American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy

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American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy Pub. Date: 11/28/2002 Publisher: Harvard University Press

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Overview

In a challenging, provocative book, Andrew Bacevich reconsiders the assumptions and purposes governing the exercise of American global power. Examining the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton—as well as George W. Bush's first year in office—he demolishes the view that the United States has failed to devise a replacement for containment as a basis for foreign policy. He finds instead that successive post-Cold War administrations have adhered to a well-defined "strategy of openness." Motivated by the imperative of economic expansionism, that strategy aims to foster an open and integrated international order, thereby perpetuating the undisputed primacy of the world's sole remaining superpower. Moreover, openness is not a new strategy, but has been an abiding preoccupation of policymakers as far back as Woodrow Wilson.

Although based on expectations that eliminating barriers to the movement of trade, capital, and ideas nurtures not only affluence but also democracy, the aggressive pursuit of openness has met considerable resistance. To overcome that resistance, U.S. policymakers have with increasing frequency resorted to force, and military power has emerged as never before as the preferred instrument of American statecraft, resulting in the progressive militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Neither indictment nor celebration, American Empire sees the drive for openness for what it is—a breathtakingly ambitious project aimed at erecting a global imperium. Large questions remain about that project's feasibility and about the human, financial, and moral costs that it will entail. By penetrating the illusions obscuring the reality of U.S. policy, this book marks an essential first step toward finding the answers.

What People Are Saying

The United States could not possibly have an empire, Americans think. But we do. And with verve and telling insight Andrew Bacevich shows how it works and what it means.

Michael S. Sherry

This deeply informed, impressive polemical book is precisely what Americans, in and outside of the academy, needed before 9/11 and need now even more. Crisp, lively, biting prose will help them enjoy it. Among its many themes are hubris, hegemony, and the fatuousness of claims by the American military that they can now achieve 'transparency' in war-making.
— Michael S. Sherry, Northwestern University

Ronald Steel

The United States could not possibly have an empire, Americans think. But we do. And with verve and telling insight Andrew Bacevich shows how it works and what it means.
— Ronald Steel, author of Temptations of a Superpower: America's Foreign Policy after the Cold War

Walter A. McDougall

I have long suspected our nation's triumphs and trials owed much to the American genius for solipsism and self-deception. Bacevich has convinced me of it by holding up a mirror to self-styled idealists and realists alike. Read all the books you want about the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, just be sure American Empire is one of them.
— Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, University of Pennsylvania

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

This small book's analysis of America's foreign policy in the post-Cold War era is unfortunately being eclipsed by current events. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, interprets America as the new Rome: committed to maintaining and expanding an empire acquired by design, not accident. He argues persuasively that the foreign policies of Clinton and Bush 41 reflected an essential continuity because all three administrations had essentially the same view of America's vital interests and how best to secure them. They accepted an American mission as the guardian of history, responsible for changing the world by making it more open and more integrated. They accepted an American global leadership, manifested by maintaining preeminence in the world's strategically significant regions. They accepted the necessity of permanent global military supremacy. While Bacevich finds no purpose is served by denying the empire, the important thing is that America behave wisely. Doing so, he argues, demands foresight, consistency and self-awareness. Bacevich derives his view from two long-neglected intellectual figures: Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams. Between them they developed the insight that American well-being depends on the effective functioning of a global economy, and simultaneous global adherence to certain behavior. Harmony of conviction and consistency of purpose has characterized overt American strategy from the days of Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman, and Bacevich asserts that the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations maintained an empire built less on coercion than on persuasion. When something more is necessary, "gunboats and Gurkhas" suffice-e.g., cruise missiles and similar long-range precision weapons systems, used in cooperation with local forces enhanced by American expertise and material. That does not seem to describe the war the U.S. is preparing for now. (Nov. 15) Forecast: The trope of American empire is a familiar one by now, and the fact that this book was completed before Bush 43's shift in foreign policy toward preemptive action and possible full-scale occupation should limit its usefulness to its historical analyses. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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From The Critics

