Twilight of the American Century

by Andrew J Bacevich

  The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

  Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signified, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  Today, for most Americans, the Cold War has become a distant memory. Yet the “life of perpetual fear and tension” that Eisenhower described in 1953, the “burden of arms” that he decried, and “the wasting of strength” that undercuts the prospect of Americans achieving “true abundance and happiness” all persist. In Washington, practices that Eisenhower viewed as temporary expedients are now etched in stone.

  Contemplate these three examples: the size of the Pentagon budget, the dimensions of the nuclear arsenal, and the extent of the US overseas military presence. If, rather than exceeding the military spending of the rest of the planet, Pentagon outlays merely equaled the combined defense budgets of, say, Russian, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba, would the United States face great peril? If the US nuclear stockpile consisted of several hundred weapons rather than several thousand, would the United States find itself appreciably more vulnerable to nuclear blackmail or attack? Were the United States, sixty-plus years after the end of World War II, finally to withdraw its forces from Germany, Italy, and the rest of Europe, would Americans sleep less easily in their beds at night?

  Consider these questions pragmatically and the answer to each is self-evidently no. Consider them from a vantage point within the Washington consensus and you’ll reach a different conclusion.

  Adherents of that consensus categorically reject the notion that the defense spending of would-be adversaries could provide a gauge for our own military budget. They argue instead that America’s unique responsibilities require extraordinary capabilities, rendering external constraints unacceptable. Even as US officials condemn others for merely contemplating the acquisition of nuclear weapons, they reject unilateral action to reduce America’s own arsenal—the fancied risks of doing so being too great to contemplate. As for withdrawing US troops from Europe, doing so might—so the argument goes—call into question America’s commitment to its allies and could therefore send the wrong “signal” to unnamed potential enemies. Thus do the Washington rules enforce discipline, precluding the intrusion of aberrant thinking that might engender an actual policy debate in our nation’s capital.

  Cui bono? Who benefits from the perpetuation of the Washington rules? The answer to that question helps explain why the national security consensus persists.

  The answer, needless to say, is that Washington itself benefits. The Washington rules deliver profit, power, and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities, and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations.

  Each year the Pentagon expends hundreds of billions of dollars to raise and support US military forces. This money lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers and providing the source of largesse—jobs and contracts—for distribution to constituents. It provides lucrative “second careers” for retired US military officers hired by weapons manufacturers or by consulting firms appropriately known as “Beltway Bandits.” It funds the activities of think tanks that relentlessly advocate policies guaranteed to fend off challenges to established conventions. “Military-industrial complex” no longer suffices to describe the congeries of interests profiting from and committed to preserving the national security status quo.

  Nor are the benefits simply measurable in cold cash or political influence. The appeal of the Washington rules is psychic as well as substantive. For many, the payoff includes the added, if largely illusory, attraction of occupying a seat within or near what is imagined to be the very cockpit of contemporary history. Before power corrupts it attracts and then seduces.

  Challenging the Washington consensus requires establishing the proposition that viable alternatives to permanent war do exist—that a different credo might offer a better way of ensuring the safety and well-being of the American people and even perhaps of fulfilling the mission that Americans persist in believing God or Providence has bestowed upon the United States.

  The existing American credo assumes that the world is plastic, that American leaders are uniquely capable of divining whatever God or Providence intends, and that with its unequaled reserves of power the United States is uniquely positioned to fulfill those intentions. Experience since the dawn of the American Century in 1941, and especially over the course of the last decade, offers little support for these propositions.

  The record of American statecraft during the era that began with the US entry into World War II and that culminates today with the Long War does not easily reduce to a simple report card. Overall that record is mixed, combining wisdom with folly, generosity with shortsightedness, moments of insight with periods of profound blindness, admirable achievements with reckless misjudgments. The president who devised the Marshall Plan also ordered the bombing of Hiroshima. The president who created the Peace Corps also dabbled in assassination plots. The president who vowed to eliminate evil secretly authorized torture and then either could not bring himself to acknowledge the fact or simply lied about it.

  Critics fasten on these contradictions as evidence of Washington’s hypocrisy. What they actually reveal is the intractability of the human condition. Even the self-assigned agent of salvation persistently strays from the path of righteousness. No wonder the world at large remains stubbornly resistant to redemption. Notwithstanding prophetic pronouncements issued by American leaders, when it comes to discerning the future they, like other statesmen, fly blind. The leader of the Free World, surrounded by his impressively credentialed advisers, is hardly more capable of divining the global future than is a roomful of reasonably well-informed high-school students.

