Limits of Power, The, Andrew J. Bacevich (Metropolitan Books, 2008) (read spring 2009)

Subtitled "The End of American Exceptionalism," this is a remarkable book, one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time. The author, a retired army colonel now teaching history and international relations at Boston University, writes clearly and powerfully about America's self-deception, its hubris and over-reliance on military force, that has led us to a state of perpetual warfare in remote places and disintegration at home. He says the United States today is threatened by three interlocking crises: economic and cultural, political, and military, and all of them are of our own making, though we like to blame others. (p. 6)

Bacevich believes Reinhold Niebuhr, "a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s," deserves recognition as "the most clear-eyed of American prophets," with much to say to us today. (p. 6) Niebuhr emphasized the need for "realism" and "humility," two qualities conspicuously lacking in our national leadership today. (p. 7)

This brief book of fewer than 200 pages has a simple outline. After an "Introduction: War Without Exits," he discusses three crises: (1) "The Crisis of Profligacy;" (2) "The Political Crisis;" and (3) "The Military Crisis," followed by a dozen pages on "Conclusion: The Limits of Power."

The "Crisis of Profligacy" is about our unending pursuit of more, primary more material goods:

For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors. (p. 16)

Bacevich says that aside from the moral and cultural implications of this development, it has important foreign policy implications, which are "almost entirely negative." (p. 10) He notes two pivotal speeches. The first was by Jimmy Carter, who is widely considered today to have been a failure as a president. But Carter gave a prescient speech on July 15, 1979, in which he said that the real danger to American democracy was not from outside its borders, but within. He said the nation was experiencing a "crisis of confidence" because it had abandoned its core values, and that the solution was to give up the never-ending quest for more in the interest of pleasing ourselves and instead to live in accordance with permanent values, like hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and faith in God. (pp. 31-35)

The second speech, by Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1973, contained, according to Bacevich, two radical propositions: (1) United States security now required the U.S. to "achieve a status akin to invulnerability," and (2) modern technology would make it possible, particularly the antimissle shield that Reagan called his Strategic Defense Initiative, but was soon labeled "Star Wars." (p. 41) Although Reagan, like Carter, bemoaned U.S. dependence on foreign oil, he and his successors did nothing to reduce it; rather, they wielded U.S. power to ensure access to oil. In effect, Reagan said Americans could keep on having more, more, more, but they would have to use force to get it.

Although United States leaders, particularly Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, are most culpable, in Bacevich's eyes, for the way we have spent money like water, pursued grandiose dreams of dominating the world, particularly the Middle East with its oil, and borrowed with abandon to leave future generations to pay almost inconceivably large debts, the American public has gone along with it. Few people and almost no politicians called for restraint, for living within our means, for saving instead of spending, spending, spending.

Since Reagan took office, we have changed from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation; from never starting a war to deliberately invading another country (and infiltrating others); from living in peace with the Islamic world to basically being at war with the Islamic world, at least in the eyes of many Muslims. The United States backed Iraq in its war with Iran, then wound up invading Iraq; it backed the Afghanistan "Freedom Fighters" (as Reagan called them" in their war with the Soviet Union; then wound up fighting them (or their sons) after 9/11.

Bacevich points out that although all of America's presidents since Reagan have agreed that "America is addicted to oil," none of them have taken any meaningful actions to weaken that addiction, nor has Congress. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in October 2001: "We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we must change the way they live. We choose the latter." (pp. 58-59)

In "The Political Crisis," Bacevich has no heroes. Both Democrats and Republicans have tacitly or unthinkingly worked together to produce a distorted, dysfunctional government, with enormously inflated presidential powers and a shrunken and complacent congress. He says that because there is such a strong consensus on the major direction the country should take, dissenting views are not really heard. (See p. 81) George Bush did not represent a new kind of president; he just continued and in some ways expanded the defects of the existing order.

He especially takes aim at the ideology of "national security" that is used to justify almost anything. He says four core convictions inform this ideology of national security: (1) the ultimate goal of all of history is human freedom, and the eternal struggle is between freedom and oppression; (2) America has always been the chief exemplar and advocate of freedom, a shining light for all other countries; (3) the United States has been divinely commissioned with the task of promoting freedom around the world; and (4) for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere in the world. These convictions supply the rationale for America to interfere and intervene anywhere in the world for what we perceive to be the cause of freedom. (pp. 74-75)

However, this ideology of national security, supposedly aimed at expanding freedom, does not really require us to do anything or prohibit us from doing anything. It does not oblige us to help the most oppressed people on earth (think Zimbabwe) or prevent us from collaborating with the world's biggest oppressors (think Egypt's Hosni Mubarak).

