The book The Limits of Power: The End to American Exceptionalism was penned by a man named Andrew Bacevich. Mr. Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and went on to serve numerous years in the army. He fought in the Vietnam war, was deployed to posts in Germany, as well as serving in the Persian Gulf. Mr. Bacevich has a PhD in American diplomatic History and has taught at numerous universities. He has authored numerous book, this book in question is one of them. This book paints an awful bleak picture of American foreign policy and government. It is important to keep in mind, this book was written during Bush’s second presidency. Ultimately, his conclusion is that the United States should search for problems within its own borders instead of trying to fix issues outside of it. Three problems Mr. Bacevich seems to think are of particular importance are nuclear weapons, the national debt, and climate change.
This book is mostly concerned with why, not elaborating on the potential benefits of a more isolationist foreign policy. Mr. Bacevich has split this book up into three different sections labeled “The Crisis of Profligacy”, “The Political Crisis”, and the “The Military Crisis”. The first section makes the point on how Americans do not live within their means. America used to produce for the world, instead the world produces for America. Factories moved overseas, and America’s trade imbalance has continued to get more and more uneven. America has gone from creating to consuming. This is what is meant by a nation of consumption and not production. To back up this point he brings up a speech by President Carter that called on Americans to reduce their consumption, to which the response he received for his address was lukewarm at best. His opponent in the election, being Mr. Ronald Reagan, was committed to quite the opposite. President Carter would then go on to lose the election to Mr. Reagan. Mr. Bacevich uses this as evidence that Americans are too focused on consumption and do not want to compromise on their way of life, even if it may potential have disastrous consequences in the future.
In the next section the matter is political, and he claims there is a connection between America’s profligacy crisis and America’s political crisis. Mr. Bacevich claims that American foreign policy can be explained if you can understand this link. As Americans want more and more and their appetite grows larger and larger, the state is expanding abroad to meet those desires. The author notes the superficiality of the political parties. Quite explicitly using the word “theater” to describe the situation. It appears, as he claims, that promises for change are usually empty. An element which Mr. Bacevich thinks contributes to this is the fact that 93% of senators and representatives who were the incumbent won reelection in 2006. The congress has been willing to hand-over more and more authority to the presidency, this in turn creates what he calls the “imperial presidency”. He notes how the authority of the president has grown increasingly over the decades. As a result of all this, congress’ main function has become, “to ensure the reelection of its members, best achieved by shameless gerrymandering, doling out prodigious amounts of political pork, and seeing to the protection of certain vested interests” (69). Which, as he says, results in the “de facto one party state”, that is a legislative branch permanently controlled by the Incumbents’ Party.
The last chapter could be summarized as a description of supposed hubris by American officials. The creating of existential threats where really none exists. The overestimation of American military might. The overestimation of leadership. The overestimation of the track record of the United States military. The desire of the United States to impose its own image on distant parts of the world. Maybe most importantly, the ignorance, short-sightedness, and recklessness of American lawmakers. If you take just two instances which he lists in this section, one is the Bush doctrine and the other is about IEDs in Iraq. Mr. Bacevich defines the Bush doctrine as, “for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere. Only when the light of freedom’s untamed fire illuminates the world’s darkest corners will America’s own safety and prosperity be assured” (75). Which, to put another way, means for America’s national security to be secured, America needs to make sure that the rest of the world is living under a government that gives its citizens proper liberty (as defined by the United States itself). The author seems to think of this idea as not only vile, but internationally unpopular and untenable, the resulting buildup of American ideology, how it has developed over the decades. Another sort of anecdote which is given in this chapter is about the use of IEDs in Iraq. The United States invaded and occupied Iraq with some of the most advanced and expensive weaponry systems available at the time. Yet, something which gave the Americans tremendous difficulty in Iraq was something that could be built at the cost of a pizza. They were IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. As the years went on, the bombs just got better and better and America never did figure out a good way to deal with them. It illustrates two things, one is that conflict is unpredictable and you can expect that which is unpredictable, the other is that to solely depend on modern technology can only go so far. It is a cautionary tale and a good example of why a nation should be very careful how and with who it chooses to fight with.
Overall, I was left rather unconvinced. The overall sentiment is quite anti-American, but I think the biggest problem with people who talk like this is that they are not based in reality. Politics should not be about what is best, it is about picking between actually viable alternatives. During the Cold War the Soviets declared they would “support workers” internationally. The Soviet Union was a disaster politically, economically, and culturally. The American system may have its flaws, but traditional Communism is infinitely worse. Broadly speaking, I think you are crazy if you think that America was ethically in the wrong for engaging in the Cold War. His arguments are all about bad or misguided things which America has done, but he never compares it up against other countries. His focus and arguments solely rely on what is best for American citizens, and not the world. I also feel like he never quite addresses the benefits which America has gotten from its foreign policy “adventures”, and what would be lost if that were to cease.
