Andrew Bacevich visited Hamilton on Oct. 20 as a speaker in the Levitt Center's lecture series on the "Responsibilities of a Superpower." His lecture, titled "Reflections on American Militarism" was based on his most recent book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, which details the rise of the U.S. military and the consequences of this change.
The new American militarism is built on the belief that we have "managed to unlock the secrets of warfare and had created military instruments of unprecedented political effectiveness as well as operational efficiency," said Bacevich, who is the director of the Center on International Relations and a professor of international relations at Boston University.
The invasion of Afghanistan was originally thought to be an unprecedented victory, said Bacevich, "a victory that seemed to finish off the Taliban regime once and for all and to dispossess Al Queda from this sanctuary that it had used in planning the attacks on 9/11. If you fast forward to October 2005 it doesn't seem to be that neat." Bacevich contends that the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have "yielded something less than complete victory and have yielded what may be a quasi-permanent military responsibility."
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War has three main points, according to Bacevich. First, he states that Americans have become infatuated with military power in a way that differs from any other nation's militarism. Secondly, he tries to explain where this American militarism originated. The bulk of the book is dedicated to demonstrating that American militarism is not a new concept, but began in the 1960s and has grown in the last few decades. Finally, the book offers suggestions on "how to wean us from this infatuation and produce not military weakness or disarmament, but yield a more balanced view of military power," Bacevich said.
His book was published in 2005, but was completed in the summer of 2004. Bacevich's lecture focused on the changes in the political landscape during this time and how it affects the basic principles of his argument.
"We have not won and we may not be able to win, and the cost whether measured in human terms, economic terms, and diplomatic terms, are enormous," explained Bacevich.
The United States expected that "once we decided to go in, our allies would more or less be forced to get on the band wagon and support us," said Bacevich. "The administration is not making it up when they talk about the coalition. There are other modest forces. But the nations and the forces that we've traditionally expected to support us have bailed out."
Bacevich believes that U.S. aggression in the Middle East has harmed American military prestige: "I don't think our adversaries are impressed. In fact, they may well be encouraged because what we've done is to demonstrate the limits of American military power."
The rise of insurgency in Iraq has bolstered questions regarding the capability of the new American militarism. "The greatest military power the world has ever seen is stalemated in Iraq by a force of probably around 10,000 insurgents, who do not have stealth bombers and aircraft carriers, but are waging war with substantial skill and fairly primitive weapon," said Bacevich.
Bacevich noted that American soldiers are unable to handle the insurgency because there are about 140,000 soldiers in Iraq, a country with a population of 290 million. "They're being called upon to engage in a kind of fighting that the architects of the war foolishly never believed we'd have to confront."
The argument for more troops does not go very far. "We can't afford it," said Bacevich. "We already have a budget deficit and secondly, even if we had all the money in the world, we can't expand the force because no one wants to join."
President Bush wants to utilize troops to handle natural disasters and a possible flu epidemic, but the forces are not available to accommodate this. "We have a mismatch of means and ends," said Bacevich. "The president—essentially the most powerful man in the world—in fact, has very little power to close the gap in the ends and means mismatch.
Confidence in the American military soldier has also declined. "This is an uncomfortable point," said Bacevich, who graduated from West Point. "It's uncomfortable for me who used to be solider. I think it's uncomfortable for a lot of Americans who don't want to look this in the face."
Bachevich cites the Abu Gharib prison scandal, lack of senior responsibility, and the changing composition of the officer core. The prison scandal serves as an example of the failure experienced as a result of the stress of war, but "in my judgment, definitely worse than what they've done, is that essential nobody at the senior levels of command has been held accountable for any of this," he said. While the officer core motto is "duty and honor and country," the core has taken on a more specialized belief system. "The officer core has come to see itself as conservative in an ideological sense," said Bacevich, who also considers himself a conservative. "Officers see liberals as problematic, less than fully American, wrong. They see themselves not only as conservatives but increasingly as Republican." He noted the predominance of Evangelical Christians in the officer core at the Air Force Academy, and religious favoritism. "We should match those developments against the notion that puts soldiers on a pedestal," Bachevich said.
Despite anti-war marches and petitions, there has been no organized opposition to the Iraq War by the Democratic Party. "I think we all know why: they're a bunch of cowards," said Bacevich. "The Democrats are fearful of the political consequences of being tagged as being weak on defense or not supportive of U.S. soldiers."
Bacevich concluded by outlining three implications of the new American militarism. He believes the Bush Doctrine, which allows for preemptive war, is defunct; the mystique of the American military power has declined; and there might not be a real strategy for the global war on terror.
--by Katie Childs '08
