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The calamities that accumulated during 2020 fostered a sense of things coming undone. The political order seemed unable to cope. Crises following one another in rapid succession tested Americans as they had not been tested for generations. Each crisis compounded the significance of the others. Taken together, they gave birth to a moment of profound and disturbing revelation.
The calamities that accumulated during 2020 fostered a sense of things coming undone. The political order seemed unable to cope. Crises following one another in rapid succession tested Americans as they had not been tested for generations. Each crisis compounded the significance of the others. Taken together, they gave birth to a moment of profound and disturbing revelation.
The premise of this book is quite simple: Regardless of whether our self-inflicted contemporary apocalypse leads to renewal or further decline, the United States will find itself obliged to revise the premises informing America’s role in the world. Put simply, basic U.S. policy must change.
The premise of this book is quite simple: Regardless of whether our self-inflicted contemporary apocalypse leads to renewal or further decline, the United States will find itself obliged to revise the premises informing America’s role in the world. Put simply, basic U.S. policy must change.
Entry into the precincts where insiders formulate American statecraft comes at a price. It requires individuals to forfeit or at least to suppress any inclination to genuinely independent thought. To be accepted as a member in good standing of the American political class is to pledge allegiance to a worldview. Central to that worldview is a particular conception of history and of America’s designated role in bringing that history to its intended conclusion.
Entry into the precincts where insiders formulate American statecraft comes at a price. It requires individuals to forfeit or at least to suppress any inclination to genuinely independent thought. To be accepted as a member in good standing of the American political class is to pledge allegiance to a worldview. Central to that worldview is a particular conception of history and of America’s designated role in bringing that history to its intended conclusion.
American Exceptionalism, a concept that stands in relation to basic U.S. policy as the Facebook motto “Bring the World Closer Together” does to the mission of that corporate behemoth. Such taglines—“Workers of the World, Unite!” and “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” offer other examples—serve as a source of legitimacy while avoiding any reference to power. Rather than describing actual purpose, they disguise it. Take such slogans seriously and you can get away with just about anything, as the United States has done for much of its history.
American Exceptionalism, a concept that stands in relation to basic U.S. policy as the Facebook motto “Bring the World Closer Together” does to the mission of that corporate behemoth. Such taglines—“Workers of the World, Unite!” and “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” offer other examples—serve as a source of legitimacy while avoiding any reference to power. Rather than describing actual purpose, they disguise it. Take such slogans seriously and you can get away with just about anything, as the United States has done for much of its history.
Americans don’t make history, whatever speechifying members of the political class may claim; they suffer its torments and adapt to its demands.
Americans don’t make history, whatever speechifying members of the political class may claim; they suffer its torments and adapt to its demands.
The inverse of innocence is not guilt but moral awareness. This book uses Trump’s admission as a point of departure. Proceeding from the premise that the United States is neither innocent nor lacking in alternatives, the chapters that follow explore how a morally aware nation facing numberless challenges at home and abroad, but still retaining considerable power and influence, could adapt itself to a rapidly changing global order.
The inverse of innocence is not guilt but moral awareness. This book uses Trump’s admission as a point of departure. Proceeding from the premise that the United States is neither innocent nor lacking in alternatives, the chapters that follow explore how a morally aware nation facing numberless challenges at home and abroad, but still retaining considerable power and influence, could adapt itself to a rapidly changing global order.
After the Apocalypse may be read as a reflection on manufactured memory. Whether related to family, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, or nation, the past is a human construct. It is not fixed but malleable, not permanent but subject to perpetual reexamination and revision. The value of history correlates with purposefulness. Changing times render obsolete the past that we know and require the discovery of a “new” history better suited to the needs of the moment.
After the Apocalypse may be read as a reflection on manufactured memory. Whether related to family, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, or nation, the past is a human construct. It is not fixed but malleable, not permanent but subject to perpetual reexamination and revision. The value of history correlates with purposefulness. Changing times render obsolete the past that we know and require the discovery of a “new” history better suited to the needs of the moment.
