Product Description

In this provocative book, Andrew Bacevich warns of a dangerous dual obsession that has taken hold of Americans, conservatives, and liberals alike. It is a marriage of militarism and utopian ideology--of unprecedented military might wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. This mindset, the author warns, invites endless war and the ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy. It promises not to perfect but to pervert American ideals and to accelerate the hollowing out of American democracy. As it alienates others, it will leave the United States increasingly isolated. It will end in bankruptcy, moral as well as economic, and in abject failure. With The New American Militarism, which has been updated with a new Afterword, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War. Various groups in American society--soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture--came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s. The upshot, acutely evident in the aftermath of 9/11, has been a revival of vast ambitions and certainty, this time married to a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges us to restore a sense of realism and a sense of proportion to U.S. policy. He proposes, in short, to bring American purposes and American methods--especially with regard to the role of the military--back into harmony with the nation's founding ideals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #426173 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity of its author. Anatol Lieven

Anatol Lieven
"This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity of its author."

About the Author
Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy.

Customer Reviews

A Penetrating, Radical Analysis of US Militarism from the Heart of the Establishment
This is an important and fascinating book on the rise of US militarism post-Vietnam, post-Cold War from someone who is not a left-winger, but has been at the heart of the US establishment.

Bacevich argues that post-Vietnam the US political establishment and military class have increasingly moved from a policy of war at last resort to war at first resort. Thus, between 1945 and 1991 the US only occasionally engaged in military action: Korea and Vietnam the obvious examples. Since the fall of the Cold War the US has increasingly resorted to military action across the globe. Bacevich notes that this propensity to use military force post-Soviet Union began under Bush 1, then reached excessive levels under Clinton (Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq 1998), before the triumph of Bush 11 and his foreign policy expeditions.

Thus the absolute, unmitigated disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush 11 are put into wider context rather than Bush bashing.

This book brilliantly maps the changing contours of the US political elite and military thinking from the humiliation of US power in Vietnam in 1975 and how the US got into such a mess and over-reached itself a couple of decades later.

A fascinating, revealing, concise book which is easy to read and will cause any open-minded reader to think again. Its only failure is in the author's conclusions where these fail to meet the scale of the tasks faced by those hoping to turn America around.