment
- we squandered a peace dividend at the end of the cold war
- we, "the chosen" and the remaining super power, assumed we could export our rules and corporate capitalism to the world
- Eisenhower was right - beware of the military industrial complex
- the 'intelligentsia elite' use Trump as a scapegoat and thus fail to address the real causes that brought about his election
- B has obviously enjoyed his career switch to academia with the bonus he gets to indulge his interest and talents in the humanities. He weaves 4 characters through his study of post WWII america:
-- Rabbit from Updikes' novels represents the everyman in the 50's defined by the cold war and the existential threat of god-less communism. Once we 'won' the cold war, what was our purpose; who is the enemy?
-- the 3 returning vets, Al, Fred, and Homer, in the Wyler/Anderson film, "Best Years of Our Lives". Their aspirations are modest - a job, an adequate house, stability, normalcy in Boone City.
- later B introduces Emerald City as the metaphor for our new aspirations based on more
- once USSR and communism was vanquished, the intoxicated elites deemed we now should/must:
-- globalize neoliberalism
-- assume the unchallenged role of global leader
-- maximize personal freedom (B later explains he sees this as counter to the need for duty)
-- presidential supremacy. Usurping congressional, constitutional oversight; Creating endless wars
- both party elites were deaf to the plight of middle america since the 90's. The result was the election of Trump
- in 2016, B joined millions who chose a 3rd party or to not vote. He doesn't tell us which option he personally picked
===========
B contrasts himself with Trump, both white hetero (ie privileged) males, and in many ways both a product of the 50's postwar culture, but fundamentally different and reflecting completely different value systems
Globalization leads to increased wealth gaps; The consumer economy and corporate capitalism takes us to Emerald City with soulless lives, increased rates of drug use, depression, suicide, and obesity.
B asserts that Trump cannot do real damage - he rejects the 'great men' theory of history. But 4 or possibly 8 years of court appointments; the undoing of env regulations and the delay of decarbonizing our economy are to many including me, tipping pts that will be difficult or impossible to recover from.
Past eras that saw revolutionary change give B hope that fundamental change is possible:
- the abolitionism movement that led to the civil war and end of slavery
- abuses during the great industrialization period led to wide-ranging reforms
- Great Depression led to New Deal, later the GI bill (B's father was a GI bill student)
Summation by B:
"Sooner or later, Americans will come to the realization that climate change is making their way of life unsustainable. [TG - I would rephrase this better as "their way of life is unsustainable for many reasons - one being climate change"] Citizens may then discover that any serious effort to alleviate its impact will necessarily require adoption of an economic model that prizes fairness and equity above share prices and quarterly profit statements. In addition, they may choose to forgo 'wars of exhaustion' in favor of a less militarized and more enlightened approach to global leadership. They might even embrace a conception of citizenship that seeks to harmonize individual freedom with the common good. In sum, the imperative of addressing climate change may one day offer a suitable replacement for the disastrously misguided consensus foisted on the American people after the fall of the Berlin Wall."
And then:
1756 quote from Edmund Burke: "The great error of our nature is not to know where to stop" and thereby ultimately "to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more." B concludes "This single sentence captures the essence of the fate that has befallen Americans during the quarter century following the Cold War."
My final thought and one I hope can be taken up in a global grassroots effort is the B suggestion that climate change could be what unifies all of us into a global community.
Full disclosure: I have read other books by B and his columns in the Boston Globe. I also attended a talk 12 years ago when he was gaining recognition for his political, cultural, and military insights. I find his research complete, his reasoning impeccable, and his conclusions clear. And because I believe I share his fundamental values (as he describes them in his books), there is no cognitive dissonance for me when he prophetically explains how really screwed-up our culture and values are in the US.
Overview:
- B explains how we got to Trump starting with the end of WWII
- Trump is a symptom not the cause of everything we (progressives) think is wrong today
- consumerism, immediate gratification is destroying our souls and the environment
- we squandered a peace dividend at the end of the cold war
- we, "the chosen" and the remaining super power, assumed we could export our rules and corporate capitalism to the world
- Eisenhower was right - beware of the military industrial complex
- the 'intelligentsia elite' use Trump as a scapegoat and thus fail to address the real causes that brought about his election
- B has obviously enjoyed his career switch to academia with the bonus he gets to indulge his interest and talents in the humanities. He weaves 4 characters through his study of post WWII america:
-- Rabbit from Updikes' novels represents the everyman in the 50's defined by the cold war and the existential threat of god-less communism. Once we 'won' the cold war, what was our purpose; who is the enemy?
