The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project) (Hardcover)

by Andrew Bacevich (Author)
Key Phrases: national security apparatus, military crisis, United States, World War, President Bush (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this caustic critique of the growing American penchant for empire and sense of entitlement, Bacevich (The New American Militarism) examines the citizenry's complicity in the current economic, political, and military crisis. A retired army colonel, the author efficiently pillories the recent performance of the armed forces, decrying it as an expression of domestic dysfunction, with leaders and misguided strategies ushering the nation into a global war of no exits and no deadlines. Arguing that the tendency to blame solely the military or the Bush administration is as illogical as blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, Bacevich demonstrates how the civilian population is ultimately culpable; in citizens' appetite for unfettered access to resources, they have tacitly condoned the change of military service from a civic function into an economic enterprise. Crisp prose, sweeping historical analysis and searing observations on the roots of American decadence elevate this book from mere scolding to an urgent call for rational thinking and measured action, for citizens to wise up and put their house in order. (Sept. 1)
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Robert G. Kaiser

This compact, meaty volume ought to be on the reading list of every candidate for national office -- House, Senate or the White House -- in November's elections. In an age of cant and baloney, Andrew Bacevich offers a bracing slap of reality. He confronts fundamental questions that Americans have been avoiding since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, first of all: What is the sole superpower's proper role in the world?

Bacevich is not running for office, so he is willing to speak bluntly to his countrymen about their selfishness, their hubris, their sanctimony and the grave problems they now face. He scolds a lot, but does so from an unusual position of authority. He is a West Point graduate who served his country as an Army officer for more than 20 years, retiring as a colonel with a reputation as one of the leading intellectuals in our armed services. A Catholic and self-described conservative, he earned a PhD from Princeton and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins before joining the Boston University faculty in 1998 to teach history and international relations. His many articles and four previous books have made him a respected voice in debates on national security.

In this book Bacevich treats the writings of theologian and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr as a kind of scripture. He calls Niebuhr, who died in 1971 at age 78, a "towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s" who "warned that what he called 'our dreams of managing history' -- born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism -- posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States." Repeatedly, Bacevich uses quotations from Niebuhr to remind us of the dangers of American hubris.

Bacevich describes an America beset by three crises: a crisis of profligacy, a crisis in politics and a crisis in the military. The profligacy is easily described: What was, even in the author's youth several decades ago, a thrifty society whose exports far outdistanced its imports has become a nation of debtors by every measure. Consumption has become the great American preoccupation, and consumption of imported oil the great chink in our national armor. When on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States suffered the most serious attack on its soil since 1812, our government responded by cutting taxes and urging citizens onward to more consumption. Bacevich quotes President Bush: "I encourage you all to go shopping more."

After 9/11, Bacevich writes, "most Americans subscribed to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasized the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack."

Bacevich's political crisis involves more than just George W. Bush's failed presidency, though "his policies have done untold damage." Bacevich argues that the government the Founders envisaged no longer exists, replaced by an imperial presidency and a passive, incompetent Congress. "No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good," he writes. "The chief . . . function of Congress is to ensure the reelection of its members."

In Bacevich's view, the modern American government is dominated by an "ideology of national security" that perverts the Constitution and common sense. It is based on presumptions about the universal appeal of democracy and America's role as democracy's great defender and promoter that just aren't true. And we ignore the ideology whenever it suits the government of the day, by supporting anti-democratic tyrants in important countries like Pakistan and Egypt, for example. The ideology "imposes no specific obligations" nor "mandates action in support of the ideals it celebrates," but can be used by an American president "to legitimate the exercise of American power."

Today politicians of all persuasions embrace this ideology. Bacevich quotes Sen. Barack Obama echoing "the Washington consensus" in a campaign speech that defined America's purposes "in cosmic terms" by endorsing a U.S. commitment to "the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders" regardless of the circumstances.

Bacevich describes the military crisis with an insider's authority. He dissects an American military doctrine that wildly overstates the utility of armed force in politically delicate situations. He decries the mediocrity of America's four-star generals, with particular scorn for Gen. Tommy Franks, original commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He calls the all-volunteer Army, isolated from the society it is supposed to protect, "an imperial constabulary" that "has become an extension of the imperial presidency."

