The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)

Maybe once or twice in a generation, along comes a book of stunningly clear vision and earth-shaking gravity. This is such a book. YES, MUST READ. I am buying copies for anyone who is vaguely interested in how we got to the mess we're in.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism
This book is very detailed on the transgressions of the Bush administration. It is especially good and was written by a Conservative retired military man too.
You will come away with very comprehensive knowledge of a complicated subject after digesting to contents.
It is too bad that we elect Presidents in this country who do not have even a small amount of insight into the ways of this world of ours.

A dense but highly thoughtful analysis of our current problems. Right on target. How the heck did we ever let our country get into such an awful state. This is not only a great study of how we got here, it's a call to arms to change.

Well written and informative about many of the problems that exist within our government and the sad state of "profligacy" to which we have arrived as a nation. It will open your eyes to what has occurred around us, most of which we might have been unaware of what was happening.

I have highly recommended this book to many of my friends. If you want a good synopsis, listen to the author's interview with Bill Moyers on the Sept 26 episode of his Journal. Mr Bacevich shows us skillfully where the system is broken and why it has gone unfixed. Here's hoping that our leaders gill give ear to his words.

Bacevich gives a unique take on the current state of affairs in everything from the military to the economy. Being brutally honest and backing up his accusations. Wish more people in Washington would read this book.

Hits the Nail squarely on the head. Will be difficult for the American public to swallow but the recent economic downturn proves his points. Interview with Bill Moyers excellent. A must read and see.

A scathing critique of American culture and the political functioning of Washington since World War II. In the manner of Reinhold Niebuhr, Bacevich outlines the "three crises" facing America. He raises some interesting points about, and undoubtedly his call for a reassessment of the utility of American power is necessary, yet discussion of the crises and their solutions is often scant.

Becevich sees America's citizens, institutions, and government as hopelessly misguided, deluded by myths, self-absorbed, self-indulging, and profligate with the country's volunteer military and resources. The author repeats these themes in a mind-numbing number of ways.
He castigates Americans for their high consumption of energy. But the critical metric is GDP produced for energy consumed. By that measure America leads the world. The book predates the fracking revolution which obsoletes most of his energy thesis.
The sky is falling pessimists are all STEM illiterates who are clueless about the role of creativity and innovation. That's been the trajectory of the last 400 years, but still hasn't penetrated the thick skulls of STEM illiterates.
The overwhelming thesis of this book is that America has degenerated to a kakistocracy, a putrid cesspool of cronies, crooks, and mediocrities. That's true thanks mostly to the degenerate liberal media. That's also obvious to anyone with a functioning brain.
He supplies details in punishing abundance.

Andrew Bacevich is an intelligent man. He has written many good books, and has served his country with honor. If anyone has a right to pen a scathing critique of American Imperialism, it is Bacevich, not the least because he lost a son in an Iraq War that he repeatedly warned against.

But this book is a train wreck. Bacevich sounds not so much like a worldly military officer as a curmudgeon. Congress? A bunch of basically corrupt knaves who believe in nothing, and it doesn't matter which party wins. The public? Coddled hyper-consumers who don't care about citizenship or the stern values that make republics great. Don't get him started on the military: every general since World War II is arrogant, or incompetent, or both. And this is all glowing praise compared to his treatment of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, or Paul Wolfowitz.

At times it verges on pure incoherence. Bacevich insists that the Bush Administration's foreign policy was really nothing more than the working out of the foreign policy elite's postwar assumptions -- but then excoriates the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war and infatuation with high-tech military as the most significant US foreign policy development since the Manhattan Project (albeit one that failed miserably). Repeatedly, he quotes Reinhold Niebuhr to the effect that we must avoid moralizing -- and then he lectures the rest of us on our shallowness. He calls American power the "empire of consumption", which, he insists, he doesn't want to praise or condemn, but merely describe -- and does so in a chapter called "The Crisis of American Profligacy." He derides secrecy in the national security establishment but also says that the public doesn't care and can't really be trusted. In all, I have rarely read anything that so sanctimoniously condemns people for their sanctimony.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this book is that its basic critique is essentially correct. America's dependence upon foreign oil to maintain its standard of living HAS tied us up in foreign adventures that we can no longer afford. Our political system DOES indeed seem unable to plan for the long run or create coherent long-term strategy. We ARE asking the military to do these things that it cannot do, relying on military solutions to political problems, and overlooking the sometimes poor performance of the general corps (although on this last point I should say he really indulges in some cheap shots against Wes Clark, whose strategy, for all its mistakes, did bring down a horrid dictator and gain autonomy for the Kosovars against Serbian brutality.).

But simply to describe this thesis demonstrates the relative lack of insight in the book. Bacevich is not even close to the first commentator to write about these things. Want to know more about the perversities of US energy policy and how it undermines US foreign policy? Try Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Interested in the ridiculousness of neoconservative foreign policy ideology and how it brought us to ruin in Iraq? Read Fred Kaplan's masterful Daydream Believers. Want to get a good sense of how America's relative position is changing in line with new geopolitical realities? Go with Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.

Unlike these other books, Bacevich doesn't even pretend to offer solutions, or even partial ones. After going on about America's addiction to foreign oil, he makes no concrete suggestions about how to change it. He lambastes the performance of US generals and its intelligence community, but has no ideas about how to make it better. Dysfunctional Washington elite? Must be something in the water: don't ask Bacevich to provide any help. He just suggests that "we need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism." This is just fatuous: used in this way, "realism" is merely a trophy word, without real content. And in any event, whatever "realism" may be, it is certainly NOT "distinctly American."

In sum, this isn't an essay or a book at all -- it is something of a primal scream. And as I suggested beforehand, Bacevich is entitled to one -- not only because of the loss of his son, but because he is a patriot, who has given his life in service to a country that he loves, and he now sees that country going down the tubes. But the rest of us who also love that country need more than an angst-ridden cri de coeur. We won't get it from Andrew Bacevich.

This is the bluntest, toughest, most scathing critique of American imperialism as it has become totally unmoored after the demise of the Soviet Communist empire and taken to a new level by the Bush administration. Even the brevity of this book - 182 pages - gives it a particular wallop since every page "concentrates the mind".

In the event a reader knows of the prophetic work of the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, you will further appreciate this book. Bacevich is a Niebuhr scholar and this book essentially channels Niebuhr's prophetic warnings from his 1952 book, "The Irony of American History". The latter has just been reissued by University of Chicago Press thanks to Andrew Bacevich who also contributed an introduction.

In essence, American idealism as particularly reflected in Bush's illusory goal to "rid the world of evil" and to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East or wherever people are being tyrannized, is doomed to failure by the tides of history. Niebuhr warned against this and Bacevich updates the history from the Cold War to the present. Now our problems have reached crisis proportions and Bacevich focuses on the three essential elements of the crisis: American profligacy; the political debasing of government; and the crisis in the military.

What renders Bacevich's critique particularly stinging, aside from the historical context he gives it (Bush has simply taken an enduring American exceptionalism to a new level), is that he lays these problems on the doorstep of American citizens. It is we who have elected the governments that have driven us toward near collapse. It is we who have participated willingly in the consumption frenzy in which both individual citizens and the government live beyond their means. Credit card debt is undermining both government and citizenry.

This pathway is unsustainable and this book serves up a direct and meaningful warning to this effect. Niebuhrian "realism" sees through the illusions that fuel our own individual behavior and that of our government. There are limits to American power and limits to our own individual living standards and, of course, there are limits to what the globe can sustain as is becoming evident from climate changes.

American exceptionalism is coming to an end and it will be painful for both individual citizens and our democracy and government to get beyond it. But we have no choice. Things will get worse before they get better. Bacevich suggests some of the basic ways that we need to go to reverse the path to folly. He holds out no illusions that one political party or the other, one presidential candidate or the other, has the will or the leadership qualities to change directions. It is up to American citizens to demand different policies as well as to govern our own appetites.

While this is a sobering book, it is not warning of doomsday. Our worst problems are essentially of our own making and we can begin to unmake them. But we first have to come to terms with our own exceptionalism. We cannot manage history and there are no real global problems that can be solved by military means, or certainly not by military means alone.

Fellow citizen, you need to read this book!

I enjoyed the revelations about corruption and political intrigue at the highest levels. I found the first half of this book excellent reading for its insider's point of view, but found the second half, focused on military matters, to be dry and not as well written. The first message is, it is up to each of us to change the future instead of relying on elected officials, who now much more closely represent the military-industrial-wealthy set. However, no clear path for collective action is laid out. What does this mean? Is it hopeless? The author thinks so.

It's amazing how much PALEO-conservatives, like Col. Bacevich (and Pat Buchanan), have in common with progressives, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

My wife and I are very progressive (I'm a Democrat; my wife's a Green), but after watching Moyers' interview with Col. Bacevich, we were blown away. We agreed that if Bacevich was running for president as a Republican, we could see ourselves crossing party-lines to vote for him: that's how profound his effect was.

I hope both sides of the aisle listen to him, because Bacevich is absolutely dead-on in what he's saying.

I'm buying this book and telling everyone I know to read it, or at least watch the Moyers interview.

I have watched Bill Moyer's interview three times. Every American voter should be required to hear this interview before he votes. It would give this interview 10 stars. I ordered two books immediately. WOW!!

Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, by Andrew J. Bracevich, Henry Holt and Company, 2013, 238 pages.
Everything comes into being, lives, declines and dies. The America I grew up in is in decline and will have to re-invent itself or perish. We have let the delusion of world domination and easy living blind us to what has to be done. Andrew Bracevich understands most of the problem. Frank
The link below is to individual reviews of Bracevich’s book. They are well worth reading.
http://www.the store.com/Breach-Trust-Americans-Soldiers-American/product-reviews/0805082964/ref=sr_cr_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&showViewpoints=0
Lies<Damn lies<Statistics<Politics. Andrew Bracevich’s new book Breach of Trust is a must read. The census link in the email is also worth reading and saving

http://www.the store.com/Breach-Trust-Americans-Soldiers-American/dp/0805082964/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379446373&sr=1-1&keywords=bacevich

