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: #11426 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
"An unusually perceptive observer and a committed patriot." -- -Reihan Salam, The New Republic

"Bacevich has an authoritative background...his judgments and his point of view are evenhanded...Bacevich's analysis is acute and unsparing." -- Andrew Day, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Bacevich] has a very important story to tell and tells it well...Every thoughtful American should read this book." -- -Chalmers Johnson, The San Diego Union-Tribune

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

Review

"Bacevich is a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative Catholic.... He has thus earned the right to a hearing even in circles typically immune to criticism. What he writes should give them pause.... His conclusion is clear. The United States is becoming not just a militarized state but a military society: a country where armed power is the measure of national greatness, and war, or planning for war, is the exemplary (and only) common project."--Tony Judt, The New York Review of Books
"Every thoughtful American should read this book.... He has a very important story to tell and tells it well.... Bacevich's main argument...is the most powerful and compelling part of his highly original analysis.... He concludes with a chapter on what to do, which is utterly sound if politically impossible."--Chalmers Johnson, San Diego Union-Tribune
"A concise, sinewy book that looks at the emperor and concludes that indeed he has no clothes.... Bacevich makes the case calmly but with piercing clarity.... His judgments and his point of view are evenhanded and steady.... Acute and unsparing."--Andrew Day, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A valuable account of the paradoxical consequences of the U.S. effort to recover from Vietnam.... Bacevich--a Boston University professor, West Point alumnus and Vietnam veteran --demonstrates a fine grasp of past debates on military matters and an ability to relate them to today's events and personalities."--Lawrence Freedman, Washington Post Book World
"Intellectually serious. Writing very much as a Vietnam veteran, he worries that both major political parties have become too trigger-happy, too keen to dispatch troops abroad. Bacevich takes a dim view of Bush's rhetoric about freedom and argues that the United States' dependence on oil is why it is fighting in the Middle East. He thinks that what some neo-conservatives call World War IV didn't start on 9/11 but in 1980, when Jimmy Carter, having failed to persuade Americans to cut down on their use of gas, declared that any attempt by an 'outside force' to take over the Persian Gulf would be met by a US military response. Bacevich details America's inglorious history in the region to illustrate his point."--James G. Forsyth, Boston Globe
"A provocative book.... Anyone with an interest in U.S. military, diplomatic, or political history, or in civil-military relations, or in current military policy should seriously consider Bacevich's argument and proposals, and the book should be required reading for all students at the nation's staff and war colleges."--Military History
"Brilliant, abrasive, important.... The epitaph for a blindly ideological, overly militarized, and self-defeating imperialism. His bravely outspoken book will enlighten many and infuriate more than a few."--Richard J. Whalen, Across the Board
"Some of the most trenchant and original criticism of the trajectory of U.S. foreign and military policy that has surfaced since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March, 2003."--Inter Press Service
"Andrew Bacevich has become perhaps the leading critic of America's preoccupation with military power. As a former professional soldier, he writes with great understanding of the military as an institution and of the path its leaders have taken since Vietnam. Bacevich explains trenchantly how, over the past 30 years, America's political and intellectual elites have all contributed to this country's overemphasis on war, soldiers and military solutions." --James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet
"Buy this, read this, and make others do the same, but only if you are open to new perspectives. Bacevich brings a gimlet eye to an array of subjects. Here are some of the freshest observations available on contemporary American military affairs, political life and popular culture--indeed, probably too fresh and challenging for many readers, right and left." --Thomas E. Ricks, Military Correspondent, The Washington Post, and author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty
"A superbly researched, articulate book that compellingly challenges the basic assumptions of the use of American military power in the turbulent years since World War II. A clarion call for reform, The New American Militarism offers a blueprint for the 21st century that should be compulsory reading for the military establishment, Congress, the White House, and for every citizen concerned with how the United States wages war."--Carlo D'Este, author of Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life and Patton: A Genius For War

About the Author

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of History and 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

Great book, but...
For a foreigner (Colombian), who went to engineering school and lived in the US for five years, enjoying american life style and many personal friendships, the book is well intentioned. Basically, there never will be "victory" for the US in Irak, but the entrenched garrison within the green zone will permit continuity of the exploitation of Irak's natural resource, oil, on a compulsary basis. Changing oil for blood is a sad fact, and the ratio of american casualties (a few thousand), to civil iraqui casualties (at leat a million), is regrettable and shameful, not fair. Another salient case of national BAD KARMA for the US. HC

A Panaramic Analysis of American Militarism.
"The New American Militarism-How Americans Are Seduced by War" is an analysis of the subject from multiple viewpoints. Andrew Bacevich examines American militarism from the point of: politicians, the military, evangelical Christians, and society in general.

In the Preface the author is quite candid and humble about himself, his idealogy, and some of the experiences that helped form his positions.
"Some will misread this as cynicism. It is instead the absence of illusion."
He doesn't attempt to lay blame.

The chapter on the neoconservative idealogy (Left,Right,Left)was very good. Some of the leaders were "devout Wilsonians, devoted to the proposition that American values are by definition universal values." That's an accurate assessment of exporting democracy.
"The conception of politics to which neoconservatives paid allegiance owed more to the ethos of the Left than the orthodoxes of the Right.On the Right they hoped to find the oppurtunity to create the alternative perception of reality necessary for fulfilling their radical aspirations." One of those aspirations was the global empire that we have now.

In analyzing the view of evangelical Christians on militarism he made this truthful observation on page 124-
"The relationship between Christianity and war has been a tangled one. Despite Christ's admonition to love one's neighbor and to turn the other cheek, Christians historically have slaughtered their fellow men, to include their fellow Christians, in breathtakingly large numbers."
Some Christian advocate war more than others.

Some more subject matter that I found revelatory were:

*The author compares current and past presidents foreign policy to that of Woodrow Wilson.
*The analysis of the Weinberger and Powell Doctrines regarding pre-conditions for engagement.
*Where the idea for prosecuting two wars concurrently originated.
*The quote from a Pentagon General assessing Rumsfeld as someone who has "done more damage to the country than we will recover from in 50 years" was sobering.
*The "priesthood of strategists". Who they are and how deeply they have affected military strategy .
*A comparison of former presidents and how they viewed and sometimes utilized the military.

Mr. Bacevich offers some sensible solutions to the current problems of American militarism, one being to utilize the National Guard more at home for Homeland Security activities. Border Patrol would make sense.
"American policymakers should employ force only with reluctance and after the most careful deliberation....and it should do so with one eye cocked on the home front, wary of claims of military necessity being used to compromise our civil liberties."

My interest in Andrew Bacevich's books was kindled by watching an appearance he made on Bill Moyer's program to promote "The Limits of Power." This book is one of the best I have read in some time.I'd rate it highly and in the league of Chalmers Johnson's books.

The Danger in having a voluntary Army in an Empire Nation
Andrew Bacevich as a graduate of West Point, Vietnam veteran, and Army Colonel knows what he is talking about when he calmly but with piercing clarity lays out the dangers in America's preoccupation with military power. He writes with great understanding of the military and explains why we are placing too much emphasis on war, soldiers, and military solutions.