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Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War Hardcover – August 3, 2010

4.4 out of 5 stars 192

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The bestselling author of The Limits of Power critically examines the Washington consensus on national security and why it must change

For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel.

In a vivid, incisive analysis, Andrew J. Bacevich succinctly presents the origins of this consensus, forged at a moment when American power was at its height. He exposes the preconceptions, biases, and habits that underlie our pervasive faith in military might, especially the notion that overwhelming superiority will oblige others to accommodate America's needs and desires—whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods. And he challenges the usefulness of our militarism as it has become both unaffordable and increasingly dangerous.

Though our politicians deny it, American global might is faltering. This is the moment, Bacevich argues, to reconsider the principles which shape American policy in the world—to acknowledge that fixing Afghanistan should not take precedence over fixing Detroit. Replacing this Washington consensus is crucial to America's future, and may yet offer the key to the country's salvation.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

U.S. Army colonel turned academic, Bacevich (The Limits of Power) offers an unsparing, cogent, and important critique of assumptions guiding American military policy. These central tenets, the "Washington rules"--such as the belief that the world order depends on America maintaining a massive military capable of rapid and forceful interventions anywhere in the world--have dominated national security policy since the start of the cold war and have condemned the U.S. to "insolvency and perpetual war." Despite such disasters as America's defeat in Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis, the self-perpetuating policy is so entrenched that no president or influential critic has been able to alter it. Bacevich argues that while the Washington rules found their most pernicious expression in the Bush doctrine of preventive war, Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghan War is also cause for pessimism: "We should be grateful to him for making at least one thing unmistakably clear: to imagine that Washington will ever tolerate second thoughts about the Washington rules is to engage in willful self-deception. Washington itself has too much to lose."
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* The U.S. spends more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined and maintains 300,000 troops abroad in an “empire of bases,” all part of a credo of global leadership and a consensus that the U.S. must maintain a state of semiwar. The Washington consensus, across administrations dating back to the cold war, is that the world must be organized in alignment with American principles, even if it means using force. Bacevich, with background in the military at the rank of retired army colonel and the perspective afforded by academia, offers a vivid and critical analysis of the assumptions behind the credo of global leadership and eternal military vigilance that has become increasingly expensive and unsustainable. He details American misadventures from the Bay of Pigs to the invasion in Iraq, and the most prominent figures (“semiwarriors par excellence”) behind the credo, notably Allen Dulles, director of the CIA in the 1950s, and Curtis LeMay, director of the Strategic Air Command during the same period. The credo of global leadership and hyper-militarism is so ingrained and resilient in the U.S. psyche that it survived even the doubts that surfaced after the miserable failure of U.S. military might in Vietnam. Whatever their party or philosophy, all presidents want to project an image of toughness that has made them vulnerable to the credo, at great cost in American dollars and lives. Bacevich challenges Washington (the president, Congress, and the military industrial complex) as well as citizens to rethink the credo that has directed national security for generations. --Vanessa Bush

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (August 3, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805091416
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805091410
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1 x 8.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 192

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Andrew J. Bacevich
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Andrew J. Bacevich grew up in Indiana, graduated from West Point and Princeton, served in the army, became an academic, and is now a writer. He is the author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books, among them American Empire, The New American Militarism, The Limits of Power, Washington Rules, and Breach of Trust. His next book America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History is scheduled for publication in 2016.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
192 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2014
Bacevich scores a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with this scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the United States into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive posture of nearly perpetual war. These assumptions take the form of the "credo" -- which holds that the United States has the unique responsibility to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means it wants -- and the supporting "trinity" of requirements for the U.S. to maintain a global military presence, to configure its military forces for global power projection, and to counter threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.

Bacevich invites readers to consider how we would respond if China, for example, were to increase its military spending to the point that it surpassed the combined defense budgets of Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, Germany, France and Great Britain; created forward-deployed garrisons around the world; partitioned the globe into territorial (and space) commands, each with a Chinese four-star general in command; maintained a vigorous program of military exercises in countries around the world; and created a long-range strike force, capable of employing conventional, nuclear, or cyber weapons on short notice; and then points out that this imaginary Chinese program pales in comparison to the actual U.S. defense posture. Is it any surprise, Bacevich asks, that the United States now tends to see every problem around the world as requiring an American military solution, or that other countries don't necessarily take American altruism for granted?

Bacevich's final chapter -- titled, with a nod to Voltaire, "Cultivating our own Garden" -- makes a plea to reject the "Washington rules" that have led us to permanent war and return to our founding ideals. Our purpose, he argues, is not to shape the world in our image, but rather "to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." Neither isolationist nor naive, Bacevich argues forcefully that U.S. military forces should be used only as a last resort, and only in self-defense or in defense of our most vital interests. In short, he concludes, "if the United States has a saving mission, it is, first and foremost, to save itself."

