|
|
 |
|
|
|
 | |||||||
|
Dressing Down An interview with Andrew Bacevich By David Tebaldi Mass Humanities, Fall 2009
Bacevich will be a featured panelist at Mass Humanities’ November 7 public symposium at Boston College, “Soldiers & Citizens: Military and Civic Culture in the United States.” Mass Humanities Executive Director David Tebaldi interviewed Bacevich by email. DT: In The New American Militarism, you argue that out of the defeat of Vietnam emerged “ideas, attitudes and myths conducive to militarism.” Can you explain briefly what some of these ideas and myths are? AB: After Vietnam, various groups of Americans -- the officer corps, defense intellectuals, neoconservatives, politically active Protestant evangelicals, the right-wing of the Republican Party -- all came to the conclusion that reconstituting U. S. military power was an urgent national priority. Specific motives varied, but broadly speaking all of these groups shared an interest in trying to reverse changes produced by what we can loosely call “The Sixties.” All shared the conviction that rebuilding American military might offered a means to that end. The outcome of the Cold War followed in short order by Operation Desert Storm -- both perceived at the time as great victories largely attributable to the superiority of American arms -- convinced many observers that military power had become America’s true strong suit. DT: You bemoan what you call “the marriage of military metaphysics with eschatological ambition” as contrary to both our and the world’s long-term interests. Why do you use the term ‘metaphysics’ in this context and what is “eschatological” about U.S. foreign policy goals? AB: The phrase “military metaphysics” comes from The Power Elite, the book by C. Wright Mills. I appropriated it. The phrase implies an over-weaning faith in the efficacy of force and a tendency to view reality through a military lens. In the wake of the Cold War, when all the talk was about America as the “indispensable nation” (á la Madeleine Albright) that defined “the right side of history” (á la Bill Clinton) there was a tendency to think that military power could enable the United States to deliver history to its intended destination. This tendency found its ultimate expression in the Bush Doctrine of preventive war and in Bush’s Freedom Agenda -- the aggressive use of hard power intended to eliminate tyranny from the earth. DT: You call for a thorough “revision of the way that the values defining the military ethic are formed and inculcated.” What are the values that define the military ethic today? Do they need to be replaced with different values? AB: Fundamentally, I favor an abandonment of the notion that our national security policy requires us to maintain a global military presence, to configure US forces for global power projection, and to persist in our penchant for global interventionism, using overt or covert means. The true interests of our nation will be served by having a more modest apparatus and more modest objectives. DT: Force projection/global hegemony seems more like a strategic objective or a goal rather than a value. What are the values that define the military ethic (duty? courage? sacrifice?) and what, if anything, is wrong with the way they are inculcated today? AB: The military professional ethic is defined by the values of “Duty, Honor, Country,” the motto of my alma mater. The ideals are admirable one. However, I’ve come to question the approach used at West Point and other such institutions) to inculcate those ideals. Places like West Point specialize in sending mixed messages, turning a blind eye to practices that actually subvert the values that the institution claims to celebrate. The problem is not unique to the military. One could probably make the same charge against most churches. DT: You mention in the preface to The New American Militarism “to be a serving soldier in my day was by definition to be apolitical.” Is that not still true? What are some other fundamental differences between military culture and civic culture? Are there aspects of military culture that, if they were to take root in civic culture, might be a source of strength? AB: When I wrote the book, back in 2003-2004, there was plenty of evidence to indicate that the officer corps had become a constituency of the Republican Party. One of the few good things to come out of the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush is that this may no longer be the case. Officers no longer suffer from the delusion that so-called conservatives are their friends and that liberals are somehow anti-military. DT: Your mention of the officer corps reminds me that in your new book, The Limits of Empire, you express a very high regard for the enlisted men and women who make up the AVF (All Volunteer Force), but you lambaste the (senior) officer corps – even naming names. How do you account for the discrepancy between the quality of the troops and the quality of the leadership? AB: I don’t know. There is something about spending too many years in a very large hierarchical institution that suppresses creativity and critical thinking while fostering corruption and careerism. It would be unfair to say that every senior officer is affected. It would be naive to deny that many are. DT: The Limits of Empire is a lamentation focusing on three interconnected “crises.” The first has to do with how we live our individual lives; the second has to do with how we see ourselves as a nation; and the third has mainly to do with what we take to be our nation’s role in the world. The first crisis, what you call the Culture of Profligacy, appears to be the most crucial . . . AB: The crisis of profligacy -- which is both economic and cultural -- underlies everything. It’s especially dangerous because it has infected and perverted our common understanding of freedom. It’s especially resistant to change because we are blind to its existence. Americans want to blame the country’s