-- the 3 returning vets, Al, Fred, and Homer, in the Wyler/Anderson film, "Best Years of Our Lives". Their aspirations are modest - a job, an adequate house, stability, normalcy in Boone City.
- later B introduces Emerald City as the metaphor for our new aspirations based on more
- once USSR and communism was vanquished, the intoxicated elites deemed we now should/must:
-- globalize neoliberalism
-- assume the unchallenged role of global leader
-- maximize personal freedom (B later explains he sees this as counter to the need for duty)
-- presidential supremacy. Usurping congressional, constitutional oversight; Creating endless wars
- both party elites were deaf to the plight of middle america since the 90's. The result was the election of Trump
- in 2016, B joined millions who chose a 3rd party or to not vote. He doesn't tell us which option he personally picked
===========
B contrasts himself with Trump, both white hetero (ie privileged) males, and in many ways both a product of the 50's postwar culture, but fundamentally different and reflecting completely different value systems
Globalization leads to increased wealth gaps; The consumer economy and corporate capitalism takes us to Emerald City with soulless lives, increased rates of drug use, depression, suicide, and obesity.
B asserts that Trump cannot do real damage - he rejects the 'great men' theory of history. But 4 or possibly 8 years of court appointments; the undoing of env regulations and the delay of decarbonizing our economy are to many including me, tipping pts that will be difficult or impossible to recover from.
Past eras that saw revolutionary change give B hope that fundamental change is possible:
- the abolitionism movement that led to the civil war and end of slavery
- abuses during the great industrialization period led to wide-ranging reforms
- Great Depression led to New Deal, later the GI bill (B's father was a GI bill student)
Summation by B:
"Sooner or later, Americans will come to the realization that climate change is making their way of life unsustainable. [TG - I would rephrase this better as "their way of life is unsustainable for many reasons - one being climate change"] Citizens may then discover that any serious effort to alleviate its impact will necessarily require adoption of an economic model that prizes fairness and equity above share prices and quarterly profit statements. In addition, they may choose to forgo 'wars of exhaustion' in favor of a less militarized and more enlightened approach to global leadership. They might even embrace a conception of citizenship that seeks to harmonize individual freedom with the common good. In sum, the imperative of addressing climate change may one day offer a suitable replacement for the disastrously misguided consensus foisted on the American people after the fall of the Berlin Wall."
And then:
1756 quote from Edmund Burke: "The great error of our nature is not to know where to stop" and thereby ultimately "to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more." B concludes "This single sentence captures the essence of the fate that has befallen Americans during the quarter century following the Cold War."
My final thought and one I hope can be taken up in a global grassroots effort is the B suggestion that climate change could be what unifies all of us into a global community.
April 10, 2020
I found myself agreeing with much of Bacevich's assessments until he got to the point about the president not having an impact. Looking over the major events of the current presidency, it seems clear that the impact, while perhaps not huge, is certainly there: oil, Iran, the Israel/Palestinian peace process, climate change, the tenor of the Supreme Court: all these issues are far worse now due to actions taken by the president and his administration. And then there is the primary election. Bacevich's main point about the electorate in 2016 is that the "basket of deplorables" and the "fear-driven gun owners" (Obama's famous quote) voted their hearts, which had diverged radically from the establishment thinking (Koch et al., perhaps?). Very simplistic analysis. And what about the progressive left? Bacevich seems fixated on the purported Sanders rebellion in 2016 where lefties failed to vote for Hillary. The data for that is pretty poor, and even he insists that Hillary lost because of inept and tone-deaf campaigning. The rush to Biden after Super Tuesday 2020 belies any massive shift in the left-leaning electorate away from "moderate" politics (i.e., establishment politics), conspiracy theories about DNC coups notwithstanding. For example, support among blacks as a group completely outside establishment thinking ought to drive them right into Sanders's camp, right? Didn't happen. Young people? Still not voting. So I think you need to look at this book with a somewhat gimlet eye and judge for yourself. I also found the lack of forward thinking takes away from the theme a lot, as have many other reviewers. What will happen in 10 years when Miami and the Florida Keys are under a foot of water? Will that produce another realignment in national politics? Or will we turn our entire economy and federal budget to keeping illegal immigrants out? We really can't have all those Canadians taking our jobs. Yes, a lot of this is self-adjusting as the idiocy of policies like separating children from families plays out in real time, or the current "stimulus" through unemployment plans that the government can't even begin to process with their antiquated processes and software systems. People get it when these things hit the headlines, or at least most people do. Finally, Bacevich's "third horseman" is "unrestricted freedom", meaning people doing everything they want without a moral compass. He just hints around on this, but it sounds like an evangelical Christian condemnation of the waywardness and immorality of modern life: moral indignation, in other words. That has never formed the basis of a rational approach to government (see Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and Endless War). I think we need to accept that tattoos are just tattoos, not a sign of the decline of Western civilization or the apocalypse. An interesting read, but it needs salt.
