The sponsor was Professor Jeffrey Gerson (Jeffrey_Gerson@uml.edu) and represented our 5th Annual commeration of 9/11, a project requested by the family of one of the victims. As the UMass Lowell web site says:
This is an annual event that addresses what happened on 9/11, the road to 9/11 and the aftermath. This year's guest speaker is Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. Bacevich will discuss his new book, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (2010).The room was full, my estimate being 120 attendees, to include Blogger Dick Howe and several professors. Also present were UMass Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan♠ and Frank Talty, Director of Academic Programs.
The introduction of Professor Bacevich was fairly long and effusive. Professor Gerson noted that Prof Bacevich raises fundamental questions as to who rules in the United States. Professor Gerson notes that Professor Bacevich wants to bring the citizens back into the conversation.♥ The person introducing the speaker also noted that 9/11 should have opened doors to reflection, but didn’t.
Professor Bacevich said that there are two reasons to commemorate 9/11. The first is to honor and remember those who died. The second is to contemplate what happened and why a day that ostensibly changed everything, didn’t.
While in the study of our history differences are interesting, it is the continuities that matter. Continuities define the “Washington Rules”. The Washington Rules are the things we choose to believe. They are assertions about how things work and the US role in the world. They are a credo.
Professor Bacevich notes that on the night of President Obama’s election he spoke to a crowd at Grant Park, calling on Americans “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.” Bending the arc of history implies work. This is no passive view of our foreign policy.
Moving on to the new Secretary of State, the Professor noted that Hillary Clinton cites Tom Paine: “We have it within our power to begin the world over again…” Then she said, “Today…we are called upon to use that power.”
In his talk, although not in his newest book, Washington Rules, the Professor also cited US Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Susan Rice, who began her service at the UN by saying that change in the US can change the world. “In today’s world more than ever world and US interests converge.”
He then notes that these sentiments are the same as those of former President George W Bush. The Professor sees this as a self-congratulatory vision. President Obama has acted to adjust how we implement that vision, but he is adjusting at the at the tactical level, not the strategic.
Our foreign policy, Professor Bacevich holds, has four convictions:
- “First, the world must be organized (or shaped). In the absence of organization, chaos will surely reign.”
- “Second, only the United States possesses the capacity to prescribe and enforce such a global order. No other nation has the vision, will, and wisdom required to lead.”
- ”Third, a few rogues and recalcitrants aside, everyone understands and accepts this reality. Despite pro forma grumbling, the world wants the United States to lead.”
- “Fourth, America’s writ includes the charge of articulating the principles that should define the international order. Those are necessarily American principles, which possess universal validity.”♦
The Professor notes that this is all dogma. He then reminds us that Publisher Henry Luce, back in February 1941, in an editorial in Life Magazine, invented the name "the American Century".
Mr Luce called on us to “accept wholeheartedly … as we see fit.” The Professor notes that we choose the purpose and we choose the means.
The result is that even today we pick activism over example and hard power over soft. We have more military forces than we need for self-defense. And, mainstream Republicans and Democrats are in agreement on this. And, our foreign policy is primarily a military thing and we (the citizenry) take it for granted.
The professor then introduced his “Triad”. He started by noting that before WWII military power was viewed with skepticism or hostility. By 1950 most accepted the Pentagon as both necessary and beneficial. Even after the Cold War we are felt military supremacy was needed. However, it is the overarching idea of supremacy that is key. There is no fixed style of military activity and no weapons system favored forever. It goes on with the draft and without. It is represented by the “Sacred Trinity”♣ of our military approach.
In the lecture and in the book he says:
Call them the sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.FN5Looking at our global military presence, he notes that we have bases everywhere, from Germany to Korea and from Iraq to Afghanistan. He notes some 160 bases, large and small, with the crown jewel being Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. A British possession, the inhabitants were expelled to allow transformation into a key base, with Propositioned Ships with arms and armaments, an airfield large enough to land the Space Shuttle and a place through which pass rendition flights and long range bombers.
Moving to power projection, he notes that the Bush Administration gave us the Department of Homeland Security (I am not sure this is so—I thought the US Congress forced in on the Administration). But, the military is not about defense, but offense. Look at Fort Hood, the largest army installation in the world. But, it isn’t a real fort, in the sense of a classical fort. It is a reservoir from which to project forces.
