A Military History By Andrew J. Bacevich Illustrated. 453 pp. Random House. $30. In the opening chapter of his latest book, the military historian Andrew J. Bacevich blames Jimmy Carter, a president commonly viewed as more meek than martial, for unwittingly spawning 35 years of American military intervention in the Middle East. Bacevich argues that three mistakes by Carter set precedents that led to decades of squandered American lives and treasure.
First, Carter called on Americans to stop worshiping self-indulgence and consumption and join a nationwide effort to conserve energy. Self-sacrifice, he argued in what is now widely derided as Carters malaise speech, would free Americans from their dependence on foreign oil and help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country.
The president came across as more hectoring pastor than visionary leader, Bacevich argues in Americas War for the Greater Middle East. His guileless approach squandered an opportunity to persuade Americans reeling from high foreign oil prices to trade dependence for autonomy.
Carters second mistake was authorizing American support to guerrillas fighting a Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, a move that eventually helped fuel the spread of radical Islam. Finally, in a misguided effort to counter views that he was too soft, Carter declared that the United States would respond with military force to any outside effort to seize Persian Gulf oil fields. This statement, subsequently enshrined as the Carter Doctrine, inaugurated Americas war for the greater Middle East, Bacevich writes.
This book, Bacevichs eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals, journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carters late 1970s missteps to Barack Obamas widespread use of assassination by drone strike today.
Washingtons penchant for intervention, Bacevich contends, is driven by more than Americas thirst for oil or the military-industrial complexs need for new enemies. In addition to these two factors, he argues that a deeply pernicious collective naïveté among both Republicans and Democrats spawns interventions doomed by confusion and incoherence.
Continue reading the main story
FROM OUR ADVERTISERS
The ultimate responsibility for the United States actions lies with an oblivious American public engrossed in shallow digital enthusiasms and the worship of celebrity, Bacevich writes. Americans support freedom, democracy and prosperity in other nations, he tells us, as long as they get the lions share of it. Ensuring that Americans enjoy their rightful quota (which is to say, more than their fair share) of freedom, abundance and security comes first, Bacevich says. Everything else figures as an afterthought.
Bacevichs argument is heavy-handed at times, but when he writes about military strategy, he is genuinely incisive. Citing numerous examples, he convincingly argues that destructive myths about the efficacy of American military power blind policy makers, generals and voters. The use of overwhelming lethal force does not immediately cause dictators or terrorists to turn tail and run, even if thats what politicians in Washington want to believe. Rather, it often leads to resentment, chaos and resistance.
A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. Getting serious also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal agents of U.S. policy, Bacevich writes. Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse would be true.
In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy, wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict.
From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war.
Book Review Newsletter Sign up to receive a preview of each Sundays Book Review, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between, Bacevich writes. Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated a lack of both competence and determination. The historical forces at work in the Middle East are different from the dynamics that led to American victories in World War II and the Cold War. American officials have failed to understand that. Whats more, a deluded Washington foreign policy establishment believes that an American way of life based on consumption and choice will be accepted over time in the Islamic world.
But it is here, in his description of the Islamic world, that Bacevich stumbles. What is missing in this book about the greater Middle East are the people of the greater Middle East. Bacevichs most highly developed Muslim character in these pages is Saddam Hussein. The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai is a distant second. Beyond those two, the rest of the worlds estimated 1.6 billion Muslims come across as two-dimensional caricatures.
And so Bacevich lumps together vastly different nationalities from Bosnians to Iraqis to Somalis often referring to all of them primarily as Muslims. The dizzying complexities of each countrys history, politics, culture, resources and rivalries are missing. And when it comes to how Muslims view the world, Bacevich veers into the simplistic essentialism that he accuses Washington policy makers of following.
Bacevich suggests that in the Islamic world lifestyles based on consumption and choice might not work. Such broad-brush statements might well be considered simplistic and even bigoted if applied to other faiths. Can one contend that a Christian world, Hindu world or Jewish world exists? Are such generalizations analytically useful? Do the worlds hundreds of millions of Muslims practice their faith identically?
As a result of this essentialism, Bacevich glosses over a vital point about the Middle East today: A historic and brutal struggle between radicals and modernists for the future of the region is underway. One can argue that the United States has no place in that fight, but making sweeping generalizations about Muslims as Bacevich does limits our understanding of the forces at work in the region. It also plays into the hands of extremists who seek to divide the world by faith.
In the most troubling passage of the book, Bacevich breezily questions pluralism itself. According to one of the prevailing shibboleths of the present age, this commingling of cultures is inherently good, he writes. It fosters pluralism, thereby enriching everyday life. Yet cultural interaction also induces friction, whether spontaneously generated or instigated by demagogues and provocateurs.
We do live in a dangerous world, but it is also an inevitably interconnected one. The commingling of cultures cannot be stopped. Nor should it be.
For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevichs call for Americans to rethink their nations militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential.
David Rohde is the national security investigations editor for Reuters and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.