Bracevich knew the military as a serving officer from Vietnam until he retired in in the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. So he knows government and politics and history. On May 13, 2007, Bacevich's son, Lieutenant Andrew John Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governorate. The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
Bracevich’s core beliefs seem to be that almost all American wars were fought to gain land or advantage but were clothed in noble sentiments and mostly benefited our upper classes. WWII and The Civil War may be partial exceptions. Our current goal is to dominate and loot the world rather than live within our means. Wikipedia reads: Bacevich has described himself as a "Catholic conservative" [10] and initially published writings in a number of politically oriented magazines, including The Wilson Quarterly. His recent writings have professed a dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of American foreign policy.
On August 15, 2008, Bacevich appeared as the guest of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS to promote his book, The Limits of Power. As in both of his previous books, The Long War (2007) and The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005), Bacevich is critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially movies) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the U.S. population to produce in the American people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service are really like.
Bacevich conceived The New American Militarism not only as "a corrective to what has become the conventional critique of U.S. policies since 9/11 but as a challenge to the orthodox historical context employed to justify those policies."
Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of an American tradition going back to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century: Charles A. Beard and William Appleman Williams.
Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate about American foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one President (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, Bacevich sees both Republicans and Democrats as sharing responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation's best interest.
He sees the end of the draft and the reluctance to tax and pay as you go for our wars as freeing the American public of responsibility for and control of foreign policy. Instead we leave it to upper level policy makers who can use an all-volunteer military any way they want. We give lip service to the “brave” soldiers but don’t serve and don’t pay and are content to let our leaders have their way-even when we know it is morally wrong.
On page 194 Bracevich writes: the real challenge in other words, lay in harmonizing the imperatives of defense with the values of democracy... Marshall [...]believed such a harmonization not only possible but necessary. As Army Chief of Staff during World War II, he personally modeled what this implied on the part of senior military officers assigned duties at the summit of power. In his own conduct Marshall subordinated himself without reservation or complaint to civilian authority... He tenaciously defended the prerogatives of the officer corps, resisting inappropriate civilian incursions into the military sphere... War has been defined by a people who have thought a lot about it – the Germans... The German view held that an invincible offensive military force... Could win any political argument. This is the doctrine Hitler carried to the verge of complete success it is the doctrine of Japan it is a criminal doctrine and like other forms of crime it has cropped up again and again...(In italics are Marshal’s words) There has long been an effort to outlaw war for exactly the sa

In this theoretical essay, the author, a retired Army Colonel and professor of international relations, thinks deeply and hard about what has gone wrong with the 250-year old experiment in "American democracy." He "over-understands" American history, and thus as a military officer and a university professor, has no trouble taking the long view.

His story is trenchant, simple and devastatingly accurate: America's continued outsized imperial reach and ambitions for empire has reached an end point: It has finally outstripped its ability to rationalize a need to continue doing so. And in the process, has left the nation morally bankrupt, and financially stressed to the point of dependency and insolvency.

From its inception as a small British colonial settlement and protectorate, to becoming a continental empire by fiat in the aftermath of the French-Indian War, to its ability to maneuver its way out of trouble until towards the ends of both World Wars, and then effectively inheriting the spoils of both, as it picked up the pieces and became a global atomic superpower, the U.S. has lived on moral and financial credit, leaving an unenviable trail of debris and unpaid bills at home and abroad that have finally come back to stalk and haunt it. At a stage of its development when it should be resting on its laurels, the US instead, like its primary superpower rival, now too finds itself in deep spiritual and financial trouble as a nation.

Using the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as a moral point of departure, the author points to three consequences of America's imperial overreach: (1) an economy in disarray that can no longer be fixed by imperial expansion; (2) a Kabuki democracy in form only transformed by an imperial presidency; and (3) a nation still involved in endless wars without exits.

But it is the causes of America's malady that makes up the complex content of this book. What seems curious and paradoxical at first, becomes clear only as the author explains why and how the U.S. infatuation with "our freedoms" has served to lead the nation astray.

The author identifies the nation's collective fetish with "our freedoms," as little more than "ritualistic cant," an excuse for self-gratification through empty consumer goods, that serves as a global cover and empty justification for all manner of global mischievousness. With hubris, sanctimony, and collective denial, we convince ourselves that others are the problem -- they are always threatening "our freedoms" -- and thus, (as GW Bush put it), as part of our "great liberating tradition, we must end tyranny in our world."

However, in the author's more careful analysis of history, he points out that "never did the US exert itself to liberate others absent an overriding perception that the nation had large security or economic interest at stake." "Our freedoms" are not so much an American value as they are an excuse and a global justification for roguish international behavior under the questionable rubric of "American Exceptionalism."

The author's answers to our problems are as sensible as his analysis: end the nation's collective denial and return to a state of realism in both domestic and foreign policies. The realism he proposes includes a renewed respect for the limitations of military power; sensitivity to unintended consequences of all policies; an aversion to making claims to American Excpetionalism; skepticism about any solutions that look too easy; and finally, the U.S. must begin to balance both its moral and economic books.

As a retired State Department Foreign Affairs Officer, who spent the better part of the Cold War at the United Nations as a US delegate, I can attest to the fact that the U.S. and its main ally, Israel, used the twin concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" as a bludgeon to beat the international community over the head in order to have its way. We became partners in international mischief that often bordered on the criminal and that always undermined the effectiveness of an already crippled international body. This is an unsettling but much needed read for all true American patriots. Ten stars

The book would be more accurately entitled "The Unlimited Wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr." Heavy on criticism of nearly any foreign policy official since the FDR administrastion - very light on recommdations. The author is an angry, bitter man, perhaps for personal reasons. But he offers no definitive alternatives, and therefore remains largely a critic.

It's easy to understand why Andrew Bacevich's "Limits of Power" was on the New York Times best seller list. In a crisply written 184 pages, the author (a former career army officer who is now a college professor) lays out why U.S. foreign policy is wrong-headed and warns Americans where we are likely to wind up unless we make some fundamental changes in our way of life.

Three chapters--"The Crisis of Profligacy," "The Political Crisis," and "The Military Crisis"--make up the core of the book. Bacevich begins by describing the central problem: American culture encourages extravagance and immediate self-gratification. However, since energy resources are not unlimited, the U.S. has long pursued an aggressive foreign policy that seeks to ensure cheap oil and other goods for its citizens in order to keep them happy. The result has been several ill-advised military adventures, the growing antagonism of much of the world, and a ballooning national debt. Many Americans naively imagine that they have nothing to worry about because the U.S. has so much political and military power that it can do whatever it pleases. Bacevich ruthlessly demolishes such delusions. He closes with this disturbing warning: "A world that once indulged American profligacy is no longer willing to do so."

This is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand why the U.S. is in its current foreign policy predicament as well as how we might get out of it.

The Limits of Power

By Andrew J. Bacevich

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

The author does a lot of quoting of a man named Reinhold Niebuhr. Do yourself a favor and skip Reinhold. I read Reinhold first at the author's recommendation, and even though the man writes in English one still needs an interpreter to get through his book.

Bacevich, on the other hand, is very mater-of-fact and to the point.
Andrew Bacevich is a college professor and ex-military. This book is another installment from "The American Empire Project."

This Project is a series of books by various authors who disparage the imperialistic policies of the United States, the expansion of the Military Industrial Complex, and the tendency of promoting the misguided notion of global exceptionalism by the U.S.A.

In this work Bacevich points out the futility of constantly choosing military solutions to solve international disagreements by the U.S.A. War should be a last resort and only used as a retort to military aggression by an enemy. Used as a diplomatic weapon it has been a total failure, Bacevich explains.

Disregarding the morality of it all, it just doesn't seem to be working. And this failure goes back for decades.

Mr. Bacevich is extremely hard on his military cohorts. General Franks, Colon Powell, General Wesley Clark and several others are run through Bacevich's meat grinder. He goes so far as to say that, though America's soldier base and technology are strong, the officers Corps is derelict. He is very outspoken with regards to the poor quality of American military leadership. This would make some conclude that our institutions for training our officers must be faulty. But Bacevich doesn't mention our military academies. Maybe he deals with those institutions and their shortcomings in another of his books.

He doesn't have much good to say about the civilian leadership either. He runs Bush and his administration through the ringer. He is especially unhappy with the Bush Doctrine of "Preemptive War" as should all Americans.

He also hits Clinton and his military strategy of throwing bombs and rockets around as equally misguided, insane and irrational.

The moral of his story is that war does not work. He quotes Norman Mailer: "Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whore house to get rid of the clap."

In Bacevich's estimation the military "option" is not the answer.
He questions every military excuse for their failure, even their groaning about interference from inept and dominating, civilian, political leadership.
By Bacevich's arguments the military leadership has no excuse. They appear to be, in the author's estimation, a bunch of bungling, rampaging buffoons.

His bottom line: no military unless attacked. Military brawn is a poor excuse for not using our political heads. The United States is not equipped, nor does it have the moral right to be preemptively striking anybody. We should be more willing to let world problems play out in the world theater. America does not have all the answers and we should not be so patriotically egotistical to think that we do. And, by the way, we don't have the money or the personnel to protect and direct the world militarily.

A big sub-theme throughout the book is highlighted by the word "profligate." The author praises Jimmy Carter for his "malaise" speech - though he says that Jimmy never used the word.

It seems that it is the wasteful, greedy consumerism of the American people that has precipitated all these terrible military and political policies. We all want cheap gasoline, cheap goods and cheap foreign imports. We are all wasteful, self-indulgent, and ... profligate.

This point by the author brings to mind such past writers as Henry David Thoreau, Thorstein Veblen and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Thoreau advised his American fellow citizens back in the 1800's to "simplify." He told us to make do with less and to be satisfied with one chair and a mat of straw to sleep on at night. Henry did not get very far with this notion even back in the 1800's.

Then there was Mr. Galbraith who pondered the difficulties of "The Affluent Society." A time that was advancing upon Americans when they would all have more free time and luxuries to spare. Oh woe is me. What would all us fat, overfed, wealthy Americans do with all our freedom and money.

Then we had Thorstein Veblen who coined the term "conspicuous consumption." But Thornstein was not talking about everyday Americans. He was referring to the elegant class, the better-off and the wealthy. Unlike the other two mentioned above, he had a point.

Mr. Bacevich is laboring under the misconception that all of us Americans have been living high off the hog going all the way back to the late forties and early fifties. Ever since World War II ended, America has truly been a land of milk and honey and "profligate" spending on the part of all us elitist Americans.
My dad was hunting work all through the 50's in my old neighborhood. My hometown of Lawrence was boasting an unemployed percentage of between 30 and 40 percent. We were in a depression.

Things were horrible.

I have never enjoyed profligacy of any type, shape or form. In my book "Hobo-ing America" Hobo-ing America my wife and I worked ourselves around America and though we worked by the sides of thousands of hard working Americans, we bumped into very few of the profligate.

I think Mr. Bacevich has been blessed and has had the privilege of rubbing elbows with the profligate in some nifty profligate neighborhoods. I have never seen one, nor do I know any of the profligate class. I don't doubt that one could find statistics to verify the author presumptions but we all know what has been said about statistics.

I resent being held blame for America's poor government leadership, military leadership, and poor economic policies.

Mr. Bacevich also neglected U.S. failure to maintain jobs in the face of our mounting import/export imbalances that started, as he pointed out, in 1970 and has never returned to the black. He mentioned the import/export imbalance but never once brought up the loss of our jobs to the global economy and what could or should have been done to compensate and keep Americans working.

I agree totally with over 90% of what Mr. Bacevich has to say especially with his points against the military option, preemptive war and attempting to police the world. But the points where I disagree I disagree very strongly.