Uncomfortable, subversive stuff indeed. An absolute must-read for anyone concerned with our future.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2016
Maybe it's because Col. Bacevich identifies many of the same problems I've been talking about since I went to Vietnam with the Army in the late 1960s, listening to the generals and the politicians tell us the problems with the war were not the result of our interventionist strategy itself but of a lack of sufficient troops, lack of support from the public at home, lack of international support, lack of proper counterinsurgency strategy (like the ever-popular "pacification" programs in which villages had to be destroyed to save them), etc. Maybe it's because the generals and politicians have been saying the same things in each of our idiotic interventions ever since. They ignore the stresses on the troops resulting from lack of a clear mission, being plunked down in hellish environments where you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys, while bemoaning the troops' use of drugs and alcohol. Maybe it's because those of us in the service with some intelligence background knew that the Soviet Union was crumbling from within in the mid-1970s. As I said back then, the Soviet Union was a country which was incapable of building a decent automobile -- and then turned to Fiat for help in doing so. We were aware of the paper capabilities of Soviet and Warsaw Pact military units, but equally aware that they had poor morale, as well as their own serious drug and alcohol problems, and that their equipment and technology were often less than reliable. (I spoke with a Soviet agricultural scientist at a national land grant university conference in 1978, who told me the Xerox machine was a huge edge for the U.S. just in research alone -- they had to go to libraries and take handwritten notes, which slowed the research process). Col. Bacevich personally saw what East Germany was like after the Wall came down, but we'd learned what life was like there in the Eastern Bloc in places like the Defense Language Institute. To his credit, once he discovered the truth of our mortal enemy's lack of clothing, he continued to examine, question, and identify the fundamental flaws in our policies of military and political intervention (like the overthrows of elected governments in Iran and Guatemala), our huge expenditures for hardware and intelligence-gathering, all of which began in the period after World War II and of which President Eisenhower warned us as he was leaving office (but did little to prevent when he had the authority). Col. Basevich's book is the clearest exposition of the fundamental problems with what has been a suicidal -- and financially ruinous --tendency to police the world, without understanding anything about our supposed enemies in any part of the world. His prose is lucid and compelling; his style pulls the reader into the narrative, and propels him or her from page to page. I've heard him speak on several occasions on television, and his books are just as intelligent as his speaking style. I've already purchased, and am well into, his "America's War for the Greater Middle East". My only question is, where were people like him when I was pulling what's left of my hair out the past five decades? He's deserving of applause -- and attention.
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Top reviews from other countries

Dr. Harald Hansluwka
4.0 out of 5 stars unbedingt lesenswert!
Reviewed in Germany on November 13, 2011
Correct as the author's diagnosis is, the less convincing his proposed treatment. Any effort to reduce the American empire to "manageable proportions" will encounter the opposition not only of Washington but also of all the poodles who depend on their masters good will. I suspect that B. himhelf entertains serious doubts that his call to the American people find receptive ears.
Glidd of Glood
5.0 out of 5 stars An unholy trinity for the land of the God-fearing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2010
Washington Rules is the book that you'd hope that everyone in power would read, especially in the western democracies, and of course in the USA. But they won't, and if they did, they'd ignore it. Especially in the USA. Andrew Bacevich is in no two minds about this, indeed his book even underlines the fact.

Written by a Boston history professor who in a previous existence was a professional American soldier with the rank of colonel, the book examines clearly and succinctly just what the US is up to as it performs its self-appointed role of global policeman and why it feels it necessary to perform this task at all.

Bacevich experienced an epiphany when, still in the army, he visited East Germany when the Wall came down. So this was the mighty foe he had spent his professional existence combating - a nation of run-down factories, crumbling infrastructure and antiquated cars. It dawned on him that the image he had been given of an all-powerful menace which might leap into aggressive action at any given moment, was something less than the truth. It sparked his own education, a desire to understand what were the mechanics behind US actions.

What he came up with, and what the book examines, was that the US has been acting for the entire post-war period under a credo which states that the US, and the US alone, should lead, save, liberate and ultimately transform the world, for such purposes as it sees fit, and in any way that it sees fit. This problematic credo - problematic for the rest of the globe, which hasn't much asked to be led, saved, liberated or transformed - is enacted through what Bacevich describes as a sacred trinity of global military presence, global power projection, and global interventionism. Suddenly, America's actions since WW2 all start to make sense. Taken together, the credo and the trinity make up what Bacevich terms the Washington Rules, which are so sacrosanct that changes of presidents and alternating parties in power have absolutely no effect on them - or how the US conducts itself abroad.

