The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J Bacevich

Author:Andrew J Bacevich [Bacevich, Andrew J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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wa r c l u b

171

As viewed from a vantage point midway through the first decade of the

twenty-first century, many of the ideas that achieved prominence during the

last decade of the twentieth century appear preposterously foolish. Once

the dot-coms collapsed in the late 1990s, the New Economy no longer

looked like the sure road to easy riches. In the aftermath of 9/11, globalization’s promise of a world without borders lost much of its luster. Nor at

least not for the foreseeable future does the universal triumph of democratic capitalism seem foreordained. History, alas, continues in full swing.

In retrospect, that is, we can see that in the 1990s irrational exuberance

was by no means confined to the stock market. During the interval between

the end of the Cold War and 9/11, irrationality also infected the mood pre-

vailing among American elites on a variety of other issues. What passed in

many cases for sober, empirically grounded analysis amounted to little

more than speculation, fueled by the intoxicating vapors given off by suc-

cessive American triumphs over the Soviets and then Iraq.

Much the same observation could be made with regard to what in the

1990s passed for the latest thinking about war. There too exuberance cre-

ated expectations that became increasingly uncoupled from reality. War’s

ancient power of seduction was reasserting itself. Winston Churchill

referred to this phenomenon as the “the romance of design”—the alluring

belief that sufficient diligence could bring the perfect weapon within reach

and that, once realized, that weapon was sure to make short work of all

sorts of nagging difficulties.61 At the time about which Churchill wrote, the years leading up to World War I, the Royal Navy dreamed of perfecting the

battleship, thereby enabling Great Britain to deflect the challenge of Ger-

man seapower and maintain its empire. In the 1990s, dreamers inspired by

the RMA conjured up images of a radically transformed U.S. military

equipped not only to deflect any and all challenges to American security

but also to promote American values around the world.

Although Marshall himself was circumspect about the prospects of

bringing the RMA fully to fruition, others were not so reticent. The ideas

embodied in the RMA kindled enthusiasms that blurred the distinction

between actually existing U.S. military capabilities and mere aspirations.

Those converted to Marshall’s vision (or at least willing to pay it lip service) churned out documents limning the Pentagon’s plans to achieve within a

decade what it called “full-spectrum dominance”—complete and uncon-

testable ascendancy in every form of warfare. 62 Journalists eager to clean up 172

t h e n e w a m e r i c a n m i l i t a r i s m

the world’s ills contemplated the implications of “virtual war” and beat the

drums for a new era of interventionism on behalf of the persecuted and

oppressed. 63 Other analysts, including recently retired four-star generals, speculated on the possibility of achieving victory not through physical

destruction but by relying on “shock and awe” to stun the enemy into sub-

mission, “quickly if not nearly instantaneously.” 64 With various observers thus resurrecting ideas that had last enjoyed favor in the run-up to Vietnam, the mind of the adversary was reemerging as the Schwerpunkt of the American way of war.

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