Recovering from the ill effects of American Exceptionalism will entail remembering things most Americans would rather forget. The “history” that shapes our political consciousness—and therefore legitimates the use of U.S. military and economic power—consists almost entirely of selectively remembered events. And while what we choose to remember, carefully curated to remove or conceal unbecoming details, may be convenient, the results come nowhere near to offering a complete and accurate record of the past.
Recovering from the ill effects of American Exceptionalism will entail remembering things most Americans would rather forget. The “history” that shapes our political consciousness—and therefore legitimates the use of U.S. military and economic power—consists almost entirely of selectively remembered events. And while what we choose to remember, carefully curated to remove or conceal unbecoming details, may be convenient, the results come nowhere near to offering a complete and accurate record of the past.
Our collective capacity for misremembering (or altogether forgetting) inconvenient facts is bottomless—and plays a crucial role in sustaining American Exceptionalism. Available yet inert, such inconvenient facts may attract occasional notice and from time to time even cause twinges of remorse. (Who can feel good about the fate that Native Americans suffered at the hands of the U.S. government?) Soon enough, however, such facts get filed away under the heading of “not especially relevant,” and the myth of Americans as God’s new Chosen People survives with hardly a scratch. In the final
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Our collective capacity for misremembering (or altogether forgetting) inconvenient facts is bottomless—and plays a crucial role in sustaining American Exceptionalism. Available yet inert, such inconvenient facts may attract occasional notice and from time to time even cause twinges of remorse. (Who can feel good about the fate that Native Americans suffered at the hands of the U.S. government?) Soon enough, however, such facts get filed away under the heading of “not especially relevant,” and the myth of Americans as God’s new Chosen People survives with hardly a scratch. In the final
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Here, in a nutshell, is the narrative that props up American Exceptionalism: the conviction that a succession of victories, engineered by the United States, had “created the free world,” thereby weaving past, present, and future into a single seamless garment. That this narrative cannot withstand even minimally critical scrutiny is beside the point. (Does the outcome of World War I qualify as a victory or did it pave the way for something worse? And didn’t Soviet leader Josef Stalin, neither democratic nor liberal, somehow figure in defeating fascism in World War II?) Biden’s framing of
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Here, in a nutshell, is the narrative that props up American Exceptionalism: the conviction that a succession of victories, engineered by the United States, had “created the free world,” thereby weaving past, present, and future into a single seamless garment. That this narrative cannot withstand even minimally critical scrutiny is beside the point. (Does the outcome of World War I qualify as a victory or did it pave the way for something worse? And didn’t Soviet leader Josef Stalin, neither democratic nor liberal, somehow figure in defeating fascism in World War II?) Biden’s framing of
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With the passing of the Cold War, an opportunity to create a bigger and better Pax Americana presented itself. After decades of conflict and competition, only a single superpower remained. Assertive U.S. global leadership was therefore more important than ever. That the nation possessed the wherewithal to fulfill that role was a given. No conceivable alternative existed.
With the passing of the Cold War, an opportunity to create a bigger and better Pax Americana presented itself. After decades of conflict and competition, only a single superpower remained. Assertive U.S. global leadership was therefore more important than ever. That the nation possessed the wherewithal to fulfill that role was a given. No conceivable alternative existed.
In the realm of international politics, the counterpart of “white privilege” is “American privilege.” In common with other Great Powers past and present, the United States habitually asserts the prerogative of judging its behavior on the global stage in accordance with its own preferred and eminently flexible standards.
“Power,” John Adams once observed, “always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.”11 Those words apply to the United States as much as to any other great nation in modern times. Over the course of its national existence, the United States has done important and admirable things. It has also committed grave sins.
George Orwell once wrote that people “feel that a thing becomes different if you call it by a different name.”12 Americans have habitually relied on different names to cloak U.S. imperialism: Manifest Destiny, settling the frontier, converting the heathen, protecting American lives and property, and sharing the blessings of democracy. But the presumed beneficiaries of U.S. ministrations, be they Native Americans, Mexicans, Cubans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, or, in more recent days, Iraqis and Afghans, have never been fooled.