Bacevich must have been wasted in the army. His prose is clear, highly readable and written stylishly. His thesis is similarly well exposed, and easy to follow. As you accompany him through his synopsis of America's involvement in wars from Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan, all the elements of the jigsaw fall into place. His straw man imaginings of how we would all feel if China decided to act exactly as the US has done - military bases and personnel all around the globe, more military spending than the rest of the world put together, a stockpile of nuclear weapons that vastly exceeds anything that it could reasonably ever find a use for - are chilling. Could this not be how many of the world's inhabitants feel about US intentions?

The fact that the author has devoted a fair chunk of his adult life to toiling in the service of the Washington Rules only makes his narrative more credible.

So where will it all end? Bacevich implies, in bankruptcy. The level of US debt and the cost of servicing that debt, will mean that the prodigious amounts spent on "defence" are unsustainable over time. But the Washington Rules are so ingrained, and benefit the cabal of the powerful to such a degree, that they are unlikely to be abandoned until American society finally implodes and is sucked into a financial maelstrom. The author makes the point that if the Americans only spent their considerable wealth and resources on themselves and fixing their own society and leaving everyone else alone, they would all be a lot richer and happier. It is ironic that a country so increasingly obsessed with God and religion, who feel themselves to be the chosen ones, should be so impervious to the admonition to "remove the plank from your own eye before you attempt to remove the mote of dust from your neighbour's". But they just can't see it.

Does this book tell us what we didn't already know or at least strongly suspect? Not really, if you have any interest in this sort of thing. But Bacevich's contribution is in the clarity of his exposition. It is so limpid, you wonder just how the western world - with the British establishment foremost among it - can be so duped. As for the population of the US itself, with its Tea Parties, it's fundamentalism and its increasing drift to the right, it increasingly looks as if it is in some propaganda-injected stupor from which it might never awake. Don't expect global peace anytime soon.
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Ms Oya Bell
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2017
Clean copy, arrived on time.Thank you.
Rob D
3.0 out of 5 stars well argued and a clear summary of what we probably already knew,
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2014
Well parented and clearly argued analysis using the knowledge gained in a long military career. Not a new critique of us foreign policy but a worthwhile
Addition nonetheless
Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning'.....C. Hedges
Reviewed in Canada on July 19, 2011
Mankind is driven into the insanity of war through one of two forces; religion and nationalism that masks itself as religion. It is upon this second premise that the author, Andrew Bacevich, forms the basis of this book. With the advent of the Puritans, Americans saw themselves as exceptionalists. Exceptionalists insomuch that America was viewed as the New Jerusalem, its peoples were solely under the guidance of the divine and that we, as a people, had an obligation to spread the American spirit of freedom as far as we humanly could. While this credo had seen itself through Manifest Destiny, by the end of WWI, the USA, having fought the 'war to end all wars', was well prepared for an extended period of isolationism. WWII put a halt to that. But using this to its advantage, with both the advent and the successful end to this bloody period, the credo was reignited to become even brighter than its initial flickerings.

"Washington Rules" examines closely how this national spirit was been used and abused since that time. From the early workings of the CIA under Allen Dulles through the continuation of G.W.Bush's misadventures in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the American public has been duped into one incursion after another. These wars, according to the author, were stimulated and approved by the public mainly through the the idealism that was brought to US shores back in the 1600s and remain with us today. The author warns, however, that the manipulation of this credo by the government has lead us into war on a permanent basis.

While I agree with the author about these manipulations and can understand, because of his life experiences in the armed services, how they actively play on the national psyche, I do not feel that they, and they alone, are the driving force behind our nation's involvement in other countries and our imperialistic bent. No, this is only the visible portion of the matrix, the one we can see and identify. Eisenhower stated that we should beware the 'military industrial complex'. By that he simply meant that by the 1950s war had become a commodity and, being so, was created, manned and carried out in order to maintain the profits of this complex. This is truly the driving force behind the manipulation and propagandizing of the the American people into going into to countries behind the barrel of a gun, raping them of what resources they have and, in the meantime, convincing the public that it is because of an attack on a ship in the Gulf of Tonkin or a mass of WMDs being aimed at New York City or the threat that a band of covert and purposeless terrorists have on our country is why a new war was necessary in the first place. Through their manipulations anyone speaking our against our agressions are labeled as being traitorous or a left-wing idealogue. All this is done to merely have its people fall in line behind an new and imagined threat and another faceless enemy. Why else would the US set aside nearly half of its monies in these difficult times towards 'defense' purposes? Why else would we have private contractors (mercenaries) kill and maim foreigners while flying the American flag? And, lastly, why is it that the US has moved from a country that treats its citizens fairly to one that favors only the rich/ruling class.

Yes, "We have met the enemy and he is us" and "us" needs to wake up to not only to the eventuality of a permanent war but that we are being tricked into thinking that it is the patriotic thing to do! This country is driven by a select few group of men whose only goal is that of power and money. It is no longer the country in which fairness, equality and empathy are its driving forces. And it hasn't been since even before Eisenhower.
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