The Professor notes that he tries to get his students to see Afghanistan as other than routine, but it doesn’t work. It is all they have known. They are conditioned to take war for granted.
And look at our policy in outer space, where President Clinton declared we needed access for our national security and would resist anyone denying us that access. He then asked us how we in the United States would view China or Russia making such claims.
Looking to intervention, he notes that the war in Viet-nam colors the lens through which he views the world. It was thought to be a watershed, but it was not. Defeat seemed to leave the sacred trinity in tatters. But, within five years the trinity was back. In ten years a new era of intervention began.
His analogy is with Germany post-WWI. In Germany the officer corps united with the elites to deny what the battlefield had produced and to blame the end of the war on the Jews and the leftists. In the US, after Viet-nam, the officer corps united with the policy establishment and blamed the leftists, academics and the media. In 15 years Germany was back—the same for the US. The US establishment made Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and William Westmoreland the scapegoats for the US loss of Viet-nam. He then talked about Anthony Lake, who resigned from the Nixon National Security Team over Viet-nam and was back in the White House with President Clinton, and in between turned to arguing that we were in danger of a fear of another Viet-nam replacing our fear of another Munich.
With Ronald Reagan in the White House intervention was back and then came President George H W Bush and then Clinton and then the Bush Doctrine. (I was surprised he didn’t mention the famous Secretary of State Madeline Albright quip to JCS Chairman Powell about having a bright and shiny military and not wanting to use it.)
Then the “so what”. Why not accept things as they are?
The reason is the Washington Rules are obsolete (woefully obsolete). We are on the path of self-destruction. The curtain has rung down on the American Century and we can no longer afford it. We are going to break the bank and maybe break the force. “The tradition has begun to unravel.”
We need a new paradigm. Having a strong military means we haven’t had to engage the world, leading to American provincialism. And, we don’t engage ourselves. Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan means not fixing Detroit or Cleveland or Lowell.
Punch Line: Go for “American Rules” instead of “Washington Rules.”
THE Q&A
Q. Your view on the recent Saudi Arms sale?
A. Since the end of the Cold War the US has become the biggest arms salesman. In the past Israel has been wary of such sales; now they tacitly approve.
Q. What about the impact of advances in communications on the engagement of the American People?
A. Looking around campus, with students walking along with their iPods or their iPhones, they don’t seem to be reaching out but rather reaching more into a small circle of friends and family. Further, regarding casualties, the American Citizens don’t really have a stake in the wars we fight. (NB: Professor Bacevich lost a son in Iraq.) Further, the Professor noted, the most cynical thing of the Bush Administration was to embark on war and give a tax cut.
Q. Will we ever be able to exit Iraq cleanly?
A. It is impossible to answer. Long term presence is up in the air, with the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) having a date certain of next year for an American exit. The future belongs to the Iraqis, but there are two facts to consider. One is the capacity of the Iraqi elites to lead and the long delay in forming a government is a bad sign. The other is the capacity of military forces to cope with what is perhaps a growing insurgency.
Q. You indict us all for buying into this credo. Was it always true.
A. The claim we are the chosen people—John Winthorp in 1630 calling us the City on a Hill—is a deeply pernicious idea. “I am a believer” but can’t find it in Scripture. At a time it was useful, if not true. It propelled us in the 1840s, Manifest Destiny—which allowed us to take California, Texas and the Southwest. I am glad, but it was immoral. The days of usefulness are past. History is inscrutable. The is no given path in history leading to democracy.
Regards — Cliff
♠ The Chancellor showed up without a jacket or tie. Do you think that the lack of a contract means he isn’t getting paid, or paid enough?
♥ In a way, one wonders if Professor Bacevich is, in his own way, a closet Tea Partier. I did not ask him.
♦ In both the book and the talk Professor Bacevich notes that the principles that should define the international order actually are not permanent, but change (presumably as we evolve in a cultural manner). Thus slavery goes out the window and women’s rights grow.
♣ This “Sacred Trinity” reminds me of Clausewitz and his tome On War and his use of the term “Trinity” to describe the People, the Government and the Army.
FN5 While the “Trinity” or “Triad” visualization is great, in fact the middle item just naturally flows from the first and the third. If the United States is going to do anything with its Army besides defend its own borders, it needs that “Power Projection” capability.
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