Please don't blame me, buddy. I have been doing all that I can just to stay alive.

Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"Mein Kampf - Analysis of Book One" - History.

A stunning clear eyed, clearly headed, well thought, well argued disputation of American foreign policy from a guy who's been there, done that. This audio book is riveting to listen to as Col. Bacevich delineates the ongoing foibles of US policy and it's continued delusion that it's king of the world. If you aren't persuaded to re-think some of your core beliefs after listening to him (whether Republican or Democrat), then you aren't persuadable. I find his analysis addictive. I've read/listened to 3 of his books. Now gimme more!

Although he always describes himself as a conservative, and his authorial voice is tempered, even gentle, over the last decade Andrew Bacevich has emerged as one of the most forceful critics of American foreign policy. This isn't entirely surprising. There are many American traditions--hostility to standing armies and foreign entanglements, for starters--that should make conservatives recoil from the ceaseless drumbeat to increase the Pentagon's budget and identify more 'rogue states' whose existence allegedly threatens all Americans' freedom (of course, among those who monopolize the debate in the traditional media and the political world, conservatives tend to be even more gung ho about war than liberals). Bacevich's point--that, although the Bush administration undoubtedly made things worse, American foreign policy has been on the wrong track for decades, shaped by elite habits of thought and practice and tacit approval by the larger population--is one that those on the left can basically agree with. Bacevich, however, makes his case without the self-righteousness and pedantry that often make the most prominent left voices tiresome and self-ghettoizing.

Although The Limits of Power is his briefest book (only 182 pages)he makes a number of important points. Bacevich roots today's debacles in the Middle East in the failure of Americans to accept Jimmy Carter's critique of the direction of the country in his speech of July 1979 (the 'malaise' speech). Rather than taking to heart the message that the US should learn to live within its means, regarding energy, the US instead demanded that a way be found to continue on without sacrifices. And so Carter was forced to reverse himself and declare that the Persian Gulf was vital to US interests, and this has been the context in which everything since has unfolded. In the second chapter, Bacevich discusses the ideology of national security, and its four main convictions: that history is an epic struggle between right and wrong, that the United States embodies freedom, that the US ensures freedom's ultimate triumph, and finally, (and I think most significantly) "for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere". These convictions undergird all public debate and the actions of presidents. They also define the huge bureaucracies that have grown up around the cause of 'national security' (the Pentagon, the State Department, CIA, etc). He portrays these bureaucracies as addled and ineffectual at guiding presidents; but the handful of loyalists they often rely on as an alternative prove no better. Various groupings of 'Wise Men' over the last fifty years have constantly overestimated the threats arrayed against the US and the need for military action. The military--at least its top officers--fair no better in Bacevich's handling. Although commanders like Schwartkopf, Clark, Franks, and most recently Petraus are often deified as exemplars of public service and super-competent, in Bacevich's view they are short sited, unable to grasp that the consequences of military action range far beyond the battlefied. Hence, 'trusting the generals' is NOT one of the lessons to be drawn from the Iraq debacle. Bacevich also deflates two other false lessons--that the US must now focus on how to win 'small wars' (why not change the policies that lead to such wars?) and that a return to the draft might reduce the possibility of rushing into an ill-advised adventure such as the Iraq invasion(dream on, the draft is not going to be reinstated). Bacevich instead offers four different lessons: war is unpredictable, the uses of military force are limited, the folly of preventive war, and stop mistaking ideology for strategy. "America doesn't need a bigger army. It needs a smaller... foreign policy... Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold war and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions." As alternatives, Bacevich recommends better energy policies, containment of radical Islam and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The key to the importance of Bacevich lies in his ability to forcefully confront reigning cliches about the virtues and magnitude of American power (cliches one is as likely to find in the works of liberal Samantha Power as in those of neoconservative Max Boot) without employing the self-isolating language of the far left. His work does have limits. One is the morality play around energy consumption, which becomes a stand-in for the ways America lives beyond its means. But that tendency has lately manifested itself most vividly in the crisis of debt. Just after the declaration of the Carter doctrine, the US became a debtor nation, jettisoned most of its industries to far away lands in favor of imports, and has never looked back, although in the next five years, it may have to. One might look a little closer at this pattern, and what classes have benefited from it, and how it relates to the trajectory of American power. It might also be useful to look at the shifting world terrain the US is operating on--most notably, Europe and East Asia have progressively gotten stronger economically, while the US has turned more and more to military force--to shed light on US power and its limits. Still, I suppose keeping a book short and readable means focusing on some things and not others. I hope (as does Bacevich, judging from writings since the publication of this book) that the 'change' Obama seeks to bring about includes developing a foreign policy based on a much more realistic appraisal of the US' position in the world and its actual capacities. But I wouldn't count on it.

This book covers three aspects of American life. The tendency to consume, the political framework comprising the oval office & the Pentagon, & the military. In all three arenas, Bacevich commands facts to generally depict a shoddy state of affairs, &, in general, is unable to provide much hope or prospect for any change.

Bacevich's erudition & passion are definitely pillars on which the book rests. The case on American profligacy is probably the most insipid chapter, not necessarily because it does not represent a good, fitting & factual picture, but because for the astute observer of history & cultures, it does not provide any new insight from the facts & figures Bacevich provides. The case against American profligacy is rather well understood in the minds of most people, & the marginal value of sharpening that understanding with this book's content is low.

Bacevich does make a few interesting points in his case against the politics of war. Of particular interest, is his vilification of the entire mechanism of politics of war that has pervaded American history for a while now, at least since the cold war, & the covert expansionism practiced by many presidents. So he does not necessarily see Bush as the supreme destroyer of America's goodwill in the world. In fact, Bacevich suggests that Bush simply stayed the course of history, doing overtly what other presidents did covertly. Again, not really a brand new insight, but a necessary & sober reaffirmation of existing insight.

The insight on military malpractices is new - at least to me. In both theory & thought, Bacevich shows, the Iraq war was a big mistake. He attacks the ideology of warfare, the planning of American wars, the gross overestimation of technological advantage, & the isolated, non-accountable Sec Def's office as all part of a military mechanism that simply has failed its mission.

Bacevich, however, does extend his work to engulf the American public & says that all American problems are not of institutional making. An uninterested, & politically inactive citizenry does not escape Bacevich's scathing remarks.

In summary, the value you get out of this book will depend on your existing knowledge of American history & politics. The lower your existing knowledge is, the more valuable this book becomes.

S!

This somewhat tedious and not entirely consistent polemic, written by a retired colonel, excoriates the United States, especially the imperial Bush II presidency, for its zeal in imposing American economic and political ideals on noncompliant parts of the world through high-tech military means, which can supposedly be accomplished quickly and precisely with few complications. Of course, recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the complete fatuity of those martial actions. But the author also contends that our hyper-consumeristic society, in which freedom has morphed into self-indulgence, virtually requires that the world satisfy our appetites for oil, credit, etc, and basically gives tacit approval of political and military aggressiveness to secure the world for our needs.

The US certainly had some international military presence before WWII, but the author contends that the expansion of the executive branch to include national security bodies, precipitated by the rise of the Russians and Chinese Communists, was transforming to the nature of US governance, especially in a willingness to intercede internationally. The secretiveness of the NSC, the CIA, the Pentagon, etc and the marginalization of Congress permitted policy positions that were frankly based on paranoid delusions of the extent of Communistic power and capabilities, best exemplified by Paul Nitze's NSC 68 report in 1950, which to this day still has immense influence among neo-conservatives. Parallel to the development of these formal structures has been the reliance of presidents since JFK on a select group of Wise Men or advisors, who operate independently of accountability or need to comport with reality. Many global misadventures lie at their feet.

The author, in more than a little axe-grinding, suggests that recent top military commanders have been mostly incompetent. There is also a fuzzy debate about whether generals have been excessively constrained by civilian tampering - by the Wise Men. One can wonder if - and it is a big if - the US had been militarily successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, would this book have been written.

While the author dates the exaggeration of our enemy's capabilities back to Nitze, its current manifestation is best demonstrated by neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz, the principal advocate of preemptive war. The author is not entirely consistent in his claims that the US foreign policy has been characterized mostly by pragmatism before Bush II, but now is ideologically driven, given the continuity of a national security apparatus prone to distorted views. What he does make clear is that the high tech capability of our military has made its use become very appealing since the Clinton years, the thinking being that a problematic foreign regime can be carefully excised through precision bombing without collateral civilian damage. The miscalculations in Kosovo alone should have given the Bush II administration some pause.

The author's views on freedom are extremely limited. There has always been the notion that material prosperity is an element of freedom, but the run-up of huge personal debts and national trade imbalances of recent years has created dependencies being played out globally. However, in a democracy, freedom has to be gauged on the ability or even desire of citizens to have a voice in political affairs. But in the national security state, citizens are propagandized rather than allowed to provide input and oversight. The author makes no call for citizen empowerment. In fact, American reliance on an all volunteer army, in the author's eyes, calls into question American interest in civic affairs.

This book is one of several written by the author over the last ten years that criticizes the US turn to establishing an empire through military means. The author is certainly correct that it is not possible financially or from a manpower standpoint to dominate the world militarily, not to mention the philosophical problems. He invokes the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr throughout the book to condemn American arrogance and sanctimony in its thinking that empire can be established almost benignly. He points out that war always has unintended and devastating consequences, yet we seem to be at a point where we cannot stop ourselves on our self-destructive path. There are limits to power.

As far as solutions to counteract our national hubris, or belief in American exceptionalism, the author can suggest only indirect measures such as eliminating nuclear weapons, achieving independence from foreign oil, and controlling global warming. But there are no suggestions as to how to start the process. He is definitely not a democrat (little `d'), so he does not call for citizen empowerment to put us on the correct path. In fact, he criticizes the American belief that electing candidates that espouse change can work, when there is no underlying movement by voters to alter their ways of life. The forces for continuity are subtle and significant. Basically the book is more or less a continuation of the author's, shall we say, need to scold the US, the imperial Presidency and especially the military, for its hubris in attempting to dominate the world. It's doubtful that this latest book breaks much new ground and some may find the curmudgeonly tone a bit off putting.

I discovered Andrew Bacevich by reading The New American Militarism; How Americans Are Seduced By War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), a book in which he describes how our culture's normalization and even romanticization of war "pervades our national consciousness and perverts our national policies." A veteran of Vietnam and subsequently a career officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton where he earned a PhD in history, director of Boston University's Center for International Relations, Bacevich has described himself as a cultural conservative who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but who also is a person whose "disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute." He's also identified himself as a "conservative Catholic."

His newest book is an unapologetic polemic that laments how badly broken America is today. Its prophetic ire finds some vindication in that it was published just a few months before Wall Street imploded. You might argue that he doesn't say much that's new, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who says it with such passion, erudition, eloquence and, sometimes, sarcasm. The end of the Cold War was thought to have ushered in a Long Peace, with the sole superpower arrogating itself to the task of reshaping the world in its own image. In reality, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration initiated a Long War against global terrorism that is a "permanent condition." This is a war, says Bacevich "of no exits and no deadlines." This Long War in general, and the Iraq War in particular, have laid bare deep contradictions and dysfunctions in America.