  As with American clairvoyance, so too with American power: events have exposed its limits. Especially in economic terms, it is today a wasting asset.

  Any new credo must take into account these lessons of the era now drawing to a close, acknowledging the recalcitrance of humankind, the difficulty of deciphering history’s purposes, and the importance of husbanding American power.

  These very insights formed the basis of an earlier credo, nurtured across many generations until swept aside by the conceits of the American Century. Proponents of this earlier credo did not question the existence of an American mission. Embracing John Winthrop’s charge, issued to his followers on the eve of founding Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, they too sought to create a “city upon a hill.” This defined America’s obligation. Yet in discharging that obligation, in their view, the city’s inhabitants should seek not to compel or enforce, but to exemplify and illuminate.

  For the Founders, and for the generations that followed them, here was the basis of a distinctively American approach to leadership, informed by a conviction that self-mastery should take precedence over mastering others. This Founders’ credo was neither liberal nor conservative. It transcended partisanship, blending both idealism and realism, emphasizing patience rather than immediacy, preferring influence to coercion. Until the end of the nineteenth century, this conception of America as exemplar, endorsed by figures as varied in outlook and disposition as George Washington and John Quincy Adams, commanded widespread assent.

  With the advent of World War II, the tradition of America as exemplar—now widely and erroneously characterized as isolationism—stood almost completely discredited. In Washington after 1945, it carried no weight at all. In official circles, fixing the world now took precedence over remedying whatever ailments afflicted the United States.

 
Outside of such circles, an awareness of America’s own imperfections—social, political, cultural, and moral—survived. The advent of the postwar American credo, with all of the costly undertakings that trailed in its wake, fostered for a minority a renewed appreciation of the all-but-forgotten Founders’ credo. Among critics of US foreign policy, the old tradition of America as exemplar enjoyed a quiet renaissance.

  Those critics questioned the wisdom and the feasibility of forcibly attempting to remake the world in America’s image. They believed that even to make the attempt was to court corruption in the form of imperialism and militarism, thereby compromising republican institutions at home. Representing no one party but instead a great diversity of perspective, they insisted that, if America has a mission, that mission is to model freedom rather than to impose it.

  The proper aim of American statecraft is not to redeem humankind or to prescribe some specific world order, nor to police the planet by force of arms. Its purpose is to permit Americans to avail themselves of the right of self-determination as they seek to create at home a “more perfect union.” Any policy impeding that enterprise—as open-ended war surely does—is misguided and pernicious.

  Come home and resurrecting the nation’s true vocation becomes a possibility. Cling to the existing American credo and the betrayal of that vocation is assured. For anyone genuinely interested in education—a category that necessarily excludes partisans and ideologues—surely this stands out as a conclusion that the events of the post-9/11 era, and indeed the entire American Century, have made manifest.

  Even if self-determination qualifies as a right, it is certainly not a gift. As with any right, it requires safeguards. To ensure that others will refrain from interfering with its efforts to create a more perfect union, the United States requires power. Yet in light of the credo described above, how precisely should the United States formulate and wield that power?

  Here, too, there exists an alternative tradition to which Americans today could repair, should they choose to do so. This tradition harks back to the nearly forgotten anti-imperial origins of the Republic. Succinctly captured in the motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” this tradition is one that does not seek trouble but insists that others will accord the United States respect. Updated for our own time, it might translate into the following:

  First, the purpose of the US military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests. However necessary, military power itself is neither good nor inherently desirable. Any nation defining itself in terms of military might is well down the road to perdition, as earlier generations of Americans instinctively understood. As for military supremacy, the lessons of the past are quite clear. It is an illusion and its pursuit an invitation to mischief, if not disaster. Therefore, the United States should maintain only those forces required to accomplish the defense establishment’s core mission.

  Second, the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America. Just as the US military should not be a global police force, so too should it not be a global occupation force. Specific circumstances may from time to time require the United States to establish a military presence abroad on a temporary basis. Yet rather than defining the norm, Americans should view this prospect as a sharp departure, entailing public debate and prior congressional authorization. Dismantling the Pentagon’s sprawling network of existing bases promises to be a lengthy process. Priority should be given to those regions where the American presence costs the most while accomplishing the least. According to those criteria, US troops should withdraw from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia forthwith.

