Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Andrew Bacevich's recent book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, is a thin volume clocking in at 182 pages and laying out the ills facing our country due to its foolish foreign policy aims. Limits of Power reminds me of Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads, Walter Russel Mead's Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, or John Gaddis's Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, all slim foreign policy books trying to criticize but advance new national security and diplomatic paradigms. Bacevich writes/blogs at Huffington Post and the Nation, and is the author of numerous books on national security, foreign policy, and military policy. He teaches diplomatic history and recent international affairs (among many several subjects) at Boston University. Last summer, I read Walter Hixson's The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy. Hixson attempts to weave theory into foreign relations history and he deserves credit for that, but he tried to accomplish too much and his analysis was a bit haphazard at points. Largely critical, it offered a fascinating alternative to much of the standard narrative. Bacevich seeks to do the same thing, but he succeeds where Hixson falters.

Bacevich looks back at American history over the past fifty years, mostly, and pointing out where we went wrong. There were two moments when policy-makers had the opportunity to steer a different course: at the end of the WWII and the onset of the Cold War when James Forrestal's alarmist sensibilities guided Defense, State, and National Security to support NSC-68. The second moment appeared when Jimmy Carter accepted America's weakened state with the "crisis of confidence" speech (dubbed the "malaise speech") and the US' deleterious energy dependence. Instead of heeding Carter's advice, Americans chose Reagan's exceptional, deficit-exploding leadership that advocated global military superiority and presence instead of conservative principles. Consumerism and energy consumption were pushed at the cost of an honest examination of the US' trade balance, energy use, savings rate, and those noble beliefs were sidelined further after the Soviet Union crumbled and the US "won" the Cold War--saddled with debt, a sloppy foreign policy, and a society addicted to cheap oil.

The US' invasion of Iraq is due in large part to the Bush administration's shortsighted pomp. As Bacevich points out, however, much of Bush & Co.'s attitudes (notably disdain for public input or consultation) arose from long-standing foreign policy traditions. As a result of Iraq, we're now in a dire situation where the chickens have come home to roost, and Bacevich isn't sure that Obama is the desired solution.

The Limits of Power is phenomenal in the way it lays out the problems our country faces. Shades of Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams ring throughout the work. Some reviews have criticized his work as lacking resolutions. Bacevich doesn't beat you over the head with his answers; he's an historian/political scientist not a pundit or politician. As such, one must understand his writing as an historian to see the lessons the reader should glean from the past in order to resolve our current problems. His conclusion also offers clear proposals for how the US could get out of this mess.

As phenomenal as a book as this is, there are problems and strange omissions. One finishes The Limits of Power with repeated examples of Reinhold Niebuhr's brilliance and premonitions, and it gets a bit tiring. (He goes so far as to call him "the prophet.") I was surprised he didn't deal more with the privatization of America's war machine and the use of, in essence, mercenaries. It warrants one apparent reference, but he could have demonstrated how market principles and Reaganomics corrupted the US' ability to wage war and its signaled a willingness to pay contractors lavish sums at the taxpayers' expense. Also, he seems to be a bit confused on the draft, and, again, privatized war relates to this issue. At one point (140) he supports the draft as a check for American power, but several pages later he relegates the idea to the bin of past good that no longer applies to current circumstances (150-152). The mixed all-volunteer army and private contractors may not be sustainable. Still, he could have explored how a draft could check American power with greater attention and seriousness.

Also, I can't tell how he feels about Muslims. In the conclusion, he raises the subject of Muslims in an odd fashion by discussing Muslims as one block and imbued with the belief that political Islam is a solution. He discredits the latter concept as akin to Marxism-Leninism and Maoism and I find that difficult to accept. Bacevich worked on his PhD in diplomatic history at Princeton. I don't know if he was informed by Bernard Lewis's works or had some affiliation with him, but I can't discern whether Bacevich, in effect, looks at Muslims as backwards, homogenous, and unable to arise above and beyond Islam's constraints, which is a core of what Lewis argues. If Bacevich does, his book is flawed and his world outlook should be questioned. I find this potential flaw disappointing for someone with such clarity, sober analysis, and trenchant criticism.

(Bacevich faculty profile at BU)