The End of American Exceptionalism

by David Gordon
by David Gordon

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. By Andrew J. Bacevich. Metropolitan Books, 2008. 206 pages.

Andrew Bacevich has written a powerful but flawed criticism of American foreign policy. Both an academic historian and a professional soldier, he is exceptionally qualified to undertake such a critique.

He begins his indictment from an indisputable fact. America has commitments all over the world, but we proved unable to defend ourselves against the assault of 9/11. By allowing empire to trump defense, what Bacevich calls the "national security state" failed miserably.

A political elite preoccupied with the governance of empire paid little attention to protecting the United States itself. In practical terms, prior to 9/11 the mission of homeland defense was unassigned. The institution nominally referred to as the Department of Defense didn't actually do defense; it specialized in power projection. (p. 5)

Bacevich contends that this failing reflects not merely the defects of the Bush administration, though he addresses these in detail, but the whole course of long-established American foreign policy.

Four core conditions inform this ideology of national security… [1] history has an identifiable and indisputable purpose… [2] the United States has always embodied, and continues to embody, freedom… [3] Providence summons America to ensure freedom's ultimate triumph… [4] for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere. (pp. 74–5)

The key idea, the core of the core, is in my view collective security, i.e., the contention that any threat around the world to "freedom" threatens America's security. Traditional American foreign policy, exemplified in Washington's Farewell Address, rejected this position. America, favored by its geographical position, could avoid involvement in European power politics. In the twentieth century, Charles Beard ably challenged the basis of the collective-security doctrine in American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940 and other books. (Bacevich does not discuss Beard in the present book, but he has written about him sympathetically in his American Empire.)

Bacevich unfortunately disagrees: he thinks that America has always aimed at empire. The Farewell Address merely reflected America's temporarily weak position: "George Washington had dreamed of the day when the United States might acquire the strength sufficient 'to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes'" (p. 28). No doubt Washington did hope for enhanced American power, but it hardly follows from this that insulation from European struggles was intended as a temporary expedient. In suggesting otherwise, Bacevich unwisely follows the interpretation of the warhawk Robert Kagan. (Bacevich never refers to Kagan's book, and he elsewhere sharply criticizes his views on Iraq; but his unusual interpretation of the Farewell Address is identical with Kagan's.) Like Kagan, he confuses continental expansion with empire and great power politics. In what way does the former imply the key doctrine of collective security?

What is wrong with the foreign policy of the national security state? Bacevich argues that, far from promoting America's safety, the policy embroils us in dangerous disputes that weaken us. America's military presence in the Persian Gulf is a prime example:

Far more than any of his predecessors, Reagan led the United States down the road to Persian Gulf perdition. History will hold George W. Bush primarily responsible for the disastrous Iraq War of 2003. But if that war had a godfather, it was Ronald Reagan… [whose] real achievement in the Persian Gulf was to make a down payment on an enterprise destined to consume tens of thousands of lives, many American, many others not, along with hundreds of billions of dollars – to date, at least, the ultimate expression of American profligacy. (pp. 49, 52)

Though Bacevich is a political conservative, it is apparent that he holds Reagan, usually viewed as a paragon of the Right, in contempt. He denies that Reagan was a genuine conservative. He promised to curtail government but instead expanded it:

during the Carter years, the federal deficit had averaged $54.5 billion annually. During the Reagan era, deficits skyrocketed, averaging $210.6 billion over the course of Reagan's two terms in office. Overall federal spending nearly doubled, from $590.9 billion in 1980 to $1.14 trillion in 1989. The federal government did not shrink. It grew, the bureaucracy swelling by nearly 5 percent while Reagan occupied the White House. (p. 39)

Carter, though normally considered far to the left of Reagan, was substantially less a spendthrift.

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