  Third, consistent with the just war tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war—the United States bestowing on itself the exclusive prerogative of employing force against ostensible threats even before they materialize—is a moral and strategic abomination, the very inverse of prudent and enlightened statecraft. Concocted by George W. Bush to justify his needless and misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq, this doctrine still awaits explicit abrogation by authorities in Washington. Never again should the United States undertake a “war of choice” informed by fantasies that violence provides a shortcut to resolving history’s complexities.

  Were this alternative triad to become the basis for policy, dramatic changes in the US national security posture would ensue. Military spending would decrease appreciably. The Pentagon’s global footprint would shrink. Weapons manufacturers would see their profits plummet. Beltway bandits would close up shop. The ranks of defense-oriented think tanks would thin. These changes, in turn, would narrow the range of options available for employing force, obliging policy makers to exhibit greater restraint in intervening abroad. With resources currently devoted to rehabilitating Baghdad or Kabul freed up, the cause of rehabilitating Cleveland and Detroit might finally attract a following.

  Popular susceptibility to fear-mongering by those always conjuring up new national emergencies might also wane and with it the average American’s willingness to allow some freshly discovered “axis of evil” to dictate the nation’s priorities. The imperial presidency’s ability to evoke awe and command deference would likewise diminish. With that, the possibility of responsible and genuinely democratic government might present itself.

  Of fundamental importance, the identity of the American solider would undergo substantial revision. The warrior-professional brought home from distant provinces of empire might once again become the citizen-protector of the nation. Rather than serving as an instrument of the state, the solider might simply defend the country—a cause which Americans, regardless of class or political orientation, might once again see as their own.

  This very prospect—the likelihood of any departure from the Washington rules reducing the privileges that Washington has long enjoyed—helps explain the tenacity of those intent on preserving the status quo. If change is to come, it must come from the people. Yet unless Americans finally awaken to the fact that they’ve been had, Washington will continue to have its way.

  So the need for education—summoning Americans to take on the responsibilities of an active and engaged citizenship—has become acute. Americans today must reckon with a contradiction of gaping proportions. Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits. To acknowledge the danger we face is to make learning—and perhaps even a course change—possible. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear.

  36

  Why Read Clausewitz When Shock and Awe Can Make a Clean Sweep of Things?

  (2006)

  The events of September 11, 2001, killed thousands, left many thousands more bereft, and horrified countless millions who merely bore witness. But for a few, 9/11 suggested an opportunity. In the inner circles of the United States government, men of ambition seized on that opportunity with alacrity. Far from fearing a “global war on terror,” they welcomed it, certain of their ability to bend war to their purposes. Although the ensuing conflict has not by any means run its course, we are now in a position to begin evaluating the results of their handiwork.

  To that effort, this very fine book makes an important contribution.1 A decade ago, Michael Gordon, a reporter with the New York Times, and Bernard Trainor, a retired US Marine Corps lieutenant general, collaborated on The Generals’ War, still perhaps the best narrative history of the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91. Cobra II, a worthy successor, is packaged as an account of the planning and conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It should be read as a study of the politics of war. Although Gordon and Trainor describe in stirring detail the celebrated “march on Baghdad,” their real contribution has been to identify the confluence of factors that inspired the march, shaped it, and produced consequences very different from those expected.

/>   One point above all stands out: the rationale for the war had next to nothing to do with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction offered little more than a convenient pretext for a war conjured up to serve multiple ends. Neither the Baath Party regime nor the Iraqi army, crippled by defeat and well over a decade of sanctions, threatened anyone other than the Iraqi people. The hawks in the Bush administration understood this quite well. They hankered to invade Iraq not because Saddam was strong and dangerous but because he was weak and vulnerable, not because he was implicated in 9/11 but because he looked like an easy mark.

  For the war’s architects, “Iraq was not a danger to avoid but a strategic opportunity,” less a destination than a point of departure. In their eyes, 2003 was not 1945, but 1939: not a climax but the opening gambit of a vast enterprise largely hidden from public view. Allusions to Saddam as a new Hitler notwithstanding, they did not see Baghdad as Berlin but as Warsaw—a preliminary objective. For the war’s most determined proponents—Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz—toppling Saddam was the first phase of what was expected to be a long campaign. In Iraq they intended to set precedents, thereby facilitating other actions to follow. Although Bush portrayed himself as a reluctant warrior for whom armed conflict was a last resort, key members of his administration were determined that nothing should get in the way of a showdown with Saddam. “In crafting a strategy for Iraq,” the undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith insisted to one baffled US general, “we cannot accept surrender.” The object of the exercise was to demolish constraints on the subsequent employment of American power. Merely promulgating a doctrine of preventive war would not be enough: it was imperative to implement that doctrine.