This systematic, well-argued work reprises the classic Jeffersonian approach to American foreign policy. The core Jeffersonian concerns are all here: America's activist global policy is primarily driven by corporate interests; it undercuts democracy at home and abroad; it involves ruinous expenditures; and it increases the risks to national security. These ideas, of course, are not new, having been brought forward at virtually every juncture in American foreign policy from the wars of the French Revolution in the 1790s to the aftermath of September 11. But Bacevich does more than just restate a venerable set of beliefs. By contrasting the foreign policies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton against the ideas of the "Jeffersonian" historians Charles Beard and William Appleton Williams, Bacevich subjects the records of Bush and Clinton to a scorching critique. At the same time, he examines the two historians' strengths and weaknesses to explain why they were both celebrated and frustrated in their respective eras — and largely (if unjustly) forgotten soon after. As Bacevich notes, Beard and Williams were right about all kinds of things, but both were dead wrong about the central foreign policy questions of the day. Beard (like Pat Buchanan) thought World War II an unnecessary war, brought on by Franklin Roosevelt's imperial scheming. And neither Williams' revisionist history of the Cold War nor his sympathy for communism has held up well. Arguing that two drivers who ended up in such spectacular crashes had better road maps than anybody else is a tough but not impossible job, and Bacevich pulls it off reasonably well. He ends this thoughtful book by noting that the question is nolonger whether the United States should become an imperial power, but what kind of empire it should be. Although Beard and Williams would resist being drawn into this debate, Bacevich is right to insist that their views will greatly enrich it.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674009400
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 11/28/2002
Edition number: 1
Pages: 312
Product dimensions: 6.28 (w) x 9.76 (h) x 0.98 (d)

Meet the Author

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University.

	Preface
	Introduction	1
1	The Myth of the Reluctant Superpower	7
2	Globalization and Its Conceits	32
3	Policy by Default	55
4	Strategy of Openness	79
5	Full Spectrum Dominance	117
6	Gunboats and Gurkhas	141
7	Rise of the Proconsuls	167
8	Different Drummers, Same Drum	198
9	War for the Imperium	225
	Notes	247
	Acknowledgments	297
	Index	299

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Posted August 14, 2004

Useful, though idealistic, account of US empire

The author is an American academic, an ex-officer of the US Army. Chapter One, `The myth of the reluctant superpower¿, exposes the nonsense that the US state just responds to events, improvising as it goes, containing others¿ aggressions, going to war only in necessary self-defence. Bacevich notes that the US state¿s ¿purpose is to preserve and, where both feasible and conducive to U.S. interests, to expand an American imperium.¿ He shows the basic continuity of US foreign policy, ¿the unflagging self-interest and large ambitions underlying all U.S. policy.¿ Globalisation expresses US economic, political, military and cultural supremacy, maintained by unilateral aggressive wars, through military proconsuls, gunboats and Gurkhas. The US state claims that its `internationalism¿ is progressive and `isolationism¿ is backward, that the USA is the vanguard of history, the pioneer, leading the world to the future of peace and prosperity. But a single dominant power brings not peace but perpetual war: the Pax Britannica involved Britain in war every single year while the Empire lasted. The same holds for the USA, ever since 1898. Since the Soviet Union¿s suicide, US warmongering has speeded up: since 1989, the USA has made 47 overseas military interventions, following a consistent strategy for US empire. Clinton¿s war in Somalia killed between 6,000 and 10,000 civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to a senior US officer. The illegal war against Kosovo, ostensibly humanitarian, became a full-blooded war against Serbian civilians, killing at least 1,500. In Afghanistan, US forces have so far killed between 1,000 and 4,000 civilians. US forces are now stuck in Iraq, where they have killed more than 13,000 civilians. The US naval victory at Manila Bay in 1898 led to forty years of occupying and `pacifying¿ the Philippines. How long will we tolerate this increasingly genocidal war against the Iraqi people? Bacevich calls for honestly recognising that the USA is an empire, so it can be run morally and realistically. But empire, founded on exploitation and repression, denies democracy, abroad and at home. It is reactionary, not progressive, and can no more be run morally than slavery can.
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American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy

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Useful, though idealistic, account of US empire