The structure he paints of the US government makes it almost seem as if it is grossly incompetent from the top-down. Nobody in Washington seems to know what they are doing. Except, one has to exactly wonder who exactly he suggests power should be left in the hands of. In this book he simultaneously attacks the American people, attacks its “wise men”, and attacks its congressmen. Then I was amused how in one place he lambastes experts, then he goes on to talk down to the American people. Which is it? Clearly, he has little confidence in either. Much of the first section of the book is how Americans have no foresight, he says:
As an effort to reorient public policy, Carter’s appeal failed completely. Americans showed little enthusiasm for the president’s brand of freedom with its connotations of virtuous austerity. Presented with an alternative to quantitative solutions, to the search for “more,” they declined the offer. Not liking the message, Americans shot the messenger. Given the choice, more still looked better. (36)
The tone is condescending—he is clearly talking down to the American people. He has similar sarcasm and zingers reserved for experts and congress too. This would be coherent if he was attacking the American political system as a whole, but I get the impression that even despite of what he says he still fundamentally believes in what America is.
To expect an individual to completely act without self-interest would be asking the impossible. It is the same with countries. A country’s foreign policy should ideally be a combination of both bringing pleasure to the greatest number of people and self-interest. The most ideal condition is where a country is motivated to pursue a policy that is in the general interests of the greatest number of people, but also clearly benefits themselves as well. To rely on charity is a foolish expectation. I also think it is rather cheap to criticize a country’s foreign policy based on what is said on a nation’s propaganda paper, off-hand comments said by an official, or an expected widely viewed public address. It is quite similar to an individual going to a college campus and arguing with the students about politics, painting it as if these students are what everybody of this political bent thinks. It is a good way to influence the public, but it is not really true, and not even really a hard thing to do.
It begins with the very title of the book, I don’t know how many times I have heard this one. If you read the newspaper Russia Today then you would get the impression that America’s death is imminent every other day. The reality is, America has one of the greatest militarizes in the world, the strongest nation in the strongest military alliance in the world, depending on how you count economic metrics, America is the richest country in the world, the country which has by far the most cultural influence, a superpower, possesses the dollar, talent for technology and innovation, has some of the greatest colleges in the world, and has room to grow to a billion people. All of this is as true as it was a few decades ago. None of which appears to be going away anytime soon. America’s geography is second-to-none, is a large country perfectly situated with lots of beautiful land and is mostly impossible to invade. I think if you just step back a little you can see America has plenty going for it. I think sometimes people really underestimate the cultural impact, American cultural has almost penetrated every country on Earth. Even if America is not as influential as it was immediately after the Second World War, there are so many nations that can hardly help but look through things with an American political outlook. You could probably go so far as to say we live in a “post-American” age. The thing about American culture is that it is incredibly subversive, and once it really seeps into a society that society can not help but change.
A distinction needs to be made between what is strategically right and what is ethically right. Iraq was probably strategically a mistake, but can anybody really say that Hussein did not deserve his fate? Does anybody feel that overthrowing the Taliban was an ethically wrong thing to do? Again, let’s zoom out. If you look at the wars or conflicts that America fought or engaged in the 20th century, then the number is about 32. The number of those conflicts which America won was 24. That’s about 72 percent. I would say that’s far from a bad number. Those defeats are Russian Civil War, Vietnam War, Laotian Civil War, Permesta Rebellion, Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cambodian Civil War, Lebanon intervention, and first intervention in Somalia. For the sake of this list I am counting inconclusive as a victory because it was not a defeat. In the 21st century there have been 13 interventions. Four of them are ongoing. The two defeats are Afghanistan and Niger. Many of these interventions too can probably labeled as “half-hearted”, where they were generally small-scale and decisions that more involved the government than the general American public. Even despite of this, I do not know how anybody can look at this record and label it a bad one. Even the fact that America possesses the ability to influence these distant parts of the world is probably a good testament of its power and ability.
His conclusion that America should pursue an isolationist policy I do not disagree with, though the reasons are completely different. I think if you look at it from his outlook, then he has quite a bit of explaining left to do. Then, many of the arguments presented felt a bit exaggerated. I got a very partisan impression of this book; this book has arguments that are backed up with reason certainly, but feels quite polemical and that the author is personally invested in the subject. The tone is also very condescending. Mr. Bacevich seems to think quite highly of himself. If you take this book from a political standpoint, it seems to have accomplished its goal because it made it into classrooms. If you take it as a piece of academic work, feels like it has some shortcomings. He is a historian, but I do not quite feel he has the same grasp over human patterns and behaviors than other academics do. His comprehension I feel is not bad, just can not hold a flame to more mature historians and philosophers. For those seeking knowledge for its own sake or pleasure, this book may be best forgotten. Politically, we both share two common points that it seems both me and him are not leftist and do not enjoy American moralizing abroad. If this book can steer even a few people away from both of these things, then I think this book was one worth written.