July 25, 2020
Andrew Bacevich may be a former soldier but he is a current Deep Thinker, having written thousands of pages of books and essays analyzing various aspects of American military and diplomatic history. A self-described conservative, Bacevich uses that term in the classic sense - unlike far too many of today's Republican leadership, who are seemingly proud of their lack of expertise in the issues of the day, Bacevich thinks long and hard about America and our role in the world.
With "The Age of Illusions," Bacevich addresses the sad question - if the United States "won" the Cold War, why are things so terrible now? As a conservative, Bacevich's answer seems to be that the United States has lost its moral foundation and instead pays lip service to our traditional values but instead is primarily focused on using our military to make the world safe for American consumerism and globalism.
Written in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election, Bacevich has Trump loom large on the landscape but spends most of his time analyzing the work of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, and is highly critical of each. Bacevich is no fan of our current military posture, which is to fight wars virtually everywhere. And he blames Clinton, Bush and Obama for promoting that posture, although he does give Obama faint praise for using drones instead of soldiers.
The basic thesis of the book is that America's lack of a moral foundation, combined with globalism and military adventurism where the wars are fought by soldiers primarily drawn from the lower classes has led to a divided America. The world is great for the elite, as they make fortunes and do not need to worry about paying the ultimate price for war, while the lower classes face high unemployment due to globalism, skyrocketing drug abuse, rising divorce, and seemingly never-ending deployments around the world. This division made the world ripe for Trump to take over.
These are all valued observations, and Bacevich has done his homework. But his writing is scholarly, almost to a fault. This is a dry, academic work extended to book form, and Bacevich seems determined to avoid using a five-cent word if he can bring a fifty-cent word to bear. As a result, "The Age of Illusions" is a slog even though it's well under 300 pages.
Highly recommended for its ideas, but not for the writing.
With "The Age of Illusions," Bacevich addresses the sad question - if the United States "won" the Cold War, why are things so terrible now? As a conservative, Bacevich's answer seems to be that the United States has lost its moral foundation and instead pays lip service to our traditional values but instead is primarily focused on using our military to make the world safe for American consumerism and globalism.
Written in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election, Bacevich has Trump loom large on the landscape but spends most of his time analyzing the work of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, and is highly critical of each. Bacevich is no fan of our current military posture, which is to fight wars virtually everywhere. And he blames Clinton, Bush and Obama for promoting that posture, although he does give Obama faint praise for using drones instead of soldiers.
The basic thesis of the book is that America's lack of a moral foundation, combined with globalism and military adventurism where the wars are fought by soldiers primarily drawn from the lower classes has led to a divided America. The world is great for the elite, as they make fortunes and do not need to worry about paying the ultimate price for war, while the lower classes face high unemployment due to globalism, skyrocketing drug abuse, rising divorce, and seemingly never-ending deployments around the world. This division made the world ripe for Trump to take over.
These are all valued observations, and Bacevich has done his homework. But his writing is scholarly, almost to a fault. This is a dry, academic work extended to book form, and Bacevich seems determined to avoid using a five-cent word if he can bring a fifty-cent word to bear. As a result, "The Age of Illusions" is a slog even though it's well under 300 pages.
Highly recommended for its ideas, but not for the writing.
January 16, 2020
Why does it mean to be an American after the Cold War? This is the fundamental question Professor Andrew Bacevich seeks to ask, prod and answer in his succinct summation, and indeed condemnation, of American foreign policy since 1989. Standing atop the metaphorical rubble of Soviet communism, and all other ideological and national challenges to its dominance, America decided not so much to reconsider its role in the world after the Cold War as expand and refresh it (American Imperialism 2.0). The military was kept large, not to slay the Reds, but to protect freedom; trade was expanded so that Jane and John could afford an endless array of consumer goods and apps that fueled a morally-empty consumption; Presidents were not merely the Leaders of the Free World, but leaders of the entire world.
Ultimately, the disenchantment of the American people with this post-Cold War consensus manifests in the election of Donald Trump. Bacevich is surprisingly critical of Hillary Clinton, and soft on Trump's presidency so far, seeing Clinton as the continuation of the status quo that left many Americans poorer and left holding the bag in its endless wars, while Trump's corruption and lying will likely not alter the fundamental fabric of American society. While I disagree on Bacevich's conclusion on Trump (the era of post-truth hints at dark times for democratic discourse, as just one example), the author's fervently-argued coda that the division that caused Trump to be elected in the first place must be addressed is timely, and appropriate for both Democrats and Republicans.