What it does is provide policy makers with a moral gloss that can be added to virtually any initiative by insisting that, whatever concrete interests might be at stake, the United States is also acting to advance the cause of freedom and democracy. (p. 77)

He shows how both Clinton and Obama really subscribe to the same national security ideology as George Bush, and this is because they really have to do so in order to be elected. Those who articulate truly dissenting opinions, no matter how principled, remain on the political fringes. If a presidential aspirant does not publicly identify with this ideology, he or she has no real hope of being elected. (p. 81)

Bacevich excoriates the "ever-expanding national security apparatus," claiming that it does not really serve the public interest and is mainly concerned with reinforcing its own existence, relying on secrecy to shield its blunders from the public. He gives an early example: a B-29 superfortress bomber crashed in 1948, but air force officials said they could not release information about what caused the crash to widows of deceased crew members "without seriously hampering national security." Yet a half-century later when the crash report was de-classified it showed that the crash occurred because of poor maintenance and pilot error – it contained no sensitive information at all. (p. 86) Two examples from the Iraq war were the false heroics attributed to PFC Jessica Lynch and the fictionalized account of how NFL football player Pat Tillman was killed. It turned out that he was a victim of friendly fire. (p. 87)

One thing that surprised me was his assertion that presidents do not view the national security institutions as allies but as adversaries, and do everything they can to marginalize or isolate them, such as by appointing leaders personally loyal to the president even if they have no real qualifications for the job, and creating new ad hoc groups to take over functions supposedly performed by intelligence agencies. His big example here is the Bay of Pigs invasion, concocted by the CIA based on intelligence that was "at best defective, at worst simply invented." (p. 91) Military leaders are mostly incompetent or too weak to state opposing views; witness the public humiliation heaped on General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff who was the only senior military officer who dared to express skepticism about the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. (p. 98)

Since the national security institutions are inept, at best, presidents have relied on a small group of unofficial – but very influential – advisors, whom Bacevich calls the "Wise Men." One of the most influential of the post-war Wise Men was Paul Nitze, the principal author of NSC68, a classified document that became the basis of national security strategy down to the present day. It viewed the world in alarmist, almost paranoid, fashion, and basically said the only way for the United States to survive in a hostile and very scary world was through overwhelming military power. This ultimately led, through the latest influential Wise Man, Paul Wolfowitz, to the preemptive war in Iraq. But, according to Bacevich, in NSC68 and subsequent reports by special commissions,

... purportedly rigorous analysis actually served to disguise an exercise in group-think, yielding preconceived conclusions that reflected the prejudices, policy agendas, and career interests of the principals involved. (p. 114)

Bacevich says what we should learn from the Iraq debacle is not how to fight better in the next war, to improve our tactics and operations, but first, to reject the ideology of national security which promises to lead us into endless wars; second, to return to a government that works, which apparently means to reform the presidency, the Congress, and the national security agencies; and third, to reject the counsel of the "Wise Men" who "have repeatedly misconstrued and exaggerated existing threats, with perverse effects." (p. 123) As to the "Wise Men," who seem to be his chief target, he says, "These are the people who under the guise of seeking peace or advancing the cause of liberty devise policies that promote war or the prospect of war, producing something akin to chaos." (p. 122)

The third crisis that Bacevich shines his spotlight on is the military crisis. The fact is that contrary to every expectation the U.S. military has utterly failed in its assigned missions in the last two decades. In the two major cases, Afghanistan and Iraq, "the assigned task was to deliver a knockout blow, leading to a quick, decisive, economical, politically meaningful victory. In each case, despite impressive displays of valor, fortitude, durability, and technological sophistication, America's military came up short." (p. 125)

Basically, we have a misplaced confidence in the efficacy of American military force. He says that's based on three great illusions: (1) that the United States had reinvented armed conflict, so that with speed and incredible precision we could target a regime, not a nation, achieving our goals swiftly and relatively painlessly, and thus achieve "full spectrum dominance" – unambiguous supremacy in all forms of warfare; (2) that the United States had learned from the Vietnam conflict some basic principles about how and when to use force, so that we would never again get into a situation like Vietnam; and (3) that the military and American society had been reunited after the divisive Vietnam years, so that now civilians would fully support the military when it was called to battle.

Events since 9/11 have exposed these illusions, says Bacevich. "The generals and admirals who touted the wonders of full spectrum dominance were guilty of flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud." (p. 130) The lessons the military leaders had supposedly learned from Vietnam were soon forgotten. And the American public, although supporting the military with words, did not really sacrifice a thing to promote a global war of ostensibly earthshaking importance. Relatively few volunteered to actually fight in this war, and Americans in general paid more attention to hometown sports heroes than to soldiers fighting in distant parts of the world. (pp. 130-131)

Bacevich also debunks three new ideas proposed as the lessons to learn from the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan: (1) changing the emphasis of the military from high-tech precision striking power to on-the-ground activities like rooting out insurgents, nation-building, training and advising "host nations", winning hearts and minds, etc.; (2) give more power and authority to the military with less restraints by the civilians supposedly in charge of the military; and (3) do away with the voluntary military and re-institute the draft as a way of repairing the relationship between the military and society. (pp. 133-141)

