Andrew J. Bacevich - Böcker

In this provocative book, Andrew Bacevich warns of a dangerous dual obsession that has taken hold of Americans, both 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, Bacevich 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. In The New American Militarism, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War, when 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, this time coupled with a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges Americans 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.For this edition, Bacevich has written a new Afterword in which he considers how American militarism has changed in the past five years. He explores in particular how this ideology has functioned under Barack Obama, who ran for president on a campaign based on "Hope for change and for a new beginning. Despite such rhetoric, Bacevich powerfully suggests, the attitudes and arrangements giving rise to the new American militarism remain intact and inviolable as ever.

Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, "The Irony of American History" is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr's masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr's wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace.

More than any other episode since the end of the Cold War, the conflict in Kosovo revealed the distinctive attributes of a new American "way of war." In so doing, Kosovo also brought into sharp focus the military, political, and moral dilemmas confronting a liberal democracy intent on wielding preeminent power on a global scale. What are the moral implications posed by waging high-tech warfare for humanitarian purposes? Does the precedent set by intervention of this type point toward peace and stability or toward more war? How well suited are the United States military and American society as a whole to the security challenges of the age of globalization? According to Bacevich and Cohen, gauging the "success" achieved in Kosovo yields important answers to these and related questions. The volume includes a well-crafted historical overview of the war and six essays that place it in a broader context. The contributors explore the conflict's relationship to U.S. grand strategy, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and American civil-military relations, among other topics. Contributors: William A. Arkin, Andrew J. Bacevich, Eliot A. Cohen, Alberto R.Coll, James Kurth, Anatol Lieven, Michael Vickers

More than any other episode since the end of the Cold War, the conflict in Kosovo revealed the distinctive attributes of a new American "way of war." In so doing, Kosovo also brought into sharp focus the military, political, and moral dilemmas confronting a liberal democracy intent on wielding preeminent power on a global scale. What are the moral implications posed by waging high-tech warfare for humanitarian purposes? Does the precedent set by intervention of this type point toward peace and stability or toward more war? How well suited are the United States military and American society as a whole to the security challenges of the age of globalization? According to Bacevich and Cohen, gauging the "success" achieved in Kosovo yields important answers to these and related questions. The volume includes a well-crafted historical overview of the war and six essays that place it in a broader context. The contributors explore the conflict's relationship to U.S. grand strategy, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and American civil-military relations, among other topics. Contributors: William A. Arkin, Andrew J. Bacevich, Eliot A. Cohen, Alberto R.Coll, James Kurth, Anatol Lieven, Michael Vickers

Andrew Bacevich is a leading American public intellectual, writing in the fields of culture and politics with particular attention to war and America's role in the world. Twilight of the American Century is a collection of his selected essays written since 9/11. In these essays, Bacevich critically examines the U.S. response to the events of September 2001, as they have played out in the years since, radically affecting the way Americans see themselves and their nation's place in the world.Bacevich is the author of nearly a dozen books and contributes to a wide variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, The Nation, Commonweal, Harper's, and the London Review of Books. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers. Prior to becoming an academic, he was a professional soldier. His experience as an Army officer informs his abiding concern regarding the misuse of American military power and the shortcomings of the U.S. military system. As a historian, he has tried to see the past differently, thereby making it usable to the present.Bacevich combines the perspective of a scholar with the background of a practitioner. His views defy neat categorization as either liberal or conservative. He belongs to no "school." His voice and his views are distinctive, provocative, and refreshing. Those with a focus on political and cultural developments and who have a critical interest in America's role in the world will be keenly interested in this book.

Andrew Bacevich is a leading American public intellectual, writing in the fields of culture and politics with particular attention to war and America's role in the world. Twilight of the American Century is a collection of his selected essays written since 9/11. In these essays, Bacevich critically examines the U.S. response to the events of September 2001, as they have played out in the years since, radically affecting the way Americans see themselves and their nation's place in the world.Bacevich is the author of nearly a dozen books and contributes to a wide variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, The Nation, Commonweal, Harper's, and the London Review of Books. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers. Prior to becoming an academic, he was a professional soldier. His experience as an Army officer informs his abiding concern regarding the misuse of American military power and the shortcomings of the U.S. military system. As a historian, he has tried to see the past differently, thereby making it usable to the present.Bacevich combines the perspective of a scholar with the background of a practitioner. His views defy neat categorization as either liberal or conservative. He belongs to no "school." His voice and his views are distinctive, provocative, and refreshing. Those with a focus on political and cultural developments and who have a critical interest in America's role in the world will be keenly interested in this book.