The point of offering this interpretation of America’s past is not to wallow in our failings or to suggest that we owe the world an apology. Nor am I hinting at a moral equivalence between our transgressions and the horrendous crimes of others. Yet to know where the nation needs to position itself in the Next Order requires first a clear-eyed account of how it got to where it finds itself today. As Americans consider their future role in the world, they can ill-afford to flinch from a past that includes both much to celebrate and much to regret.
Niebuhr taught that power combined with pride induces blindness, leading first to folly and then to tragedy. Members of Washington’s postwar policy elite found it inconceivable that this warning should apply to them.
not unlike the poet or composer whose works are suddenly understood after long having been misconstrued, Niebuhr’s moment may finally have arrived. Niebuhr agreed with Donald Trump that the United States is anything but innocent. As a Christian, his worldview derived from a belief in Original Sin. All persons are, therefore, fallible and prone to shortsightedness, selfishness, and error. So, too, are all nations. As for God’s purposes, they remain unknowable. American Exceptionalism is, therefore, at best illusory and at worst blasphemous. Here was the rock on which Niebuhr built his own quite
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Niebuhr did not intend for the United States to remain passive in the face of evil. He was neither an isolationist nor a pacifist. Nor was he a utopian. The art of statecraft, in his view, consisted of “finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.” Niebuhr urged policymakers to cultivate “a sense of awe before the vastness of the historical drama in which we are jointly involved” along with “a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom, and power available to us for the resolution of its perplexities.”22 In Washington throughout the decades of the New Order, such modesty and awe proved to
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The cause of justice, Niebuhr wrote in 1942, is best served “neither by the Utopians who dream dreams of perfect brotherhood nor yet by the cynics who believe that the self-interest of nations cannot be overcome,” but by “the realists who understand that nations are selfish” and will remain so, “but that none of us, no matter how selfish we may be, can be only selfish.”23
the United States would be better served to reposition itself as a nation that stands both apart from and alongside other members of a global community. No longer aspiring to dominion, America should focus on subsuming differences and bridging gaps, an approach likely to be congenial to its own well-being and to the world’s.
According to the historian William H. McNeill, Western Civ enrolled Americans, hitherto regarded as raw and unrefined, in “the great cultivated, reasonable, sophisticated world of ‘us,’ the heirs of a Western tradition dating from Socrates.”
Today, if the West that once fought the Nazis and contained Communism can be said to exist, it does so mainly as a figure of speech. To pretend otherwise is pointless.
During most of the twentieth century, international politics centered on conflicts between liberalism and totalitarianism, between white and non-white, between imperialism and national liberation. In the twenty-first century, it will—or at least should—center on reducing inequality, curbing the further spread of militant fanaticism, and averting a total breakdown of the natural world.
A nation imagining itself to have a special friendship with another country invariably deceives itself and thereby loses sight of its own interests. It also risks exposing itself to manipulation. In his Farewell Address, President George Washington famously warned against “passionate attachments” that foster illusions of common interests, while exposing the United States to “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.”1 The centuries since have validated the wisdom of Washington’s counsel.
what’s the harm? For the United States to persist in categorizing its relationships with Britain and Israel as special is akin to clinging to imperial pretensions even after the costs of maintaining the empire exceed the benefits. Sentiment and nostalgia inhibit realistic analysis. By extension, they promote miscalculation not only among the partners in the relationship but among others as well.