The root of this crisis rests in a facile notion of freedom, defined as the sacred right to consume, and manifested in "three interlocking crises" -- economic and cultural, political, and military. After a brief introduction, Bacevich devotes a chapter to each crisis. The cultural-economic crisis expresses itself in wholesale profligacy, "a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors." Our profound addiction to cheap oil, easy personal credit, massive trade imbalances between what we export and import, and the runaway federal debt characterize this profound profligacy. In politics, we've witnessed the concentration of power in the executive branch, the deterioration of meaningful checks and balances, a feckless and dysfunctional congress, and appalling incompetence in overall government (cf. Katrina, health care, social security, immigration). Aggravating this political crisis is an overall "national security ideology" which specializes in disinformation and marginalizing dissent. Bush, says Bacevich, is not to blame; he merely inherited and expanded this tendency, and it's a tendency that successive presidents will surely follow. In his analysis of our military crisis, Bacevich details our illusions about war mongering and the lessons, real and imagined, that we ought to learn from Afghanistan and Iraq (where "we are playing a losing hand").

Will a new president or congress make a difference? Wipe the slate clean and put the nation back on track? Bacevich dismisses this as "the grandest delusion of all," for it turns a blind eye to decades of dysfunction, whether under Reagan and Bush or Carter and Clinton. "There is something touching about these expectations," says Bacevich, "but also something pathetic, like the battered wife who expects that this time her husband will actually keep his oft-repeated vow never again to raise his hand against her" (172-173). The abused wife, of course, is co-dependent, and only when she assumes control of her own life will conditions change. "Something of the same can be said of the American people." As I write, The Limits of Power sits at #10 on the New York Times best seller list.

Andrew Bacevich speaks from a unique perspective: soldier, historian, philosopher and father.

He finds that the US military strategy and execution has gone astray. We believe in American exceptionalism and the ability to control the world. This post Cold War view was at its peak from 1995-2005. The experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the war on terror, is helping the public to see that the world is not so simple.

Bacevich asks that our political and military leaders ground their decisions in deeper values and more sophisticated analysis, taking account of risk, reality, culture and history.

The author's arguments are much more focused and disturbing than the lighter fare in Zakaria's The Post-American World. He is not concerned about mere loss of unilateral power, but of losing relevance and meaning.

This book is a direct challenge to those who believe in simplistic answers, from both ends of the political spectrum.

It is also a call to the American public - it's elites and it's masses - to grow up and assume the adult responsibility for leadership in a world that remains deeply challenged. Although the author's focus is on military/defense/power issues, it could also apply to our management of the economy, practice of politics and cultural drift.

Are we caught in an end of empire time, or are there leaders who can show the way forward?

As I write this review, the country is embroiled in a public debate over the proposed $700 billion bailout for the nation's troubled finance banking sector. A good part of the cause of the crisis is the deregulation of the banking industry, which encouraged both corporate hotshots and dividend counters to shoot for the moon. Politicians are insisting that taxpayers ought not to be burdened with the bailout pricetag, and many are also insisting that the bankers ought not to take a personal financial hit either.

All this illustrates one of the central arguments in Andrew Bacevich's courageous and pithy The Limits of Power. Bacevich argues that the tail that wags the nation's foreign policy dog is our consumerist culture of instant gratification. We want the world, and we want it now. So we use traditional appeals to "liberty" and "freedom" as moral glosses that justify our imperial ambitions to control as much of the world's wealth as we can (Bacevich calls recent foreign policy a "de facto Ponzi scheme," p. 66). This means, of course, that the military is called upon. But we--the common citizen as well as the political elders and the "Wise Men" with whom they surround themselves--don't want to make any sacrifices to support the military. So the military gets stretched thinner and thinner, the nation's diplomatic relations with the rest of the world lose credibility, and our incessantly profligate lifestyles make the domestic economic situation increasingly fragile.

This is a recipe for disaster, and it's all predicated on the fact that the American culture simply won't curb greed--for wealth, for no-sacrifice lifestyles, for imperial reach. Bacevich asserts that we're headed for a rude awakening unless we wake up to the fact that bigger isn't necessarily better. There are obvious material limits to power, and Bacevich argues that there are moral ones too.

The voice of Reinhold Niebuhr serves as Bacevich's muse throughout the book, voicing both the moral highground and the hard-headed realism that are also Bacevich's trademarks. All in all, a remarkable and incredibly important book.

Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich has written a sharp non-partisan critique which speaks truth to power. He sees a tendency for the US to become enmeshed in a seemingly never-ending "long war" as he describes it, and doesn't blame any one particular party or president, although he skewers many past presidents.

While I agree with much of his thinking, sometimes he doesn't nail down his argument (but he's still right, generally.) For example, he sees American foreign policy as "an outward manifestation of American domestic ambitions, urges and fears", and suggests that domestic dysfunction CAUSES foreign policy blunders. This seems too strong. I see correlations (not cause-and-effect relations) between domestic dysfunction and foreign policy blunders, and both are, in my view, symptoms of deeper, more pervasive forces underlying our decaying democracy. I don't see how people shopping excessively causes foreign policy weakness (with perhaps two exceptions: (1) oil addiction indirectly funds Middle Eastern extremist groups (2) excessive purchase of consumer goods from China possibly undermines American manufacturing capacity.)

I see a consensus emerging that America's woes can not be solved by partisans from left or right, but that problems are deeper and more dangerous. Powerful non-partisan thinkers are contributing from different angles to a tough critique of America. These critics have TEETH. Along with Dr. Bacevich, read Dana D. Nelson's excellent "Bad For Democracy" who argues that the presidency, itself, is undemocratic, and that people have reduced their role as citizens to doing the minimal task of voting for president every four years -- that's all people do -- which isn't enough to sustain a democracy, she argues. Further, check out Kevin R. C. Gutzman's "Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution", a sharp non-partisan look at constitutional law. Bacevich's critique hammers away from the foreign policy and military analysis angle, and there is substantial agreement with Benjamin Ginsberg's brilliant "The American Lie" regarding American political corruption.

Bacevich was influenced significantly by a thinker from the 1930s through 1960s named Reinhold Niebuhr, who saw in America an unrealistic tendency to think we can manage history. Good fortune and pre-eminence made the US susceptible to self-adulation, thought Niebuhr. He counseled realism. He saw American culture as having a tendency to equate happiness with comfort. Bacevich echoes these concerns, and sees America as insisting that the world maintain it's spendthrift lifestyle by providing cheap oil, cheap credit, cheap consumer goods. But over-spending erodes American power as we become dependent on foreigners. The worship of freedom brings a mixed blessing, writes Bacevich, because it undercuts the nation's ability to fulfill its own commitments. We court bankruptcy. Our economic crisis? Cultural crisis? Political crisis? They're all of our own making, he writes. To support the American way of life, we've used military power as a crutch to support an American imperium.

Bacevich argues persuasively that American power has its limits. We can't continue to spend huge sums on preventive wars without weakening the nation's economy, and an afterword (written January 2009) discusses the current economic meltdown in this regard.

I somewhat disagree with Professor Bacevich about the economics underpinning American decline. I think economic activity is like a wind summoned by hunger for goods and services, stoked by wily inventors and creative business wizards, that envelops a region of the world when conditions are right (capital, legal foundations, demographics), and when it blows strong for decade after decade, people get wealthy. But with this newfound prosperity comes laziness and inertia, an affection for doing things the same old way, a rigidity. So the winds of commerce won't last forever -- they find a new place and blow there. Prosperity undoes itself. And I think America has had it's time in the wind, but now the winds of commerce are shifting to Asia, and there's not much that can be done to steer them back. I don't think America's economic troubles were CAUSED by excessive spending or freedom, as Professor Bacevich suggests, but are natural cycles that come and go.

But I agree that foreign policy blunders, such as Vietnam and the second Gulf War, as well as excessive regulation and corruption, can cost dearly and hasten economic stagnation. That the US has run out of oil isn't so much its own fault but rather the result of its location. The American continents, as Jared Diamond points out in "Guns, Germs & Steel", are oriented north-to-south, while the larger landmass of Europe & Asia & Africa is oriented east to west. Since there is much more territory for the growth of different species along this west-east axis of the Eurasian landmass, more animals lived there, and died -- which turned into oil. So naturally the Middle East has the largest reserves of oil. And oil is such an amazing fuel with so many uses that I find it hard to blame Americans for learning to exploit it in many different ways for work and pleasure. Too bad we're not on top of it.

Bacevich criticizes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, most recent presidents, Congress (essentially an "incumbent party" he writes, with their main focus on re-electing themselves.) We live in the age of the permanent national security crisis. He thinks changing presidents won't help much; I agree. He writes: "Counting on the next president to fix whatever is broken promotes expectations of easy, no-cost cures, permitting ordinary citizens to absolve themselves of responsibility for the nation's predicament." He notes if the US no longer needed mideast oil, then many in the Pentagon would lose their jobs, military bases would close, and the Navy's Fifth Fleet would stand down. To prevent terrorism, Bacevich wants to contain Islamic extremism and keep it from spreading with more intensive surveillance of Islamic activity as well as multilateral police efforts. He doesn't specify how this might be accomplished. I still think my strategy to prevent terrorism (below) is steel-tough. He writes: Americans must stop thinking they can tutor Muslims in matters related to freedom; I agree. He writes: Let Muslims discover Islam's shortcomings for themselves; I agree. He favors abolishing nuclear weapons since conventional weapons are becoming increasingly powerful and better able to deter a nuclear-armed nation; I was not convinced here. He favors expensive research to find energy alternatives; again, I wasn't convinced here.

Overall, a powerful critique by a shrewd and ballsy high-octane thinker highly critical of American exceptionalism. I think America is broken politically and that the ONLY way to restore it is with a Second Constitutional Convention. I think Dr. Bacevich is one of the few Americans smart enough with sufficient integrity to be a delegate to this Convention. I call him to be a delegate. So far, he has not responded, but I continue to urge him to attend. Last, this is a must read book. Five stars!!!

Thomas W. Sulcer
Author of "The Second Constitution of the United States"
(free on web; google title + Sulcer)

I just finished reading this book and liked it very much. The message is by no means warm and pleasant, but it did an excellent job of communicating the mindset of those who are running this country. Some shocking revelations (to me, but I am not terribly well informed on these issues) come forth. The governing "elite" is busy trying to run the world, and using our military as their tool of choice. This explains a lot of things. Domestic spending (read between the lines: health care) is a threat if it gets in the way of military imperialism.

