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The Limits of Power
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The Limits of Power

The End of American Exceptionalism

Andrew Bacevich
Metropolitan Books, 2008
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Eye Opening
  • Background

Recommendation

Author Andrew J. Bacevich dedicates this book to his son, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Bacevich has long been a strong conservative critic of U.S. policy in Iraq, but it’s difficult to escape the impression that the impassioned indictment set forth here draws on a deep reservoir of personal anguish. With unblinking, unwavering directness, he attacks the illusions, self-deceptions and hypocritical cant that he says have provided the atmosphere and background music for a U.S. orgy of profligate consumption at home and rapacious violence abroad. A leading “conservative historian,” Bacevich supports his case with remarkably well-chosen facts, anecdotes and quotations, without ever bogging down the reader in unnecessary detail. Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, getAbstract recommends his book to anyone interested in contemporary American history and events.

Summary

Endless War

The “peace dividend” that Americans expected after the Cold War never materialized. Instead, the U.S. embarked on a continuing, seemingly endless, series of wars, with boots on the ground or bombs in the air, or both, in the Caribbean, Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe, Africa and Central Asia. By the 1990s, America was “the indispensable nation,” responsible for managing a “Pax Americana” called “globalization.” America used soft means of persuasion but resorted to violence when it deemed that was necessary to defend its allies in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Defense Department did not, however, take responsibility for actually defending U.S. soil. Investigations after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed that no government department or institution took that duty. Instead, the Defense Department focused on applying force to make sure events in far-flung places did not disturb the American way of life. And what is that way of life? Freedom, of course – though no one has really defined what freedom means.

America has taken on the expansion and defense of freedom worldwide as its raison d’être. Reinhold Niebuhr, ...

About the Author

Former military officer Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. He wrote The New American Militarism and sits on the Council on Foreign Relations.

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