Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [9]
When it comes to projecting power, the United States exempts itself from norms with which it expects others to comply. The notorious Bush Doctrine of preventive war provides the ultimate expression of the prerogatives to which Washington lays claims. Yet in promulgating the doctrine that bears his name, George W. Bush was adhering to a well-established practice. Ever since 1904 when Theodore Roosevelt enunciated his famous “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine—asserting authority to “exercise international police power” throughout the Caribbean whenever the United States found evidence of “chronic wrongdoing”—his successors have played variations of TR’s theme. The eponymous doctrines of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Reagan number among the results.3
That the United States should also maintain a far-flung network of bases and other arrangements to facilitate intervention abroad emerges as an essential predicate. Whereas the United States once erected bases in places like Hawaii, Panama, or the Philippines to defend outposts of empire, for decades now a central purpose of “forward presence” has been to project power anywhere on earth. As a result, Americans have long since become accustomed to the stationing of U.S. troops in far-off lands. This global military presence is ostensibly essential to the defense of American freedom even in places where the actual threat to American freedom is oblique or imaginary.
Precisely because American purposes express the collective interests of humankind, Washington expects others to view U.S. military power, the Pentagon’s global footprint, and an American penchant for intervention not as a matter of concern but as a source of comfort and reassurance. The good intentions inherent in the credo of American global leadership render the triad of principles defining U.S. military practice benign.
Americans take all this for granted and so are blind to its significance. Like corruption or hypocrisy, this national security consensus has long since become part of the wallpaper of national life, attracting attention only when some especially maladroit escapade comes to light.
What makes headlines is not a congressman accepting bribes, but that he stashes the cash in his kitchen freezer. That a married senator keeps a mistress on the side qualifies as a bit ho-hum; that he’s trumpeted his devotion to family values as a member of Promise Keepers and was in the forefront of those demanding Bill Clinton’s impeachment over the Lewinsky affair gives the story its special juice. So, too, with the Washington rules: It’s only when something especially egregious occurs—most commonly a botched war—that members of the public take notice, and even then only briefly. That the Washington rules are the problem rather than offering the solution to problems seldom commands any attention.
For some comparative perspective, consider this possibility: In light of his country’s status as a rising power, China’s minister of defense announces plans to
increase Chinese military spending so that annual expenditures by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will henceforth exceed the combined defense budgets of Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, Germany, France, and Great Britain.
create a constellation of forward-deployed PLA garrisons in strategically sensitive areas around the world, including, say, Latin America, expressing the global range of Chinese interests.
negotiate access agreements and overflight rights with dozens of nations to facilitate humanitarian intervention and augment the PLA’s ability to assist in maintaining global stability.
partition Planet Earth into sprawling territorial commands, with one four-star Chinese general assigned responsibility for the Asia Pacific, another for Africa, a third for the Middle East, and so on—to include a Chinese