One thing I very much enjoy about the book is that it is non-partisan. The big issues hold constant as we have had democrats or republicans in the white house, and the recent jump to a democratic president has not changed all that much. So, who is running the country? Read the book and come to your own conclusions. It is refreshing to read a book that does not get on a bandwagon blaming "the other party" for all the problems.

A few things hold this book back from a 5 star rating. First and foremost is the authors habit of quoting Reinhold Niebuhr like an evangelical Christian quotes the bible. Clearly the author is infatuated with this guy, but I am left wondering "who is he and why should I care?". The other thing this book needs badly is a good introduction. Let's define for example just what we mean by "American exceptionalism" (or just plain vanilla exceptionalism for that matter). A quick peek online yields a succinct definition (thanks to wikipedia) in less than a minute, the book should do this. A good editor could have helped out. Rip out all the references to Niebuhr and use the space made available for a good introduction and the book would get 5 stars.

Bacevich certainly likes big words! That is OK, I like big words too - but he makes a point of using a lot of them. Feckless, risible, hegemony, and my favorite: obstreperous! I am going to read the book a second time (that is my highest endorsement) and compile a complete list. I decided some time ago to not hold back on using a big word when appropriate, but sometimes you have to decide whether it is your goal to impress, intimidate, or communicate.

General Douglas McArthur was right when he said, at the end of World War II: "It must of the spirit if we are to save the flesh...."

We Americans have not a real problem, but real "problems" today,and most of them stem from the way we have come to define "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness..."

In this day and time, "the pursuit of happiness" has come to mean "give us what we want when we want it..." And that attitude has caused seemingly unsolvable economic, political and military problems. Our system of government has strayed and our whole national psyche seems to be geared toward "give us what we want when we want it..." And it can't go on forever.,

This is not a book bashing the Republicans or the Democrats. It is a book taking a realistic look at some of the very real problems facing our country today. And they won't be solved simply or overnight. Consider the following passages from the book (hardback version):

Pae 172-73-"At four-year intervals, ceremonies conducted to install a president reaffirm this inclination (to gloss over our real problems). Once again, at the anoited hour, on the steps of the Capitol, it becomes "morning in America." The slate is wiped clean. The newly inaugurated president takes office, buoyed by expectations that history will be soon be restored to its proper trajectory and the nation put back on track. There is something touching about these expectations, but also there is something pathetic, like the battered wife who expects that this time her husband will actuallly keep his oft-violated vow never again to raise his hand against her..."

And from pages 170-171: "...to imagine that installing a particular individual in the Oval Office will produce decisive actions on any of these fronts is to succumb to the grandest delusion of all..."

The real problem is our present-day definition of "the pursuit of happiness." It has to change.

And McArthur was right, "It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh (the country)..."

This is an important, though alarming book.

Yet, this is America where there is always hope. Yet, hope alone won't solve our problems. They are not going away of their own accord, and they will be solved only by some fundamental changes in our expectations from government and from ourselves.

This slim tome ought to be required reading in every high school American government or civics class.

On my blog, I have repeatedly excoriated "American exceptionalism" in BOTH its Republican and Democratic forms.

And now, Bacevich gives a professional historical take on this. Building on historians such as Paul Kennedy and his "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Bacevich notes we also transitioned from an empire of industry (and yes, we're an empire) to an empire of consumption, more than 30 years ago. (Kennedy speaks of the move from industry to finance as the mainstay of an economy as what has been a sure sign of decline in previous post-Renaissance great powers.)

Bacevich uses as a fulcrum Jimmy Carter's famous -- and famously misquoted and distorted -- 1980 "crisis of confidence" speech.

At the same time, Carter, through the "Carter Doctrine" declaring the Persian Gulf a vital American interest furthered the problems with the "empire of consumption," Bacevich notes.

And, what Carter said, and what Bacevich says, is that the problem lies not just in Washington, but in Austin, Albany and county seats. It lies not just on Wall Street, but on Main Streets.

The third main section of the book, on military policy, is the most interesting. Unlike "citizen reader" critics on places like the store, what Bacevich said in this section is certainly not dry, nor difficult to follow.

Some of it, though, sounds exactly like he accuses Tommy Franks of doing -- settling scores. Perhaps we should be thankful that Bacevich just got his bird and not any stars. Of course, his unwillingness to play Army politics may explain that in the first place. And that, in turn, although Bacevich kindly doesn't say so, is why we've had what he also kindly does not call "detritus" to generally lead our armed forces in the last generation or so. (Colin Powell was widely seen as a political officer already in Vietnam.)

Some critics claim the book doesn't offer solutions, but that's quite untrue. The solutions include:
* Stop believing we're more enlightened abroad than we actually are;
* Actually do something serious to cut our oil consumption;
* Live m ore within our means otherwise;
* Practice Cold War-type containment, not regime change, in the Muslim world.

Those are simple solutions, but Nos. 2 and 3 rely in large part on Main Streets and individual Americans, not Wall Street or Washington.

And, that's probably why negative critics claim it doesn't offer solutions. The truth is, it doesn't offer either "magic bullet" or NIMBY-type solutions.

Informed American voters and readers call this book a screed, and ignore its warnings about their own behavior, at the peril of themselves and the nation.

That said, the book, like "The New American Militarism," has one shortcoming. While Bacevich talks a lot about oil supply, he never discusses Peak Oil.

This is a book about America. The America we grew up hearing about, thinking about, learning about. And the America that it became. The America that sold out. The America that is crumbling before our very eyes. Others have gone over the details better than I can write. Suffice to say to buy it, read it, or watch the interview on Bill Moyers.

I'm writing this a year after the book was released, and since that time we've seen the economic meltdown, Wall Street bailouts, mortgage crises, Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Sanford's billion dollar ponzi schemes bilking millions with no oversight, massive government intervention in the name of "stimulus" under Republican watch. Plus a war with no end in sight likely to cost $3 trillion when it's over. George Bush left office with an approval rating near that of President Nixon, and a black man was elected President in a near landslide, with his own stimulus plans. All of which hasn't abated what Bacevich predicted much at all. And probably won't.

Read this book and you'll understand why.

You'll also quickly understand why a lot of so called progressives and people on the left admire Bacevich. And you'll quickly realize that he quickly cuts through the nonsense, proving that the terms "conservative" and "liberal" don't mean anything anymore. They've become buzzwords, two sides of the same fraudulent coin. Rubber terms to be stretched to mean whatever one wants them to mean, usually insults.

Bacevich is often called a conservative, or paleo-conservative. But that's not exactly right. Well, it might be. I say that because you read his philosophy and you'll understand how Bush and the neoconservatives all but destroyed the Republican party, and left them with virtually nothing to stand on. It's because they built their skyscraper on quicksand. People on the so called right ridiculed Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul. But as time is showing, and Bacevich shows in this book, many of their core messages, even if you don't like them as messengers, are what conservatism was built on. Not the current imperialistic hodgepodge of global intervention, supply side economics, collusion, and cronyism. Bacevich cuts through all of that. Similar in the way David Walker incisively explains the national debt. You listen to them, and they just make sense.

Read this book. You won't be a conservative or liberal anymore. You'll look beyond that, and hopefully see how alike we are as Americans, and think that if we come together a little more, and stopped listening to left/right political pundits driving us apart, we can head this country in the right direction again.

Andrew J. Bacevich's The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project) is a tour de force treatise on modern American foreign policy agenda and National Security. Key to Bacevich's success with The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project) is his balanced treatment of the causes of America's downfall. Namely, Bacevich is careful not to blame one side or the other of the great political divide in the US - he lays blame to both Democrats and Republicans, and ultimately concludes that the American public as a whole is complicit in our woes. Bacevich proposes, with much strength, that American foreign policy and National Security agenda are set in large part by our glutinous consumer ways - our, public, need to consume cheap goods dictates how our leaders set policy, policy which is enhanced by hawkish power elite who have provided the drive to generate an executive branch with power out of proportion with the balances originally intended by the Founders.

As Bacevich points out 9/11 represents a convenient excuse to continue pursuance of National policies that feed our needs, war in the Middle East was largely a forgone conclusion that 9/11 provided public support for. Bacevich is critical of George W. Bush and his policies but is quick to point out that while Bush and his security hawks took things to another level, it was merely a continuation of policies already pursued by previous Presidents since the Second World War, Republican and Democrat alike. These policies have shifted the US from a creditor nation that ran in the black, produced and exported more than it imported, and lent to others, to a debtor nation that continues to go deeper into the whole with each passing day. As Bacevich points out continuance of our current National Security policies will simply lead to more debt and woe. Our military forces are pushed beyond their limits and our power is largely illusion. The only way to rid us of our current downward spiral, as Bacevich proposes, is to fundamentally alter our consumptive ways so that National Security can focus on defense once again rather than preventative wars to maintain our import needs.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project) should be required reading for all voting age (or nearing) Americans - the choice of future is ours as the public, if left to the power elite (both sides of the political aisles) we will simply continue down the same path, one leading quickly to ruin on levels similar to the far of the Roman empire.

"Set thine house in order." With this biblical passage, Andrew Bacevich begins his short but powerful exposition of the three crises facing the American nation today. In Bacevich's view, these problems are of our own making.

These three crises are economic, political and military, and the underlying reason for all three emergencies "comes from within." The economic crisis is a "crisis of profligacy." Given the choice, Americans have given in to living beyond their means. The gap between requirements and means is ever-expanding, requiring us to look beyond our shores to sustain a frankly unsustainable American way of life. The political crisis of the United States is one of where the government is managed in a wartime-minded national security state whose primary attribute is dysfunction. This is a situation where Congress--more concerned with its reelection than anything else--has willfully abdicated its power to the executive branch, effectively ending the democratic republic.

The third crisis stems from the first two but is one that has metastasized since the onset of the Global War on Terror, the military crisis. In sum, we have too much war for too few warriors, and those few warriors are led by mediocre generals who no longer understand nor grasp the lost art of strategy. Bacevich scours the military establishment and their widely held belief that Americans have reinvented war and warfare. Nothing about war's nature has changed, he argues, and American leaders are drawing all the wrong lessons from our current conflicts.

Andrew Bacevich's "Limits of Power" takes an unflinchingly hard look at the state of our American democratic experiment. While his predictions are dire and his economic outlook has largely come to pass, he does offer solutions that won't be easy for the American people: we must learn to live within our means, for one. The "Limits of Power" exposes the vacuous shell of our democracy, and insists that only our citizenry that can fix the mess. But it will not be easy.

The reality is that America has become, as repugnant as we may hold it, the belligerent Roman Empire of the modern age.

This book brings clarity to this understanding at a point in time when the economic bubble expansion has run out of new frontiers that can perpetuate the dominance of the military-industrial kingpin policy.

This also highlights a startling admonition: The US is not willing, ready to reconcile reality that we are forcing abnormal consumption imbalance through military belligerence that is increasingly ineffectual and irrelevant.

The US is pricing itself out of competition as a world power through a misfit of policies with the evolving world reality.