The heart of the matter, Bacevich argues, is that war can never be considered a useful political tool, because wars invariably produce unintended consequences: "War's essential nature is fixed, permanent, intractable, and irrepressible. War's constant companions are uncertainty and risk." New inventions cannot alter these facts, Bacevich writes. "Any notion that innovative techniques and new technologies will subject war to definitive human direction is simply whimsical," he writes, quoting Churchill approvingly: "The statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

Yet the United States is today engaged in multiple wars that both exceed the capacity of the all-volunteer force and are highly unlikely to achieve their political aims, Bacevich argues. War is not the answer to the challenges we face, he says, and "to persist in following that path is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy and ruin."

The Limits of Power is a dense book but gracefully written and easy to read. It is chockablock with provocative ideas and stern judgments. Bacevich's brand of intellectual assuredness is rare in today's public debates. Many of our talking heads and commentators are cocksure, of course, but few combine confidence with knowledge and deep thought the way Bacevich does here.

Some of Bacevich's asides, however, are highly debatable -- that Richard M. Nixon and Mao Tse-tung together helped bring down the Soviet empire, for example. Bacevich is no globalist, and he treats trade as a sign of national weakness. One could provide a long list of objections of this kind, but quibbles cannot undermine Bacevich's big argument, which is elegant and powerful.

The end of the Cold War left the United States feeling omnipotent but without a utilitarian doctrine to guide its foreign policy. Instead, we have succumbed, again and again, to the military temptation. In Iraq we stumbled into a real disaster. If we cannot get our goals and our means into balance soon, our future will be a lot less fun than our past.

Bacevich is argumentative, and his case is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but at the end of this book, a serious reader has a difficult choice: to embrace Bacevich's general view or to construct a genuinely persuasive alternative. For many years our leaders have failed to do either. The price of their failure has been high and could go much higher. Bacevich knows a lot about the costs himself; his only son, Andrew John Bacevich, a first lieutenant in the Army, was killed in Iraq last year.

Candidates for office owe the voters their take on the big argument here: Do they think military power remains a tool of choice to help the United States make its way through the perils of the modern world? If so, can they explain why?

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books (August 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805088156
• ISBN-13: 978-0805088151
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (173 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,035 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

514 of 538 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cliche or not, this is a "Must Read" book, August 15, 2008

By	David R. Cook "Dave Cook" (Menomonie, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

207 of 225 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars both liberals and conservatives need to listen to Bacevich, August 16, 2008

By	D. Stamatis (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

169 of 188 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Would we be free by the truth or from the truth?, August 16, 2008

By	Barrie W. Bracken "Researcher" (Daytona Beach, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you read the excellent review by Mr. David R. Cook, you probably wonder why I am bothering with one. Good thought. I am so impressed with this work, it is impossible not to praise it. When a book like Obama Nation can be pushed by false sales to the best seller list, and this book will probably never make it, we can only hope those who bought the Obama smear are too stupid to read it. Frankly this book offers more hope for the future than I see. We have had warnings of this condition we are now facing and ignored them long ago. Mr. Cook points to the book by Reinhold Niebuhr which was ignored because as the author here says Americans are too consumptive led to be willing to change. I must agree and would add that Americans have shown in the past several presidential elections they are afraid of change. As he points out we blindly believe the universe revolves around us and as the chosen of God's creation, no harm can come to us.

As Dr. Bacevich points out we are complacent about the outside world. We are unconcerned for the most part about the welfare of our armed forces. The American people are great at giving lip service, especially since World War II, but we stop far short when it comes to sacrifice. Our president, who has committed so many men and women to danger, flies around the world dancing with dictators and making bad jokes. The hope of our time, the Democratic congress has sold out to the select few who own the nation's future and use it for their own retirement program.

Until we reach that point in our economic and political situation when we are willing to face the truth that if our government is going to do its job, protecting its citizens, we must face the truth and not listen to palatable political pabulum, we are doomed. Anyone who can read and think should read this work. Let's take a bold step and show the ridiculous religious right, the most dangerous of all right-wing groups, that a book of real quality can be a best seller in America again.