In a challenging, provocative book, Andrew Bacevich reconsiders the assumptions and purposes governing the exercise of American global power. Examining the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton--as well as George W. Bush's first year in office--he demolishes the view that the United States has failed to devise a replacement for containment as a basis for foreign policy. He finds instead that successive post-Cold War administrations have adhered to a well-defined "strategy of openness." Motivated by the imperative of economic expansionism, that strategy aims to foster an open and integrated international order, thereby perpetuating the undisputed primacy of the world's sole remaining superpower. Moreover, openness is not a new strategy, but has been an abiding preoccupation of policymakers as far back as Woodrow Wilson.Although based on expectations that eliminating barriers to the movement of trade, capital, and ideas nurtures not only affluence but also democracy, the aggressive pursuit of openness has met considerable resistance. To overcome that resistance, U.S. policymakers have with increasing frequency resorted to force, and military power has emerged as never before as the preferred instrument of American statecraft, resulting in the progressive militarization of U.S. foreign policy.Neither indictment nor celebration, American Empire sees the drive for openness for what it is--a breathtakingly ambitious project aimed at erecting a global imperium. Large questions remain about that project's feasibility and about the human, financial, and moral costs that it will entail. By penetrating the illusions obscuring the reality of U.S. policy, this book marks an essential first step toward finding the answers.

Writing in Life magazine in February 1941, Henry Luce memorably announced the arrival of “The American Century.” The phrase caught on, as did the belief that America’s moment was at hand. Yet as Andrew J. Bacevich makes clear, that century has now ended, the victim of strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline. To take stock of the short American Century and place it in historical perspective, Bacevich has assembled a richly provocative range of perspectives. What did this age of reputed American preeminence signify? What caused its premature demise? What legacy remains in its wake? Distinguished historians Jeffry Frieden, Akira Iriye, David Kennedy, Walter LaFeber, Jackson Lears, Eugene McCarraher, Emily Rosenberg, and Nikhil Pal Singh offer illuminating answers to these questions. Achievement and failure, wisdom and folly, calculation and confusion all make their appearance in essays that touch on topics as varied as internationalism and empire, race and religion, consumerism and globalization. As the United States grapples with protracted wars, daunting economic uncertainty, and pressing questions about exactly what role it should play in a rapidly changing world, understanding where the nation has been and how it got where it is today is critical. What did the forging of the American Century—with its considerable achievements but also its ample disappointments and missed opportunities—ultimately yield? That is the question this important volume answers.

The Gulf War of 1991 Reconsidered subjects one of the formative events of the post-Cold War era and a watershed in Middle Eastern international politics to a comprehensive reassessment. Condidering events from Arab, Israeli and American view points, the book examines the Gulf War's historical origins, conduct and legacy.

The United States has been "at war" for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between America's soldiers and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defence Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." Citing figures as diverse as the martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the marine-turned-anti-warrior Smedley Butler, Breach of Trust summons Americans to restore that principle. Rather than something for "other people" to do, national defence should become the business of "we the people." Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor - mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy - moral as well as fiscal.

In the decades that followed, American leaders put that claim to the test. They embraced globalisation as a putative source of unprecedented wealth, embarked on wide-ranging military campaigns to export American values, and redefined the very meaning of freedom. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House fulfilling the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom.In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, recounting an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how within a quarter of a century the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well as, of course, the strangest president in American history.

What is the nature and scope of the American empire, and what are its prospects and challenges? In this timely and thought-provoking collection, leading scholars and observers consider the new reality of American power in the world and what consequences it may bring at home and abroad. First-rate...a most valuable collection. —Walter LaFeber