Dr. Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American diplomatic history from Princeton. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins.
Bacevich is the author of several books, to include The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008), The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005) and American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy (2002). He is the editor of The Long War: A New History of U. S. National Security Policy since World War II (2007) and Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire (2003). His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest publications to include The Atlantic Monthly, The Wilson Quarterly, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times among other newspapers. Bacevich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The criticism of Obama's foreign and national security policies coming from some on the Right seems overheated. Yet recall the way that many on the Left assailed G. W. Bush for his foreign and national security policies: the criticism was just as fierce and impassioned. The notion that "politics stops at the water's edge" has been a myth for decades. But the issue is not simply one of hyper-partisanship. There are genuine, substantive differences that divide the noisy Right and the noisy Left. Above all, there is a dispute centered on the question of military power and its uses. The… Read more
We cannot possibly have a useful debate about future strategy without a clear-eyed understanding of the past. We need to stop kidding ourselves: Whatever utility "containment" may once have possessed as a descriptor of postwar US strategy, that utility has long since vanished. The sequence of events that landed us in today's Long War -- a sequence that began in 1945 when FDR's famously met with King Ibn Saud in the Great Bitter Lake -- cannot possibly be explained under the rubric of containment. Dealing with the threat posed by the Soviet Union was but one consideration among many that… Read more
Bob Killebrew pays more attention to Latin America than I do. But in describing Chavez as an "increasing threat to core American interests" could he bring us up to date about Venezuela's order of battle? Carrier battle groups? Mechanized divisions? Long range ballistic missiles? Weapons of mass destruction? Just wondering. Why does the "return of the Left" in Latin America concern the United States? Latin America's experiment with the Right -- the Washington Consensus -- seems not to have provided a solution to the region's problems. Why not give the Left a chance? Frankly, who cares? Why not let Latin… Read more
The ongoing economic crisis will not itself determine the winners and losers of international politics. Its significance lies in helping us appreciate the larger forces at work that are in fact propelling some nations on an upward trajectory while others are in decline. It clears away the fog that accumulated in the wake of the Cold War when all the smart talk was about unipolarity, hyperpower, globalization, and benign global hegemony administered by the United States. Events have now revealed all of this as so much blather -- a salutary development. Connect the dots between the economic crisis and… Read more
Choosing the question of the week is the prerogative of those who moderate this blog. With all due respect, I do not believe they are exercising their prerogative wisely. This has been my impression for some time now. This week's question illustrates the problem in spades. For the United States at this point to fixate on how to "win" in Afghanistan (your quotes -- and they are indeed appropriate) is the equivalent of present-day GM executives devoting themselves to the cause of building a better Hummer. The question serves little purpose other than to divert attention from other far more… Read more
I've just finished reading an advance copy of David Kilcullen's forthcoming "The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One." Official publication date is March 2009. I've got some reservations about the book, which I will lay out in a review. Suffice it to say here that it is a very important and exceptionally well-informed analysis of the so-called global war on terror. Kilcullen makes plain the strategic bankruptcy informing that entire enterprise. … Read more
Obama's big challenge, one that he will face on day one, will be to avoid having his administration hijacked by the succession of "crises" demanding his attention. There will be no "change" -- at least none on the scale that his most fervent supporters look to him to achieve -- unless Obama jettisons the conceptual framework received from his predecessors. A necessary first step will be to repudiate the global war on terror, stating plainly what has become all but self-evident over the past half-dozen years: open-ended global war as a response to violent Islamic radicalism is a dumb idea… Read more
Related Link: http://www.bu.edu/ir/faculty/bacevich.html
