BOOK REVIEW The warfare state Washington Rules by Andrew J Bacevich
By Jim Ash
The effete liberal intellectual is one of the favorite straw men for the
right-wing branch of the American establishment. In fact, for defenders of
triumphant US militarism, an attack by a member of the ''radical'' left is
almost welcome. They simply have to label the critic - who probably teaches at
an eastern university and wears glasses - an America-hating snob who doesn't
support the troops. Implicit in this attack on the speaker (instead of the
argument - the right wing never met a logical fallacy it didn't like) is the
assumption that our academic spent the '60s smoking pot and burning flags, and
could probably do with a salutary punch in the nose. And who cares what that
wimp says?
With this in mind, it's clear that a former military man who now
questions the catechisms of US power is a problem for the perception managers.
The neo-conservative editorial-writer can't impugn the patriotism of someone
who served his country. (This is particularly true for the many US neo-cons who
conveniently avoided fighting the Vietnam War.)
And forget about threatening to hit this critic if his arguments get under your
skin, as William F Buckley famously threatened Gore Vidal in 1968. Your average
Fox News blowhard probably doesn't want to tangle with someone who was trained
in unarmed combat.
Worst of all, the former warrior has insights into the system in which he
served. He or she can shine light into corners of policy that the Pentagon and
its apologists would prefer were kept darkened. This is exactly what Andrew J
Bacevich, a former US army colonel, does in his excellent Washington Rules:
America's Path to Permanent War. Bacevich lays out the rarely spoken
assumptions that have come to guide US foreign policy since the end of World
War II. He then details how these assumptions have led the country into a
series of wars that didn't need to be fought, and have culminated in a war that
seemingly can't be ended.
For Bacevich, there are four essential premises that have led the US to become
a permanent warfare state. One: the world must be shaped. Two: only the United
States is capable of doing this. Three: only the US has the right to do so
because it is intrinsically good. Four: the rest of the world accepts these
principles - and countries that don't are ''evil empires'' or ''rogue states''.
These four principles comprise what Bacevich calls the national security
consensus, or credo. They are the "Washington rules".
From the principles flows the practice. The consensus has resulted in the
enshrining of what Bacevich calls the sacred trinity of US military practice: a
global military presence; the ability to project power anywhere in the world;
and a penchant for intervention abroad by force. This trinity keeps America in
a constant state of crisis, in what James Forrestal, the first US defense
secretary, called a state of ''semiwar''. Bacevich writes:
Conceived by
Forrestal at the beginning of the Cold War, and reflecting his own
anticommunist obsessions, semiwar defines a condition in which great dangers
always threaten the United States, and will continue doing so into the
indefinite future. When not actively engaged in hostilities, the nation faces
the prospect of hostilities beginning at any moment, with little or no warning.
In the setting of national priorities, readiness to act becomes a supreme
value.
In Bacevich's view, semiwar has been a debacle, both
for the US and for the world at large. For Americans, it has resulted in
obscene - and unaffordable - levels of defense spending, a military that has
far too much power over US policy and a succession of real wars that cost many
lives and much treasure, but have done little to really advance American
interests in the world.
This is to say nothing of the suffering US foreign policy has inflicted on
non-Americans. Bacevich doesn't spend a lot of time on this subject, although
it seems clear enough that he thinks his country has plenty to answer for
abroad. At one point in Washington Rules, he discusses a famous moment
in 1996 when Madeleine Albright - then permanent representative to the United
Nations - was asked about a report that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a
result of US sanctions against the country. ''It's a hard choice,'' she
replied. ''But I think, we think, it's worth it.'' For Bacevich, this comment
is very revealing:
Albright's response once again expressed a
perspective that enjoyed wide currency and that still remains central to the
Washington consensus. American purposes are by definition enlightened... The
pursuit of exalted ends empowers the United States to employ whatever means it
deems necessary. If US-enforced sanctions had indeed caused the deaths of
500,000 Iraqi children, at least those children had died in a worthy cause.
