Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [0]
The Limits of Power:
The End of American Exceptionalism
The Long War:
A New History of U.S. National Security Policy
Since World War II
The New American Militarism:
How Americans Are Seduced by War
American Empire:
The Realities and Consequences
of U.S. Diplomacy
The Imperial Tense:
Prospects and Problems
of American Empire
WASHINGTON RULES
WASHINGTON RULES
AMERICA’S PATH
TO PERMANENT WAR
ANDREW J. BACEVICH
METROPOLITAN BOOKS
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
Metropolitan Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
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New York, New York 10010
www.henryholt.com
Metropolitan Books® and ® are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2010 by Andrew J. Bacevich
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bacevich, Andrew J.
Washington rules : America’s path to permanent war / Andrew J. Bacevich.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9141-0
1. United States—Foreign relations—Decision making. 2. United States—Military policy—Decision making. 3. Consensus (Social sciences)—United States. I. Title.
JZ1480.B335 2010
355'.033573—dc22
2010006302
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First Edition 2010
Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
TO MY DARLING DAUGHTERS
Jennifer Maureen
Amy Elizabeth
Kathleen Therese
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.
T. S. ELIOT, “ASH WEDNESDAY” (1930)
CONTENTS
Introduction: Slow Learner
1. The Advent of Semiwar
2. Illusions of Flexibility and Control
3. The Credo Restored
4. Reconstituting the Trinity
5. Counterfeit COIN
6. Cultivating Our Own Garden
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
WASHINGTON RULES
INTRODUCTION: SLOW LEARNER
Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he’s headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.
My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with precision: For me, education began in Berlin, on a winter’s evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen.
As an officer in the U.S. Army I had spent considerable time in Germany. Until that moment, however, my family and I had never had occasion to visit this most famous of German cities, still littered with artifacts of a deeply repellent history. At the end of a long day of exploration, we found ourselves in what had, until just months before, been the communist East. It was late and we were hungry, but I insisted on walking the length of the Unter den Linden, from the River Spree to the gate itself. A cold rain was falling and the pavement glistened. The buildings lining the avenue, dating from the era of Prussian kings, were dark, dirty, and pitted. Few people were about. It was hardly a night for sightseeing.
For as long as I could remember, the Brandenburg Gate had been the preeminent symbol of the age and Berlin the epicenter of contemporary history. Yet by the time I made it to the once and future German capital, history was already moving on. The Cold War had abruptly ended. A divided city and a divided nation had reunited.
For Americans who had known Berlin only from a distance, the city existed primarily as a metaphor. Pick a date—1933, 1942, 1945, 1948, 1961, 1989—and Berlin becomes an instructive symbol of power, depravity, tragedy, defiance, endurance, or vindication. For those inclined to view the past as a chronicle of parables, the modern history of Berlin offered an abundance of material. The greatest of those parables emerged