Page 2 of 2 BOOK EXCERPT How Washington rules From Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War by Andrew
Bacevich
Had I been insufficiently attentive? Or was it possible that I had been
snookered all along? Contemplating such questions, while simultaneously
witnessing the unfolding of the "long 1990s" - the period bookended by two wars
with Iraq when American vainglory reached impressive new heights - prompted the
realization that I had grossly misinterpreted the threat posed by America's
adversaries. Yet that was the lesser half of the problem. Far worse than
misperceiving "them" was the fact that I had misperceived "us". What I thought
I knew best I actually understood least. Here, the need for education appeared
especially acute.
President George W Bush's decision to launch Operation Iraqi
Freedom in 2003 pushed me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed
elementary - above all, claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of
American power - now appeared preposterous. The contradictions that found an
ostensibly peace-loving nation committing itself to a doctrine of preventive
war became too great to ignore. The folly and hubris of the policy makers who
heedlessly thrust the nation into an ill-defined and open-ended "global war on
terror" without the foggiest notion of what victory would look like, how it
would be won, and what it might cost approached standards hitherto achieved
only by slightly mad German warlords. During the era of containment, the United
States had at least maintained the pretense of a principled strategy; now, the
last vestiges of principle gave way to fantasy and opportunism. With that, the
worldview to which I had adhered as a young adult and carried into middle age
dissolved completely.
Credo and Trinity
What should stand in the place of such discarded convictions? Simply inverting
the conventional wisdom, substituting a new Manichean paradigm for the old
discredited version - the United States taking the place of the Soviet Union as
the source of the world's evil - would not suffice. Yet arriving at even an
approximation of truth would entail subjecting conventional wisdom, both
present and past, to sustained and searching scrutiny. Cautiously at first but
with growing confidence, this I vowed to do.
Doing so meant shedding habits of conformity acquired over decades. All of my
adult life I had been a company man, only dimly aware of the extent to which
institutional loyalties induce myopia. Asserting independence required first
recognizing the extent to which I had been socialized to accept certain things
as unimpeachable. Here then were the preliminary steps essential to making
education accessible. Over a period of years, a considerable store of debris
had piled up. Now, it all had to go. Belatedly, I learned that more often than
not what passes for conventional wisdom is simply wrong. Adopting fashionable
attitudes to demonstrate one's trustworthiness - the world of politics is flush
with such people hoping thereby to qualify for inclusion in some inner circle -
is akin to engaging in prostitution in exchange for promissory notes. It's not
only demeaning but downright foolhardy.
Washington Rules aims to take stock of conventional wisdom in its most
influential and enduring form, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and
precepts that have defined the tradition of statecraft to which the United
States has adhered since the end of World War II - the era of global dominance
now drawing to a close. This postwar tradition combines two components, each
one so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all
but disappeared from view.
The first component specifies norms according to which the international order
ought to work and charges the United States with responsibility for enforcing
those norms. Call this the American credo. In the simplest terms, the credo
summons the United States - and the United States alone - to lead, save,
liberate, and ultimately transform the world. In a celebrated manifesto issued
at the dawn of what he termed "The American Century", Henry R Luce made the
case for this spacious conception of global leadership. Writing in Life
magazine in early 1941, the influential publisher exhorted his fellow citizens
to "accept wholeheartedly our duty to exert upon the world the full impact of
our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit".
Luce thereby captured what remains even today the credo's essence.
Luce's concept of an American Century, an age of unquestioned American global
primacy, resonated, especially in Washington. His evocative phrase found a
permanent place in the lexicon of national politics. (Recall that the
neoconservatives who, in the 1990s, lobbied for more militant policies, named
their enterprise the Project for a New American Century.) So, too, did Luce's
expansive claim of prerogatives to be exercised by the United States. Even
today, whenever public figures allude to America's responsibility to lead, they
signal their fidelity to this creed. Along with respectful allusions to God and
"the troops," adherence to Luce's credo has become a de facto prerequisite for
high office. Question its claims and your prospects of being heard in the
hubbub of national politics become nil.
Note, however, that the duty Luce ascribed to Americans has two components. It
is not only up to Americans, he wrote, to choose the purposes for which they
would bring their influence to bear, but to choose the means as well. Here we
confront the second component of the postwar tradition of American statecraft.
With regard to means, that tradition has emphasized activism over example, hard
power over soft, and coercion (often styled "negotiating from a position of
strength") over suasion. Above all, the exercise of global leadership as
prescribed by the credo obliges the United States to maintain military
capabilities staggeringly in excess of those required for self-defense. Prior
to World War II, Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions
with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake of World War II, that
changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American
identity.
By the midpoint of the 20th century, "the Pentagon" had ceased to be merely a
gigantic five-sided building. Like "Wall Street" at the end of the 19th
century, it had become Leviathan, its actions veiled in secrecy, its reach
extending around the world. Yet while the concentration of power in Wall Street
had once evoked deep fear and suspicion, Americans by and large saw the
concentration of power in the Pentagon as benign. Most found it reassuring.
A people who had long seen standing armies as a threat to liberty now came to
believe that the preservation of liberty required them to lavish resources on
the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about
falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a
position of overall primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy
no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper of national debate, unambiguous and
perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate to global
leadership.
