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

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Overview

"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
... See more details below

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Overview

"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." "Though 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 establishing 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.

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.
Foreign Affairs
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.
More Reviews (5) Fewer Reviews
Across the Board
Andrew Bacevich's remarkably clear, cool-headed, and enlightening book is an expression of the United States' unadmitted imperial primacy. It's as bracing as a plunge into a clear mountain lake after exposure to the soporific internationalist conventional wisdom...Bacevich performs an invaluable service by restoring missing historical context and perspective to today's shallow, hand-wringing discussion of Sept. 11...Bacevich's brave, intelligent book restores our vocabulary to debate anew the United States' purpose in the world.
— Richard J. Whalen
Boston Globe
[A] straightforward "critical interpretation of American statecraft in the 1990s"...he is straightforward, too, in establishing where he stands on the political spectrum about US foreign policy...Bacevich insists that there are no differences in the key assumptions governing the foreign policy of the administrations of Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II--and this will certainly be the subject of passionate debate...Bacevich's argument persuades...by means of engaging prose as well as the compelling and relentless accumulation of detail...Bring[s] badly needed [perspective] to troubled times.
— James A. Miller
Political Studies Review
American Empire is an immensely thoughtful book. Its reflections go beyond the narrow realm of U.S. security policy and demonstrate a deep understanding of American history and culture.
— David Hastings Dunn
The Guardian
For everyone there's Andrew Bacevich's American Empire, an intelligent, elegantly written, highly convincing polemic that demonstrates how the motor of US foreign policy since independence has been the need to guarantee economic growth.
— Dominick Donald
Washington Monthly
To say that Andrew Bacevich's American Empire is a truly realistic work of realism is therefore to declare it not only a very good book, but also a pretty rare one. The author, a distinguished former soldier, combines a tough-minded approach to the uses of military force with a grasp of American history that is both extremely knowledgeable and exceptionally clear-sighted. This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the background to U.S. world hegemony at the start of the 21st century; and it is also a most valuable warning about the dangers into which the pursuit and maintenance of this hegemony may lead America.
— Anatol Levin

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.

Table of Contents

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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  • Anonymous

    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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