The "illusion of grandeur" that the author elaborates is tantamount to a societal mental dysfunction... institutionalized national insanity.

We, the observers, are likely to watch the demise of the American principles and society. I would say, Wake up People, we can head toward a new direction! ...but hold little hope of this or other works of good conscious to impact the self-interested delusions that head America for the precipice.

In the face of this, it is just that America now collapse under its own debt weight ... or, however unlikely, change course to become the revolutionaries of the new, techno-ecological future.

The limits of power by Andrew Bacevich is indeed a fine book and makes an X-ray of the current American administration and its military. It is written in a truly sincere fashion that calls for the need to have a doubl take towards its policy failures, especially of the Bush administration and his book utterly exposes the arrogant and corrupt motives of the American military.

Bacevich advocates the need on the part of America's policy makers to have a softer and considerate approach towards the outside world instead of degrading the lofty American values propunded by its founding fathers.

However, it is easy to write in a somewhat holistic fashion than to place oneself in the role of the president and the policy makers. Nevertheless, he is justified in demanding a reconsideration of America's hawkish and imperialist political perceptions.

This is a marvellous book in which historical accounts are so well narrated that would definitely help general readers, too. This book is extremely interesting and justifies the views of the author who has sacrificed a lot for his country and whose opinion is not those of an arm-chair politcian. It is a must read book.

Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies since Independence.'

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)
Review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

In this 182-page book with a dozen pages of notes, Bacevich discusses the problems facing our economy, the difficulty created by an imperial presidency, and the seriousness of being involved in endless wars and suggests that all our problems have been exacerbated by this country's continual quest for more. This is not a book for Democrats or Republicans, and Bacevich writes in an unbiased manner. I recommend the book regardless of your views. As a professor history and international relations at Boston University, a colonel in the U.S. Army and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he brings tremendous experience, credibility, and expertise to his insights and conclusions. His writing is fluent, succinct, concise, intelligent, and never boring or dry. This is a powerful book that explains our country's practice of exceptionalism (illusions of grandeur) and the difficulties that result from it. Bacevich writes with intelligence, passion, and clarity, and this book is a thought-provoking and approachable analysis.

For a short book, I found this very repetitive. If you only have time to read the conclusion, that does sum up the prior 170 pages pretty well - if you are curious, go back and read the rest. While author does make some very good points, the book predictably turns into another Bush-bash, so reader beware. In all fairness, he does state that America's political and military problems stem back from the time that unrealistic expectations were first set going back several presidencies, but the his focus of blame rests primarily with the military policies of George W. Bush. The revised Afterward of the book spoke of Obama's "inteligence, vigor, eloquence, cool persona, and compelling personal story." Will he be the one who is able to change the course? Time will tell, but I think his inexperience, coupled with the fact that he has appointed what the author describes as "establishment figures, utterly conventional in their outlook" makes the prognosis rather bleak. Over a year since this book has been written, it appears that they are more focused on their global celebrity, scrambling to getting re-elected, printing money, hiding their heads in the sand, and not on fixing the problems that are escalating at warp speed in their own backyard. The author himself states that "Obama will run the risk of seeing his presidency hijacked ... Obama will face the prospect of Bush's wars, especially the war in Afghanistan, becoming his own. And the likelihood of his making good on his promise of change will diminish accordingly." Interesting that the author was already excusing Obama's lack of success only 4 days into his presidency. Wonder what the author would say at this point in time. Has Obama broken with the traditional blame game and stepped up to the plate to take fiscal, military and political responsiblility for the course of this country? I have my own opinion, which I will not share here, but that is the real crux of the question, and what I believe was the author's call to action.

I just finished this book and promptly sent an email recommending it to my friends.

The authors most insightful thoughts were in regard to the demonizing of those around the world who are different than us or treat us in a perceived disrespectful manner. In effect, our government seems bent on portraying anyone who speaks ill of the United States as a mortal threat justifying not only our defense budget, but on occasion an intervention or occupation in the name of "freedom".

Mr. Bacevich explains plainly we can no longer afford this type of arrogant imperialism. We need to discern real threats from imaginary before we break the bank, and the backs of our military.

I also thought his observations on our consumer society forcing our hand around the world were intriguing. I agree with the author that if we continue to import oil from the Middle East, and money from China and Japan to fund our deficits, our foreign policy will be largely dictated to us.

Although some of the concepts in the book were not new, the back story of how we got to our current circumstance, and the author's insights on the implications of our current path were. Great book.

In his conclusion, Dr. Bacevich writes:

"Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilians -- with President Bush a prime example -- has been to confuse strategy with ideology. The president's freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the Global War on Terror, expressed grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them. Meanwhile, ever since the Vietnam War ended, the tendency among military officers has been to confuse strategy with operations."

Our political and military elite have lost the ability (assuming they ever had it after 1989) to think in strategic terms, to think of formulating national policy which reflects core national interests (strategy based on rational goals achieved through appropriate and existing means). Instead national power is used to further the interests of an ever narrower political/economic elite who think they can subvert/abuse US power in any way since the US is simply "too big to fail". They find the military option simply too tempting to use in a time of deteriorating US power in other areas.

The American people are driven by fear, and national policy is presented as a series of actions/reactions responding to an ever-increasing list of threats, all the while the actual interests involved are hidden by a compliant corporate media. The problems are systemic which means that whoever takes over in November the problems will remain the same, since as Bacevich writes, what America needs is a more modest foreign policy.

In strategic theory terms everything has come down to tactics - both at home and abroad - while operational art (as what Russia is doing now) and strategy (what has been sorely missing in "The Long War" - itself a strategic absurdity) . . . are missing in action.

Read Bacevich's new book as yet another flashing red light on the road to national ruin.

I first heard of this book through a streamed interview that the author gave on the Bill Moyers show. That interview was impressive, and I'm not someone who is easily impressed, least of all by Americans.

But the book is something else entirely. The author explains the history of the present in about 196 pages, and boy does he make a truly excellent job of it! His written style is fluent, succinct, concise, intelligent but never boring or dry. He is a Professor of International Relations at Boston University, and his students must love him! Not only that, but he is a West Point graduate who served in Vietnam, and subsequently served in the US Army for 22 years.

He survived Vietnam, but ironically and very poignantly, he lost his son, a 1st Lieutenant, in Iraq. The book is dedicated to his son's memory. And it is an immensly worthy dedication. He writes with intelligence, passion and clarity. He shoots from the hip but, like the Zen archer, hits all his targets without fail; at the same time he doesnt hit anything he's not aiming at. Though it is an academic work, there is an almost spiritual profoundness and power about it, together with an almost military realism. He knows what he is about, and is not afraid to say it, no matter whose toes get trodden on.

If I had a million pounds (2 million dollars) I would buy every copy of this book I could find, and distribute it for free on every university and college campus in the US. It is that good an investment, and that important.

This is the same review as I wrote for the store.uk, with this addition.

Prof. Bacevich writes about Limits of Power from the perspective of constitutionally legitimate and legitimised power, which is both legally and in practical terms limited.

However, the very existential nature of the present crisis in terms of impending shortages of primary resources, could very well lead the 'powers-that-be-' in the US in particular, and in the Western world in general, to adopt forms of govermental authority that are less legitimate, but that would become 'legitimised' by the existential nature of the crisis. If this were to happen, the Limits of Power that Prof Bacevitch writes about, might very well become redundant.

This book offers a provocative argument: that the ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness have become perverted over time. Now, the author says, "happiness" for many Americans has become associated with endless consumption. Freedom has become "just another thing to buy." Our over-consumption has become unsustainable with disastrous effects both on oursleves and the entire world.
So far so good. But then the author takes his argument a step further: "Our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness at home requires increasingly that Americans look beyond our borders. Whether the issue at hand is oil, credit or the availability of cheap consumer goods, we expect the world to accomodate the American way of life." (page 9)
"Simply put, as the American appetite for freedom has grown, so too has our penchant for empire."
It's an intriguing idea but the book doesn't to my mind completely make the case. Instead, it falls back on an all-too-familiar litany of alleged American foreign policy misdeeds over the past 80 years and culminates in a ferocious attack on the George W. Bush administration.
I find these reviews of the bad side of U.S. foreign policy somewhat disturbing. Film director Michael Moore did much the same thing in "Bowling for Columbine." Of course, there's much to criticize in the U.S. record -- but such criticism should be balanced. The United States after all, through the Marshall Plan, did provide the basis for western Europe to rebuild after World War II. It did win the Cold War, allowing Eastern Europe to free itself from the Soviet grip. And American "empire" if such there has been, has been far more benign than any other empire in human history. Having defeated Japan, the United States helped the Japanese construct a new democratic society -- and then withdrew leaving them to challenge our economic dominance.
The account of the first Gulf War is likewise incomplete. Did the author forget that Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, a sovereign nation? Is there any doubt that unchecked, he would have gone on to threaten Saudi Arabia which would have given him control of most of the world's oil?
Far from behaving in an imperial manner, President Bush (the father, not the son) constructed a wide international coalition, obtained United Nations approval and expelled Iraq from Kuwait, after which he stopped the war and brought the troops home. Of course, his son took a different path -- but that's no reason to argue that the younger Bush represented the logical outcome of decades of U.S. foreign policy.
I too find American exceptionalism to be disturbing (I would have welcomed a history of this phenomenon but you will not find it here) and of course we need to get to grips with American over-consumption. But the link between domestic trips to the shopping mall and invading Iraq is tendencious and unproven in this book.
It's still an interesting read. The author has many insightful comments that are worth thinking about. He just takes them a bridge too far.

In The Limits of Power, Bacevich makes the argument that our failure to understand the limitations of military power and our misuse of military force as an instrument of policy has been pervasive and consistent since the end of the Second World War. He frames his argument in terms of Reinhold Niebuhr's dialectic between our belief in America's innocency and our (at least formerly held) practical understanding of its limits.

The lessons he draws from Niebuhr is that we must be suspicious of our own tendency as a nation to frame actions involving the use of force in our national interest as purely noble crusades, the "Freedom Agenda" leading to our devastation of Iraq and subsequent entanglement in that nation's rebuilding being but the latest example.

He argues cogently that failure to appreciate the limits of power, and the development of strong, self-interested bureaucratic and economic forces who profit and derive meaning through the use of military force as the primary instrument of American foreign policy threatens the peace, stability and economic well being of America. The result, he argues, is an apparatus which acts to further its interests and power at the expense of America's national interest, while shielding its own self-interest by resort to notions of American exceptionalism, or what Niebuhr called innocency.

Whether one agrees with Bacevich entirely, the arguments he makes are cogent, well-formed and concise.

A must read for those interested in American foreign and military policy.