Above the battlefield, air force, navy, and Marine Corps high-performance aircraft and drones operated with virtual impunity. On the ground, despite possessing superior arms and equipment, GIs enjoyed few advantages. Rather than keeping to the tidy pattern envisioned in the Joint Vision, combat in Afghanistan and Iraq did not differ materially from the chaos and confusion that earlier generations of U.S. troops had encountered when pursuing rebellious Filipino nationalists at the turn of the twentieth century or fighting Vietnamese guerrillas in the 1960s. At a certain level, all dirty wars
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the All-Volunteer Force is out of sync with U.S. global ambitions. Even so, as if enshrined in the Constitution, the post-Vietnam military system remains fixed in place. As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny. Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental of questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history’s indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest,
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Present-day military leaders have neither any desire nor any intention to learn from the painful experiences of the post-9/11 wars. They have already moved on, busily cultivating an imaginary future more to their liking. During the Apocalypse of 2020, there would be no looking back and, hence, no accountability. Beset with myriad troubles, the American people were in no mood to object. In effect, they tacitly concurred with the Pentagon’s preference to move on as if nothing untoward had occurred. To realize the dangers here, it should hardly be necessary to cite George Santayana’s famous
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Since 9/11, the United States has engaged in wars that General Bradley would have recognized as misguided and largely irrelevant, with actual threats to the safety and well-being of the American people treated as afterthoughts. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, the United States finds itself badly needing some Bradley Wisdom.
Subsuming and going well beyond national defense, the concept of national security emerged during World War II and grew to maturity during the Cold War. National defense had meant something specific and concrete: protecting the American people where they live. National security implied far greater ambitions. Its defining feature was elasticity. Depending on circumstance, it could mean many things, even incorporating intangibles like prestige and credibility. As national security supplanted national defense, protecting the American people was demoted to the status of a lesser concern. When it
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Second only to the nuclear policy of Massive Retaliation, Ranch Hand may well qualify as the ultimate expression of the mindlessness to which the Cold War–inspired perversion of national security gave rise. Relying primarily on specially modified C-123 transport aircraft, the air force proceeded to dump some nineteen million gallons of various herbicides, Agent Orange being the most common, over an estimated six million acres of South Vietnam and Laos.9
The punishment that nature is capable of absorbing has limits; to exceed those limits is to endanger the safety and well-being of the human species. In short, if sufficiently abused, nature itself becomes the threat, with modernity potentially put at risk.
The dubious logic that produced Operation Ranch Hand survived. If anything, the conviction that “techniques and gadgets” held the key to national security became even more deeply entrenched. Washington continued to pay more attention to illusory threats in faraway places than to actual threats imperiling Americans where they live.
In late 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the “long twilight struggle” abruptly ended. In theory, this astonishing turn of events might have prompted policymakers in Washington to rethink and replace the prevailing national security paradigm. No such rethinking occurred. The U.S. military, its prestige and political standing now fully restored to pre-Vietnam levels, exerted itself to preempt any such possibility.
What is the common denominator shared by these various threats to U.S. national security? Crucially, they are nation-states and they are far away. Adhering to Colin Powell’s three-decades-old prescription, they qualify as what we might call Pentagon-preferred adversaries, their very existence justifying a military establishment that is still configured to project power against distant enemies.
the abiding, unspoken premise of basic U.S. policy, spanning both the Cold War and all the years since: the conviction that containing or deterring or coercing nation-states that are both far away and classified as dangerous holds the key to keeping Americans safe at home and guaranteeing their freedom.
On occasion the United States has found itself face-to-face with threats that did not conform to the profile of Pentagon-preferred adversaries. On each such occasion, with the American people gripped by fear, the existing national security paradigm was found wanting. The first occasion was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the second 9/11, and the third the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Seemingly unrelated, these three episodes lay bare the inadequacies of the prevailing national security paradigm.
Is all of the money consumed annually by the national security establishment enhancing our collective welfare? Or are these expenditures merely diverting resources from priorities of greater relevance to the well-being of the American people?
When I lie awake at night worrying about the planet that my grandchildren will inherit, it’s not terrorism that prevents me from sleeping. Nor is it Iran or North Korea or Russia or even China. It’s the puerile witlessness of a national security apparatus oblivious to real and proximate dangers that, if ignored, will only worsen with time and ultimately jeopardize the American way of life.
