The full title of the book: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism indicates clearly the perspective and inclinations of the author. The author, Andrew J. Bacevich is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who now holds the position of Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University. Additionally and tragically Professor Bacevich lost his son in Iraq in 2007. I am going to break this review into sections: 1. Thesis 2. Summary 3. Critique 4. How the DailyKos community can use this book. Since readers around here seem to be less tolerant of long diaries, I will address 1 and 2 in this diary, and parts 3 and 4 tomorrow.
Thesis
Professor Bacevich argues that the fundamental flaws of American Foreign policy lie in the rise of the Imperial Presidency and the permanent National Security apparatus that controlled the formulation and execution of American Foreign Policy throughout the Cold War. This contentious partnership originated with NSC-68 in the late Truman administration and grew in scope and entrenched bureaucracy since that time. George W. Bush and his Neocon operatives, while categorically wrong, merely leveraged and expanded an existing mentality in both the electorate and the "National Security" apparatus of our government. Moreover, as a corollary thesis the American electorate gave tacit approval to this arrangement by their disengagement and willingness to equate material prosperity with "freedom." "Freedom," a term used to elicit emotional responses without any careful examination of motives or policy; a term that for the most part lost any substantive meaning during this period of U. S. History. The current crisis faced by the United States presents a Hydra of threats resulting from overspending, overextended military power, dwindling world support for U.S. policies and unwillingness on the part of American political leaders and the American people to confront reality with a rational mind. The current crisis presents an opportunity to fundamentally address our course or face certain and dramatic decline.
Summary
In three main chapters entitled "The Crisis of Profligacy," "The Political Crisis," and "The Military Crisis," Professor Bacevich substantiates his thesis with significant examples and historical context delineating the evolution of our current state of affairs.
In the Profligacy chapter, Bacevich outlines the ascendancy of the US in the post WW II economic world order and the fundamental economic strength derived from victory in the context of European and Japanese destruction. Throughout the 1950s the US achieved a standard of living that became the envy of the world however, that began to shift in the late Vietnam War period:
Prior to the 1970s, because the United States had long been the world’s number one producer of petroleum, American oil companies determined the global price of oil. In 1972, domestic oil production peaked and began its inexorable, irreversible decline, The year before, the perrogative of setting the price of crude oil had passed into the hands of a new producers’ group, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). (pp. 29-30)
From here he moves on to economic decline and the choice between the prescient Carter’s energy dependence challenge and Reagan’s optimism. Regan’s victory ushered in a period of spending unsupported by fundamental economic strength. Trends since then have only continued and debt has supplemented earning power in American life. The bills for this "profligacy" eventually came due.
In the Political Crisis chapter, Bacevich lays out the evolution of the Imperial Presidency and the National Security apparatus. He argues that in the post WW II world, Congress abdicated its’ role in the checks and balances system allowing for the creation of the Imperial President. The National Security apparatus renders this situation intolerable by supplanting the voters as the final arbiter of American policy. Presidents come and go, but the National Security apparatus stays in place, much to the detriment of any President coming to Washington thinking they will actually change anything. Bacevich substantiates this with numerous examples of Presidents that become suspect of the advisors. More importantly, he punctuates this chapter with a healthy discussion of NSC-68 and the spirit of foreign policy exemplified by two WW II era leaders who exhibited markedly different styles: Henry L. Stimson and James Forrestal. Both men were Wall Street Republicans who served under FDR, but they exemplified very different traditions. Stimson served as a Colonel in WW I, Governor General of the Philippines, Secretary of State under Hoover, and finally Secretary of War under FDR. He exemplified the conservative reaction to circumstances: cool and measured. James Forrestal served the Secretary of Navy, Frank Knox and went on in the postwar to become the first Secretary of Defense. Forrestal possessed a pessimistic temperament and tended to emphasize potential threats as always imminent. Eventually he broke down and committed suicide. Bacevich agues that while Stimson remained respected the majority of advisors emulated Forrestal and culminated in a statement of policy in NSC-68 written by Paul Nitze who was then head of the Policy Planning Staff of Dean Acheson’s State Department:
Historians have long seen NSC 68 as one of the foundational documents of postwar American statecraft. From our present perspective, it is that and more. NSC 68 provides us with an early sense of what our postwar habit of deferring to the Wise Men has wrought.
Two recent events had prompted Truman in January 1950 to direct the State and Defense departments to undertake an urgent—and of course secret—review of national security strategy. Although those events were by no means trivial, Nitze’s chief contribution was to blow them completely out of proportion and use them as a basis to argue for sweeping reorientation of U.S. policy. In this effort, he ultimately prevailed. (pp. 107-108)
Over the next few decades, hyping the potential threat promoted job security for the National Security elite and it spiraled into lower and lower tolerances for risk. This culminated with Dick Cheney saying that a 1% chance of Iraq having WMDs is too much. In the context of the Profligacy chapter no one can afford a policy that demands such risk analysis. Policy must maintain a balance between possible and probable, because the basis for military strength has always been economic.
In the Military Crisis chapter Bacevich builds on the previous two chapters and moves into the area of his greatest strength—specifically military policy. He clearly dissects the various forms of conventional wisdom as they emerged at various times from 2001-2007. Every time he effectively winds back to his main thesis that the endless War on Terror represents a clear over-extension of American capability and if continued will accelerate decline. The financial crisis, the sputtering War on Terror and the unrealistic expectations of the American electorate will combine to continue unrealistic policies that solve nothing. Most convincingly he lays out the axiom that all "Small Wars" are wars of empire, and that is not what we should be engaged in prosecuting. The Department of Defense is more accurately described as the Department of Power Projection and it needs to get back to doing defense.
Lurking behind this simple question are several larger ones. How is it that our widely touted post-Cold War military supremacy has produced not enhanced security but the prospect of open-ended conflict? Why is it that when we flex our muscles on behalf of peace and freedom, the world beyond our borders becomes all the more cantankerous and disorderly? To turn Madeleine Albright’s famous question to Colin Powell on its head, what exactly is the point of using this superb army of ours if the result is Iraq and Afghanistan?
The events of the recent past offer several lessons that illuminate these questions. The first, and perhaps most important, concerns the nature of the war. Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that war is not subject to reinvention, whatever George W. Bush and Pentagon proponents of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs or "shock-and-awe" may contend.
War’s essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War’s constant companions are uncertainty and risk. "War is the realm of chance," wrote the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz nearly two centuries ago. "No other human activity gives it greater scope: no other has such incessant and varied dealings with this intruder," a judgment that the invention of the computer, the Internet, and precision-guided munitions has done nothing to overturn. "The statesman who yields to war fever," Churchill correctly observed, "is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." Therefore, any notion that innovative techniques and new technologies will subject war to defining human direction is simply whimsical. (pp. 156-157)
In the end of this chapter he concludes that the essential problem is not the size of our Army, but what we are asking it to do. Technical military capability does not make up for age old fixed costs of conflict. Moreover, any foreign policy needs to be grounded in sound fiscal policy otherwise it is unsustainable in the long run.