Author Andrew J. Bacevich dedicates this book to his son, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Bacevich has long been a strong conservative critic of U.S. policy in Iraq, but it's difficult to escape the impression that the impassioned indictment set forth here draws on a deep reservoir of personal anguish. With unblinking, unwavering directness, he attacks the illusions, self-deceptions and hypocritical cant that he says have provided the atmosphere and background music for a U.S. orgy of profligate consumption at home and rapacious violence abroad. A leading "conservative historian," Bacevich supports his case with remarkably well-chosen facts, anecdotes and quotations, without ever bogging down the reader in unnecessary detail. Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, getAbstract recommends his book to anyone interested in contemporary American history and events.

This is a good book about the reasons behind America's ignominious fall from the heights of power. While Bacevich doesn't really put forth any information that can't be found in any of the "Amercian Empire Project" books, he does present it in a different light with slightly different conclusions. America's conspicuous consumption is a MAJOR problem and has been for years, and failure to address that is what has led to our current economic woes and the mindless flag-waving and sloganeering which has consumed this country since September 11, 2001.
Concerning the negative reviews about this book, it amazes me that when an author questions both major political parties people don't stop and think "wow, maybe I should look into this before snapping to judgement". Instead, they fall back on talking points and empty facts with no deeper analysis of where those facts come from or what they mean.

Excellent study, though I have to take exception on some key points, most notably Mr. Bacevich's take on Reagan and Afghanistan. He writes: "Reagan's policy toward Afghanistan...a seemingly brilliant success that within a decade gave birth to a quagmire...The billions that Reagan spent funneling weapons...to the Afghan mujahideen were as nothing compared to the $1.2 trillion his administration expended modernizing US military forces." Partly true, but the author allows himself to be carried away into inaccurate history.

First, it was not Reagan who spent billions funneling the weapons, but a liberal congressman named Charlie Wilson. Reagan merely gave political support to the program. Secondly, it in no way led to a quagmire. It led to the departure of the Soviet Union, which led to anarchy in Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban taking control, which led to O. bin Laden taking up residence in Afghanistan. To suggest that Sept 11 and our subsequent invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is due to Reagan and Wilson's support of people who were defending themselves against Soviet invaders is facile. The 19 hijackers were not successful because of any calisthenics they did in the desert at an al Qaeda camp. They did the bulk of their training and planning in Germany and the US.

More to the point, our involvement today is not and need not be a quagmire. And this speaks of a missing theme, the absence of which I noticed often in reading Bacevich's otherwise very good book. Our military is not a police force. Our military is not a relief organization. Our military is not a nation-building agency. Our military is the best in the world at attacking and defending against other militaries. Saddam and his army are vanquished. The Taliban were run out of power a long time ago. It's time for us to go. Yes, bin Laden escaped, but that is no reason for us to stay. Hunting him now would seem to be a good task for the CIA, working together with the Pakistani intelligence service. Similarly, how much better it would have been for the US military to leave Iraq immediately after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Yes, much had to be rebuilt, but why not let the Iraqis do it among themselves in 2004 instead of 2011? Why not support Hamid Karzi in the way we supported the mujahideen, ie., from a safe distance?

Bacevich correctly identifies the solution in his title: our power is great, but there are limits. The problem is political megalomania which sees no limits to what our military can accomplish. The story has been remarkably similar in this respect in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, but people like Lyndon Johnson and GW Bush continually hearken back to Japan and Germany as the model. If Barak Obama is as astute as he appears, he'll follow the lead of President Eisenhower in Korea, and not President Nixon in Vietnam.

The Limits of Power presents an impassioned argument against current American national security and foreign policy. Bacevich offers some vague suggestions for what this failed policy should be replaced with.

The author is a professor at Boston University, however this is not an academic book. This is clearly an argument intended for a popular audience. He relies on many secondary sources and does not always cite his sources. The Limits of Power is well written and intelligently argued. The author is obviously knowledgeable and well read.

The primary thesis, or at least the one I found most compelling, is that national security policy making is being consistently done by small groups of "wise men", not by the policy making institutions of our government. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council are not actually used or consulted when Presidents make policy. These institutions must justify, support and execute the policies once they have been made. Not only is this system badly broken, it is completely undemocratic. Special criticism is doled out to Paul Nitze, the primary author of NSC 68, which formed the basis of Americas cold war policy.

These poorly conceived policies are then carried out by a military which has failed to produce competent leaders. Bacevich asserts that our generals are mediocre at best, often fail to accomplish their missions and that there is no consequence to that failure. The prime example of this is Tommy Franks, the general who was in command of the invasion of Iraq. Franks apparently did not plan at all for "phase IV", what to do when America wins the campaign and controls Iraq.

All of this, according to Bacevich, is driven by the profligacy of American citizens. This argument is not very original and is not convincingly presented in my view. It sounded very moralistic. Of course there is considerable basis in fact for this argument.

The authors recommendation is for a more modest foreign policy. It is not clear from the text what that means or how it would be done. I would have appreciated more discussion of this idea.

I found this short book to be a compelling and convincing read.

Leading up to his 2010 book on the Washington rules, Mr. Bacevich traces the limits of three aspects of American power. The first, which is the crisis of profligacy, traces the limitations of Americans in getting the comforts of life without any consequences for their actions. They go deeply into debt, they desire to obtain cheap oil to maintain their affluent way of life which puts pressure on the government to extract demands from overseas that result in the inevitable military interevention in the name of freedom. They also refuse to put their lives on the line to serve overseas where they would face the hazards of frontline action and leave it to the volunteers who sign up mostly out of economic necessity.

The second limitation, which is the political crisis, disregards the constitutional limits that the Founding Fathers placed on our governemnt and proposes to exhibit American "exceptionalism" at the expense of liberties in this nation as well as peoples across the globe. The author contends that a mere change of party in Congress and the White House would do little good in corraling the expansion of the military industrial complex that has grown since 1941. Even Obama in a recent speech (April 2011) talked about the United States being the greatest nation on earth, a statement which fosters the continued misconception of exceptionalism.

The third crisis, being a military one, is expressed through fact that the simple military might and power would not be enough to win the hearts and minds of peoples overseas. In fact the author contends that their prescense is counterproductive to such goals.

The author concluded that with centralized power within the executive power and the military, it may be too late for our nation to be saved from our descent into bankruptcy and the ending of our republic. The only bone of contention I have with this book is the unnecessary comments on climate change at the end of the book. It is apparent that the same type of do-gooders who are behind our military buildup are the same ones who would use the force of government to control our lives through massive environmental regulation to acheive global "warming" reduction. In either case, our freedoms are being reduced through unelected entities. A great book otherwise.

This terrific short book crystallizes what is wrong with our country today and how it got that way in clear, simple prose that any idiot like me easily grasp. Many readers will take offense that Professor Bacevich does not pay homage to the supposedly noble, tired old half truths about how the USA was built into a superpower. Just like other powers in the past, we basically stole it. In fact, he rips the scab off of the fable of America, and says it very neutrally. There is no hand wringing, just the facts. The superiority we feel and the sense of entitlement to own more and more stuff made me feel guilty, and angry, because it's true. We want something like oil, we make sure we can get it, and that has created the current disaster in the middle east and our quest for the oil there. This book is NOT political, the left and right have created the holes in our sinking ship. To me, the most blame lies on the lazy, consumerist electorate. We could elect honest, progressive leaders but we usually don't. It may not be too late, but the train may have left the station.

Bacevich's previous books, AMERICAN EMPIRE & THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM, are trenchant, scholarly critiques of our post-Cold War foreign policy, spiced with a bit of acid wit. In THE LIMITS OF POWER, the acid level is way up, but the occasional humor is gone. Perhaps this is because Bacevich--history professor, retired Army lieutenant-colonel, Vietnam vet and West Point grad--lost his son (an Army 1st lieutenant, KIA) in Iraq in 2007.

Whatever the reason, THE LIMITS OF POWER is more of a polemic, though an effective one, informed as it is by the author's deep historical knowledge and enriched by quotes from titans of history like Winston Churchill & Reinhold Niebuhr, as well as midgets of the moment like Doug Feith and (Feith's nemesis) Tommy Franks. Bacevich's central thesis is that uncontrolled American appetites for cheap goods, cheap oil and cheap credit have led to a foreign policy which sees any possible threat to this profligate, constantly expanding, insanely materialistic "American way of life" (above all, a cut-off of cheap foreign oil) as an existential threat to America itself. This has led to the rise of the neocons and their obsession with "Benevolent World Hegemony," the concept that to safeguard our standard of living (deliberately mis-labelled as "our freedoms"), America must dominate the world, with military action the preferred method, leading in turn to such mis-begotten wars as Afghanistan, Iraq, and the whole grandiose, never-ending Global War on Terror itself. Bacevich lays out a convincing case. Continuing a theme begun in his previous books, he traces the roots of our current predicament and finds they are bi-partisan, going back at least as far as Harry Truman. Besides Truman, Bacevich blames heroes of the Democrats like Kennedy and Clinton, and revered Republicans like Reagan and both Bushes. He also takes aim at the cult of "the Wise Men," those senior statesmen and retired generals whose advice Bacevich finds is more likely to advance their own narrow interests and agendas than to serve the nation as a whole.

Bacevich is equally scathing when he goes after today's active duty generals. Regrettably, this is where he will lose the one or two movement conservatives (as opposed to the paleo variety) who actually bother to read the book. Why? Because he pronounces David Petraeus (who can do no wrong in conservatives' eyes) and the surge, a failure. Bacevich may be correct, but it's too early to tell and I wish he had been a little more tentative and a lot less strident. Bacevich also dares to state that the armed forces have failed to accomplish their missions in the GWOT, which many conservatives (at least, the type who let talk radio do their thinking for them) will mistakenly construe as an attack on the troops, despite the author's military background and acknowledgement that we have a very fine military. Again, I wish he had taken a more nuanced view, because this book needs to be read by conservatives, especially the 30% of the electorate who seem to have an unshakeable faith in George Bush.

Finally, Bacevich offers some suggestions for things we can do to climb out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. Unfortunately, they include two suggestions, nuclear disarmament and action to reduce global warming, which many (like me) will find ridiculous, or at least unacceptable, and may cause them to dismiss the great truths the book reveals about the course of self-destruction we are following. (Ergo, the pessimistic review title.)

But I DO HEARTILY RECOMMEND this book! Indeed, you should read AMERICAN EMPIRE & THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM as well as THE LIMITS OF POWER, to gain a broader and deeper understanding of how we came to be in this catastrophic pickle. Reading all of them is not difficult, because Bacevich--whose writing style is clear, direct and easy to read--also has the gift of concision: about 600 pages total for all three works. And I join with other reviewers who would like to see Andrew Bacevich much better known, and much more influential, than he is today. He would be a breath of fresh air on the NSC, wouldn't he?

Depending on who you talk to the United States is on the decline,has its best days ahead of it, or somewhere it between.Bacevich makes a compelling argument that the United States is actually on the decline in many ways. From the financial meltdown, to the mismanaged war policies, the United Stats is in trouble, and potentially stands to decline as a world power.