For those who look longingly back on the pre-Trump era, Bacevich's analysis is as necessary as a cup of water upon waking up from a hangover. Rarely will you encounter truth-telling like this, without the pretexts of partisan spin that fill the pages of tomes by politicians and DC-hucksters.
Ultimately, the disenchantment of the American people with this post-Cold War consensus manifests in the election of Donald Trump. Bacevich is surprisingly critical of Hillary Clinton, and soft on Trump's presidency so far, seeing Clinton as the continuation of the status quo that left many Americans poorer and left holding the bag in its endless wars, while Trump's corruption and lying will likely not alter the fundamental fabric of American society. While I disagree on Bacevich's conclusion on Trump (the era of post-truth hints at dark times for democratic discourse, as just one example), the author's fervently-argued coda that the division that caused Trump to be elected in the first place must be addressed is timely, and appropriate for both Democrats and Republicans.
For those who look longingly back on the pre-Trump era, Bacevich's analysis is as necessary as a cup of water upon waking up from a hangover. Rarely will you encounter truth-telling like this, without the pretexts of partisan spin that fill the pages of tomes by politicians and DC-hucksters.
May 2, 2020
The author's credentials are exceptional. A West Pointer and career military guy, he is now professor emeritus in history and international relations at Boston University.
Professor Bacevich plots US History from post WW II through the first three years of the Trump Administration, emphasizing the post fall of the Berlin Wall period. He discusses how / why we lost the so-called "Peace Dividend" that was to accrue to the US after the Soviet Union collapsed, and the creation of the environment wherein Donald Trump became our president. American hubris was responsible for the continued growth in the military and it played a leading role in support for economic globalization. This led not only to the wasting of American treasure (both human and monetary) but the loss of jobs and lower “real wages” for our shrinking middle class.
In the closing chapters the author calls for serious national discussions on the pros and cons of globalized neoliberalism and the inequality it produces. He also rightly points out that the existing political establishment has neither the incentive nor the wish for such debates since both major political parties benefit from the status quo. Mr. Bacevich maintains hope that, like Abolition and the Depression, such discussions may come about prompted by the existing major common problem now facing the world, i.e., climate change. Good luck with that!
Professor Bacevich plots US History from post WW II through the first three years of the Trump Administration, emphasizing the post fall of the Berlin Wall period. He discusses how / why we lost the so-called "Peace Dividend" that was to accrue to the US after the Soviet Union collapsed, and the creation of the environment wherein Donald Trump became our president. American hubris was responsible for the continued growth in the military and it played a leading role in support for economic globalization. This led not only to the wasting of American treasure (both human and monetary) but the loss of jobs and lower “real wages” for our shrinking middle class.
In the closing chapters the author calls for serious national discussions on the pros and cons of globalized neoliberalism and the inequality it produces. He also rightly points out that the existing political establishment has neither the incentive nor the wish for such debates since both major political parties benefit from the status quo. Mr. Bacevich maintains hope that, like Abolition and the Depression, such discussions may come about prompted by the existing major common problem now facing the world, i.e., climate change. Good luck with that!
September 12, 2022
Hubris, wishful thinking, Ideology, and a desire to transcend all limits. These are a few of the forces identified by Andrew J. Bacevich in "The Age of Illusions," an extended essay that examines the unraveling of the post-Cold War American polity. And according to Bacevich, these forces have manifested themselves in a variety of illusions that have led to the malignancies afflicting us: Congressional deference to government by unencumbered executive action; an unaccountable administrative state; globalization and militarism; and, the celebration of the unfettered self.
Beginning in the seventies, Irving Kristol noted that "The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism," adding, “For well over a hundred and fifty years now, social critics have been warning us that bourgeois society was living off the accumulated moral capital of traditional religion and traditional moral philosophy, and that once this capital was depleted, bourgeois society would find its legitimacy ever more questionable." In this respect, Bacevich's analysis is a prolonged validation of Kristol's warning.
A thoughtful examination of the self-deception that has consumed our elites and a repudiation of the resulting dysfunction.
Beginning in the seventies, Irving Kristol noted that "The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism," adding, “For well over a hundred and fifty years now, social critics have been warning us that bourgeois society was living off the accumulated moral capital of traditional religion and traditional moral philosophy, and that once this capital was depleted, bourgeois society would find its legitimacy ever more questionable." In this respect, Bacevich's analysis is a prolonged validation of Kristol's warning.
A thoughtful examination of the self-deception that has consumed our elites and a repudiation of the resulting dysfunction.
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