This was not cynicism or hypocrisy on Albright's part. It was conviction
encased in an implacable sense of righteousness.
But it is not
just civilian casualties that US policymakers are unconcerned with. For
Bacevich, there is no outcome - no matter how disastrous - that will make the
American establishment question either the premises of the Washington
consensus, or the sacred military trinity that they underpin.
He shows this clearly in his analysis of three American wars: Vietnam and the
invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Vietnam War ended up
devastating three countries, turned the US into a debtor nation and crippled
the American army as a fighting force for years afterward. The invasion of Iraq
quickly became a bloody quagmire that cost endless dollars and lives but served
only to increase the influence in that country of Iran - the US archenemy du
jour. And after a quick, painless (for the West, at least) victory over
the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US and a shrinking list of its allies are now
bogged down in a brutal counter-insurgency, employing tactics that Bacevich
argues were discredited during the Vietnam War.
Have US elites learned anything from all this? Not a chance, Bacevich says.
Soon after the last Americans left Vietnam, the process of whitewashing what
happened there began. The gospel now is that the US failed in Vietnam because
it couldn't get the formula quite right. It made specific errors in how it
employed its power there, errors that saw a worthy undertaking derailed. But
the consensus of American exceptionalism, of American power as a moral force
with a duty to reshape the world, survived intact.
Fast-forward to today, Washington Rules argues, and you see the same
process at work. The US history of its Iraqi adventure is already being
rewritten around what Bacevich sees as the mythology of the ''surge''. And an
appropriate narrative for the Afghan war is sure to follow.
Propelled by Bacevich's terse, active prose, Washington Rules is an easy
read. And for such a short book, it's a surprisingly deep examination of US
military history since World War II. But it doesn't satisfactorily answer the
larger question of why America can't put an end to its permanent national
emergency, its perpetual semiwar. Why do US elites, both military and civilian,
keep believing in the credo and the trinity, no matter what the cost? Are they
deluded or disingenuous? Or put another way, do they really believe their own
bullshit?
Bacevich seems torn on this question. We have seen him describe Albright as
neither a cynic nor a hypocrite. And he gives the impression that other key US
figures - like Eisenhower-era CIA chief Allen Dulles and air-force nuclear
warrior Curtis LeMay - were true believers, whatever their other faults. But he
also, in a single paragraph in the book's conclusion, tells us who benefits
from the Washington rules. His answer: Washington does. Believing the credo and
accepting the trinity delivers ''profit, power and privilege to a long list of
beneficiaries'' inside the US establishment, Bacevich writes. But if this is
so, are we supposed to accept that all of Washington's spear-carriers really
believe the gospel that they preach?
If there is ambiguity in Bacevich's position (and to be fair, his other books
may resolve it), perhaps it is because the author is wary of moving too far
into the territory of the most famous academic critics of US power, such as
Chomsky and Michael Parenti. For them, there is nothing bungled about American
foreign policy. Its goal is to advance corporate capitalism, in the United
States and abroad.
Under this reading, as long as the rich elites of the world make out - which
they are doing more than ever today - it doesn't matter how many of the little
people get stepped on, or how much chaos ensues in the US or anywhere else. In
parts of Washington Rules, Bacevich leans toward this position, but he
refuses to come down from the fence.
Jim Ash is a Canadian writer and editor.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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
Worst of all, the former warrior has insights into the system in which he
served. He or she can shine light into corners of policy that the Pentagon and
its apologists would prefer were kept darkened. This is exactly what Andrew J
Bacevich, a former US army colonel, does in his excellent Washington Rules:
America's Path to Permanent War. Bacevich lays out the rarely spoken
assumptions that have come to guide US foreign policy since the end of World
War II. He then details how these assumptions have led the country into a
series of wars that didn't need to be fought, and have culminated in a war that
seemingly can't be ended.