Strafor's George Friedman seems the think the U.S. will be a power for some time, or at least doesn't think the situation is as dire--he has a good argument as well--I digress. Who's right? Is Friednman right that the U.S. going to be a power for some time to come. Is the situation as dire as Bacevich say it is? Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. Stay tuned.

While I have given this book only three stars, nevertheless I strongly recommend you read it. The crises described by Professor Bacevich are real and worth thoughtful consideration.

First, I believe that it is important to give a context to a review--briefly I am almost a decade older than Professor Bacevich, not a military academy graduate, and not having fought in Viet Nam. I've worked most of my career in the business area and have neither a diplomacy nor an academic background. This is the first of his works that I have read. As other readers would know, Professor Bacevich quotes heavily from Reinhold Niebuhr. While I am familiar with the name, I am not well read in his works.

Second, since there are nearly 200 reviews posted for this boook, I will attempt to limit my comments where they may provide additional insight. For example, others have outlined and summarized the main arguments by Professor Bacevich. Perhaps obviously, I may repeat comments by others since I did not read all prior reviews.

The reason for my relatively low rating for the book (vis-a-vis the majority of reviewers) rests on two criteria-I found the book both uneven and incomplete. By uneven, I mean that his voice / arguments vary widely among the three different crises he describes. I found him exercising his most authentic voice when describing the failure of miitary leadership in the chapter on the Military Crisis. He held many of the recent past military leaders to a very high standard of conduct and found them largely wanting. On the other hand, in the chapter on Profligacy he sounds much more like an Old Testament prophet or perhaps a scold and in the chapter on the political crisis, he sounds extremely uncertain, almost wishy-washy, about the standards to hold our government officials to. While he is fairly aggressive in decrying the Executive Branch, and he begins to do the same with respect to Congress, but then backs off.

In the Profligacy Crisis chapter, Professor Bacevich chronicles briefly a history of the United States, listing both well and ill conceived strategies. For my taste I would have preferred that these had been put in a more broad historical context, perhaps referring to and using "A Nation Among Nations" by Professor Thomas Bender which attempts to view american history in the context of several different issues and how they were handled across the globe, instead of a stand alone litany. Also, perhaps dealing with the background of the Constitution would have been helpful rather than using the Declaration of Independence for the most part; such as was done recently by Professor Richard Beeman in his "Plain, Honest Men".

In the chapter on Political Crisis, I believe he is insufficiently critical of former President Carter, in particular for his handling of both the Iranian hostage situation, and the high levels of inflation experienced during his tenure, while at the same time giving former President Reagan insufficient praise, for his handling of both. See for example Robert Samuelson's "The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath" for an excellent exposition of how Reagan with Volcker broke the back of inflation. Not all crises are dealt with by military force.

As for incompleteness, he seems to argue that we are a profligate people, that we are living beyond our means, which leads to a dependence upon imported oil, which in turn leads us to use military power in the Middle East to insure our access to that oil. If I have his argument correct, then the problem with it lies in the fact that Asian / Pacific countries and Northwest European countries are the main consumers (+/- 85% of the roughly 17 million barrels per day of PG oil production). Thus if one argues that the purpose of our military presence in the ME is to protect oil, then it must be for the A/P and NWE countries which consume it, which leads one to ask why are we doing the oil protection for those nations? And, of course, what would happen if we stopped? If the argument is more simple, i.e. we are too dependent upon imported oil, and that leads us to the military incursions, then one is led to ask why those nations with a much higher dependence upon imports are not? For example, Japan and South Korea are essentially 100% dependent upon imported oil, as are some European countries. U.S. oil imports tend to come from Canada, Mexico, the North Sea, Venezuela, the west coast of Africa, as well as the ME. If defending our sources of imported oil were the basis for using US military, then perhaps it should be used with respect to Venezuela? Also, the US dependence upon all PG produced oil is roughly 4% of total US energy consumption. It would seem that this relatively small component could be eliminated by relatively simple conservation techniques, if the appropriate policies were enacted? Thus, if one examines the factual information with respect to oil flows and US imports, it would appear that the reasons for military presence in the PG are a good deal more complicated than simply to protect US Middle East oil access.

None of the above should be taken to say that the Americans are not great consumers, we are. I'm certain each of us has our own litany of excesses we note in others every day. In this Professor Bacevich is correct. However, again, when he says 'we' are living beyond our means--that our requirements exceed our means to meet them--it would be extremely helpful to define the 'we', for as the old saying goes, if everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame. In particular, does he mean we as individuals, the group we, or does he mean also the federal government representing 'we'? This matters both in describing the 'crisis' as well as contemplating appropriate remedies.

Even in what I see as his strongest chapter, on the Military Crisis, he is unsatisfyingly incomplete. He describes the problem with the military theory of 'full spectrum dominance' and compares it to Professor Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History' seemingly dismissing Fukuyama's 'democratic capitalism' also, without explanation. I, for one, found Fukuyama's theory worthwhile and would have appreciated an explanation of why Professor Bacevich seems to not--or perhaps I am the only one not in the know?

In his closing chapter he begins to outline a few paths the United States might pursue instead of the current heavily military power strategy. He mentions curbing emissions to reduce global warming; he mentions 'containment' of radical Islam. He mentions abolishing nuclear weapons. As I write this review we are just a few days beyond the unfortunate meetings in Copenhagen, where the best that was achieved was an agreement for each country to prepare of list of actions; and a few weeks beyond the release of hundreds of e-mails prepared by leading AGW proponents, apparently showing their less than open mindedness with respect to hard temperature data. Clearly, the jury is still out on AGW and strategies for curbing fossil fuel emissions. While containment did work with respect to the USSR, it is not clear to me how it would work against a non-nationally based group. How does one contain an 'idea'? At a somewhat higher level, it seems Professor Bacevich comes close to saying that we need 'systemic' changes in the United States, but avoids doing so. For example, if the federal government is dysfunctional, and we are deluding ourselves by assuming we will get the desired change by simply electing a new President every four or eight years, then why not propose changing the system. Why not a balanced budget ammendment to curb both Presidential and Congressional spending appetites? Why not term limits for Congress to counter the gerrymandering they have accomplished to avoid serious competition? Obviously such proposals are aimed at the group 'we', and not at each of us individually. Recall the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes!

I note that several reviewers found the lack of detailed solutions by Professor Bacevich problematic, while others seemed satisfied that he had 'identified' the problem. I would side with the former. Even in family conversations I believe, where there is a strong mutuality of language and frames of reference, we frequently find it is not until we begin exploring 'solutions' that we find we truly share an understanding of the 'problem'.

Again, I do recommend that this book be read, but wish that Professor Bacevich had written a more complete theory, and can only hope that he will soon flesh this small volume out in a more complete manner.

This was a very timely book and Bacevich manages to pack it with a substantial amount of well organized information. His main themes, as evidenced by the title, are the limitations of power projection through military force and the ideology of American Imperium. He traces the history of the National Security State, its organizational apparatus and the friction between various departments and the ideology of National Security which provide the rationale for the projects of political elites. His analysis situates the Bush administration within a tradition of ideology that spans back to the early days of the Cold war. Whilst also demonstrating its discontinuities; above all, the Bush doctrine's concept of "preemptive war". For Bacevich, this policy is both morally indefensible and pragmatically inept. He attempts to give both a description of the current crises (the crisis of profligacy, the political crisis and the military crisis) and prescriptive advice on how to readdress past mistakes. However, he does not view the current political, economic and military quandaries of the United State's as the product of the Bush Administration and its key insiders alone. Though, he does a fine job of dissecting figures like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz while linking their ideological positions to pervious policy makers like James Forrestal and Paul Nitze. The crucial advantage of Bacevich's "The Limits of Power", is that it moves beyond the notion that the Bush Administration is an aberration and contextualizes the administration within the broader history of U.S. Foreign policy. Moreover, his analysis of institutional frameworks and the nature of self-seeking political elites add a deeper understanding to the current situation. To mention one failing, Bacevich does little to relate the current crises to the operations of capitalism itself. That however, would have perhaps limited the books appeal to segments of the political spectrum and pushed the book beyond its scope of inquiry. Despite that quibble, I couldn't recommend Colonel Bacevich's book more strongly.

Andrew Bacevich is a retired military man with 23 years of service behind him. He is currently professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A few years ago he wrote a book called The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, in which he warned against the increasing militarization of American foreign policy. In the present work he returns to this topic. As a conservative critic of a nominally conservative administration his opinion is highly regarded. Many critics have called Bacevich a liberal, but this is not really accurate; he argues that the current administration has not really broken with the past, but is following an imperial agenda of which both liberals and conservatives are guilty.

In Bacevich's view the foreign policy created in the Beltway by the political classes reflects what they think people want: namely, an imperial policy that guarantees the contiuous flow of cheap oil and cheap consumer goods. The political establishment would have them believe that the projection of American military power is necessary to maintain our way of life.

In his critique of the Bush administration, Bacevich is exactly right. The neocons - Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz - saw 9/11 as an opportunity for the unrestrained use of American military power. They went as far as discrediting the State Department and even the CIA in order to concentrate all power in the Pentagon and the White House. All foreign policy became part of the Global War on Terror. This war was presented as a twilight struggle between good and evil.

Bacevich's indictment of the current administraion is accurate, but it is only accurate for Bush's first term. If one hasn't noticed the change of behavior in the second term, then one is blind. I would also take exception with his blanket indictment of all administrations since the end of World War II as imperial. Most presidents were keenly aware of the limits of American power and settled for multilateral action mediated by international institutions. In my view the Bush administration did break with the past with its policy of preventative war and the use of torture and illegal wiretapping.

In the case of Afghanistan, Bacevich misses a major point. The invasion was not to build a nation-state in our image, it was to go after the perpetrators of the deaths of 3,000 plus Americans. And leaving behind a more stable and less threatening government than that of the Taliban is not exactly as amibitious nation-building, but rather a sensible and pragmatic necessity.

On the whole liberal Democrats, more than conservative Republicans, have been disabused of the notion of American exceptionalism and the concomitant exercise military power. Bacevich fails to give liberal Democrats credit for seeing in advance the light of the arguments. A glaring defect of an otherwise very thoughtful book.

In this critique of American citizens, Bacevich takes a hard look at the citizenry's role in the current economic, political, and military crisis. The author is a retired colonel, which means I give a lot more credence to what he has to say. In fact, the gravitas between his advice and that of many others is a world apart.

I was pleased to see that he believes our misguided strategies ushering the nation into a global war of no exits and no deadlines cannot be blamed solely on the Bush Administration but rather on all of us. That is, the USA citizens. It may well be hard medicine to swallow but it needs to be taken regardless. And while, a doomsday picture is not being painted in this book, the author has far more faith in the masses than I do.

Great writing style combined with historical observations on our decline. Maybe people will "get it" and transform our culture before it is too late. I give this book 5 stars. I hope you find this review helpful. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR Author of Wingtips with Spurs