troubles on “them” -- whether distant enemies like Osama bin Laden or those slightly nearer like a corrupt and inept governing class. They resist recognizing that the real problem may be “us.” DT: You say you don’t see any evidence that Americans are ready to undertake the kind of self-critical assessment of our life style and expectations that is necessary for meaningful change to occur. I know it is difficult to be optimistic, but don’t we see this, for example, in what might be called the New Agrarianism and the locavore and artisanal movements? Isn’t the increasing attention being given to our “carbon footprints” a step in this direction? Isn’t the economic recession of potential benefit in this regard -- Americans are cutting back, saving more, spending less extravagantly . . . AB: Well, let’s see how the current economic crisis plays out. My guess is that its effect on the culture will be minimal. Recall 9/11, the day when it was said “everything changed.” In fact, next to nothing changed. DT: You may be right, but you must admit that the impact of the Great Depression on the culture was very significant – at least for the generation that lived through it. And like our current recession, it too followed on the heels of an era of extravagant excess. This recession may not be nearly as severe (or it may yet be, we don’t really know), but we now have an increasing awareness of the inconvenient truth that our profligate life style is threatening the habitability of our planet. AB: I wish I shared your optimism. We’ll just have to wait and see DT: In your Memorial Day appearance on the radio show “On Point,” you identified the really essential questions that Americans need to face: “What is the true meaning of freedom and how does that effect how I live my life personally?” “What does it mean to be fully human?” “What are our responsibilities as citizens?” Where do you think we might look for answers to these questions? AB: We are a pluralistic society. There is no one definitive answer to the question of freedom’s true meaning. I simply insist that conspicuous consumption and radical autonomy don’t qualify for inclusion. DT: Reinhold Niebuhr seems an unlikely source of inspiration for a self-described conservative Catholic. How do you account for his influence on your thinking? AB: The implication seems to be that in their search for truth conservative Catholics can’t draw on a wide range of sources. I disagree. I’ve come to take a “big tent” approach -- I’ll take my insight where I find it and don’t much care what the label reads. DT: I’m sorry; that question was badly put. I simply meant to ask how you came to be familiar with Niebuhr’s writings and what it is about his thinking that appeals to you. Again, I am interested in where you think people who are ready to think critically about the true meaning of freedom and the responsibilities of citizenship might turn for insights. AB: Years ago, I picked up a used copy of Niebuhr’s Irony of American History at a yard sale. I read it about three times before I got it. I’ve been using it for several years in a course I teach and year by year have become ever more convinced that it’s an essential text. I might add that the course also includes writings by the likes of Mark Twain, Randolph Bourne, Eugene Debs, Robert LaFollette, William Appleman Williams, Martin Luther King, Wendell Berry, and Stanley Hauerwas -- all of whom have much to teach conservative Catholics and just about anyone else. DT: In a recent column (about the Obama Administration’s flatfooted response to the turmoil surrounding the presidential election in Iran), David Brooks wrote, “Foreign policy experts are trained in the art of analysis, extrapolation and linear thinking. They simply have no tools to analyze moments that are non-linear, paradigm-shifting and involve radical shifts in consciousness.” AB: The statement may be true, but I’m not sure that it applies only to foreign policy experts. I’m not aware of David Brooks having admitted to any radical shift of consciousness as the neoconservative project has come crashing down. A wag once commented that a trendsetter is someone who keeps about a half step ahead of the conventional wisdom. That probably describes a successful newspaper columnist as well. DT: I thought your analysis of the social costs of reliance on a professional army rather than a citizen army was spot on and assumed you were about to conclude with an appeal for a return to conscription. So I was surprised by your equally incisive critique of the idea of reinstating the draft. Your solution to this dilemma, in the chapter entitled “Common Defense” in The New American Militarism, is really compelling. Could you summarize it for us? AB: The draft is not politically feasible so there’s really no point in discussing it. I favor trying to resuscitate some form of the citizen-soldier, which implies getting American elites to see service as something that they are called upon to do and therefore choose to do. We need to figure out the right mix of incentives to encourage that choice. DT: I don’t know if you saw the opinion piece by Danielle Allen (a classicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) that appeared in the Washington Post last winter. It was entitled “Red-State Army?” and her main point is that the AVF is drawing recruits disproportionately from politically conservative states, creating a U.S. military that has closer connections (cultural and religious) to some regions of the country than to others, exacerbating existing social divisions. She sounds a lot like Andrew Bacevich when she concludes that “It is time to think seriously about a structure for national service -- both military and non-military -- that could successfully integrate young people from different regions of the country so that they will come, at least, to understand each other. We need to weave a fabric of shared citizenship anew.” Mass Humanities, Fall 2009 | ||||||
Andrew Bacevich