He says these are the wrong lessons to take from Iraq and Afghanistan. The "small wars" of the last half-century or so, which Bacevich says are wars of imperialism, not defense, have largely failed for one reason: not civilian interference with the military, not the performance of the troops, but the incompetence of the generals. Bacevich says that, at best, they have been mediocre, and he gives plenty of examples. (pp. 147-152) Also, bringing back the draft is not a good idea and it will never happen, although the military might turn more to "pricey contractor-mercenaries." (pp. 152-156) Interestingly, he says the only significant segment of the electorate that might support bringing back the draft is conservative evangelicals! (p. 154)

When he turns to what he says are the right lessons to be drawn from our recent military experience, he says the first one is that the speed, precision, and power of modern technological weapons is basically irrelevant – the first lesson is to realize that "War remains today what it has always been – elusive, untamed, costly, difficult to control, fraught with surprise, and sure to give rise to unexpected consequences." (pp. 159-160)

The second lesson we should learn, says Bacevich, is the limited utility of force. The Bush administration treated force as "an all-purpose tool" that can be used "to set things right and fix whatever is broken." (p. 160) This is wrong, he says, and our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan show that force is not the answer. The third lesson is similar – the folly of preventative war. Even setting aside moral considerations, "to launch a war today to eliminate a danger that might pose a threat at some future date is just plain stupid. It doesn't work." (p. 163; emphasis by author) A prime example is Iraq:

Yet a military operation expected to demonstrate the efficacy of preventative war accomplished just the reverse. The looming threat that ostensibly made the invasion of Iraq an urgent necessity – Saddam's weapons of mass destruction – proved to be nonexistent. The war's promised outcome proved elusive. Its costs turned out to be far greater than anyone in the administration had anticipated. (p. 165)

Instead, Bacevich says we should conform to the Just War tradition, "not only because that tradition is consistent with our professed moral values, but also because its provisions provide an eminently useful guide for sound statecraft." (p. 165)

The fourth lesson Bacevich would have us learn from our recent military history relates to the "formulation of strategy." He says since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilian leaders (e.g., George W. Bush) has been to confused strategy with ideology, whereas among military officers the tendency has been to confuse strategy with operations. He points out that in General Tommy Franks memoir, he referred to a "basic grand strategy" for the war in Iraq that was totally devoid of political issues, gave no thought to what might happen after the war and ignored other regional power relationships; made no reference to culture, religion, or ethnic identity, had no moral dimension, and did not even include a statement of purpose. It was just a "template" for decisive victory, highlighting U.S. capabilities vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein's sources of power. (pp. 165-168)

He says "America doesn't need a bigger army. It needs a smaller – that is, more modest – foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. We should give up on "the illusions of grandeur" to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise, and we should rein in the "imperial presidents" who expect the army to make good on those illusions." He says that when it comes to supporting the troops, "here lies the essence of a citizen's obligation." (p. 169)

In his conclusion, Bacevich re-emphasizes the peril the United States is in, largely because of its profligate consumerism, incompetent political establishment, and over-reliance on the use of force to try to shape the world according to American desires. The failure to appreciate the limits of what any one country, no matter how rich and powerful, can do is leading us to destruction. He says "Acknowledging the limits of American power is a precondition for stanching the losses of recent decades and for preserving the hard-won gains of earlier generations going back to the founding of the Republic." On the other hand, a "realistic appreciation of limits ... creates opportunities to adjust policies and replenish resources – perhaps even to renew institutions." (p. 174)

He says we must work together with allies to contain the threat of violent Islamic extremism, not vow to destroy evil in the world, which is essentially what President Bush said after the tragedy of 9/11.

Americans ought to give up the presumptuous notion that they are called upon to tutor Muslims in matters related to freedom and the proper relationship between politics and religion. The principle informing policy should be this: Let Islam be Islam. In the end, Muslims will have to discover for themselves the shortcomings of political Islam, much as the Russians discovered the defects of Marxism-Leninism and the Chinese came to appreciate the flaws of Maoism – perhaps even as we ourselves will one day begin to recognize the snares embedded in American exceptionalism. (p. 177)

He identifies two enormous threats to the future of all human life that can only be solved by cooperative action, nuclear weapons and climate warming.

Ultimately, Bacevich is not very hopeful. He thinks

the American people will ignore the imperative of settling accounts – balancing budgets, curbing consumption, and paying down debt. They will remain passive as politicians fritter away U.S. military might on unnecessary wars. They will permit officials responsible for failed policies to dodge accountability. They will tolerate stupefying incompetence and dysfunction in the nation's capital .... Above all, they will venerate freedom while carefully refraining from assessing its content or measuring its costs. (pp. 181-182)

This book was published in 2008. On May 13, 2007, the author's son, a first lieutenant in the Army, was killed in Iraq. That tragedy may have affected the writing of this book, but the book is not a bitter tirade. It is extremely sobering, but well-reasoned and (to me) very convincing. He cites Reinhold Niebuhr as the "prophet" for our times, but I think Andrew Bacevich is also speaking prophetically in this book. Read it again!