Every great military power has its distinctive signature. For Napoleonic
France, it was the levee en masse - the people in arms animated by the ideals
of the Revolution. For Great Britain in the heyday of empire, it was command of
the seas, sustained by a dominant fleet and a network of far-flung outposts
from Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore and Hong Kong. Germany
from the 1860s to the 1940s (and Israel from 1948 to 1973) took another
approach, relying on a potent blend of tactical flexibility and operational
audacity to achieve battlefield superiority.
The abiding signature of American military power since World War II has been of
a different order altogether. The United States has not specialized in any
particular type of war. It has not adhered to a fixed tactical style. No single
service or weapon has enjoyed consistent favor. At times, the armed forces have
relied on citizen-soldiers to fill their ranks; at other times, long-service
professionals. Yet an examination of the past 60 years of - military policy and
practice does reveal important elements of continuity. Call them the sacred
trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international
peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military
presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter
existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global
interventionism.
Together, credo and trinity - the one defining purpose, the other practice -
constitute the essence of the way that Washington has attempted to govern and
police the American Century. The relationship between the two is symbiotic. The
trinity lends plausibility to the credo's vast claims. For its part, the credo
justifies the trinity's vast requirements and exertions. Together they provide
the basis for an enduring consensus that imparts a consistency to - policy
regardless of which political party may hold the upper hand or who may be
occupying the White House. From the era of Harry Truman to the age of Barack
Obama, that consensus has remained intact. It defines the rules to which
Washington adheres; it determines the precepts by which Washington rules.
As used here, Washington is less a geographic expression than a set of
interlocking institutions headed by people who, whether acting officially or
unofficially, are able to put a thumb on the helm of state. Washington, in this
sense, includes the upper echelons of the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches of the federal government. It encompasses the principal components of
the national security state - the departments of Defense, State, and, more
recently, Homeland Security, along with various agencies comprising the
intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Its ranks extend to
select think tanks and interest groups. Lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, former
officials, and retired military officers who still enjoy access are members in
good standing. Yet Washington also reaches beyond the Beltway to include big
banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major
corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York
Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. With rare exceptions, acceptance of the
Washington rules forms a prerequisite for entry into this world.
My purpose in writing Washington Rules is fivefold: first, to trace the
origins and evolution of the Washington rules - both the credo that inspires
consensus and the trinity in which it finds expression; second, to subject the
resulting consensus to critical inspection, showing who wins and who loses and
also who foots the bill; third, to explain how the Washington rules are
perpetuated, with certain views privileged while others are declared
disreputable; fourth, to demonstrate that the rules themselves have lost what
ever utility they may once have possessed, with their implications increasingly
pernicious and their costs increasingly unaffordable; and finally, to argue for
readmitting disreputable (or "radical") views to our national security debate,
in effect legitimating alternatives to the status quo. In effect, my aim is to
invite readers to share in the process of education on which I embarked two
decades ago in Berlin.
The Washington rules were forged at a moment when American influence and power
were approaching their acme. That moment has now passed. The United States has
drawn down the stores of authority and goodwill it had acquired by 1945. Words
uttered in Washington command less respect than once was the case. Americans
can ill afford to indulge any longer in dreams of saving the world, much less
remaking it in our own image. The curtain is now falling on the American
Century.
Similarly, the United States no longer possesses sufficient wherewithal to
sustain a national security strategy that relies on global military presence
and global power projection to underwrite a policy of global interventionism.
Touted as essential to peace, adherence to that strategy has propelled the
United States into a condition approximating perpetual war, as the military
misadventures of the past decade have demonstrated.
To anyone with eyes to see, the shortcomings inherent in the Washington rules
have become plainly evident. Although those most deeply invested in
perpetuating its conventions will insist otherwise, the tradition to which
Washington remains devoted has begun to unravel. Attempting to prolong its
existence might serve Washington's interests, but it will not serve the
interests of the American people.
Devising an alternative to the reigning national security paradigm will pose a
daunting challenge - especially if Americans look to "Washington" for fresh
thinking. Yet doing so has become essential.
In one sense, the national security policies to which Washington so insistently
adheres express what has long been the preferred American approach to engaging
the world beyond our borders. That approach plays to America's presumed strong
suit - since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War,
thought to be military power. In another sense, this reliance on military might
creates excuses for the United States to avoid serious engagement: confidence
in American arms has made it unnecessary to attend to what others might think
or to consider how their aspirations might differ from our own. In this way,
the Washington rules reinforce American provincialism - a national trait for
which the United States continues to pay dearly.
The persistence of these rules has also provided an excuse to avoid serious
self-engagement. From this perspective, confidence that the credo and the
trinity will oblige others to accommodate themselves to America's needs or
desires - whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods - has
allowed Washington to postpone or ignore problems demanding attention here at
home. Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing
Cleveland and Detroit. Purporting to support the troops in their crusade to
free the world obviates any obligation to assess the implications of how
Americans themselves choose to exercise freedom.
When Americans demonstrate a willingness to engage seriously with others,
combined with the courage to engage seriously with themselves, then real
education just might begin.
Andrew J Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations
at Boston University. His new book, Washington Rules: America's Path to
Permanent War (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. This essay is its
introduction.
Excerpted from
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, published this month
by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright (c)
2010 by Andrew Bacevich. All rights reserved.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
