The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (review)

In the early 1990s Edward Luttwak, Russell F. Weigley, and Richard Kohn published essays in which they argued that there was a crisis in civil-military relations in the United States. More recently books by Kohn and Peter Feaver, Andrew Bacevich, and Eliot Cohen have expanded on this theme. All, to one degree or another, concern themselves with the politicization of the late twentieth-century American military. Bacevich's most recent work, The New American Militarism, however, turns the argument on its head: rather than focusing on the politicization of the military, Bacevich outlines the militarization of American politics and culture.

Alfred Vagts posited that "An army that is so built that it serves military men, not war, is militaristic; so is everything in an army which is not preparation for fighting, but merely exists for diversion or to satisfy peacetime whims." Bacevich depicts a post-Vietnam military whose actions fit Vagts's definition: hamstringing civil authority by structuring the military so that the nation could not go to war without the Reserves and National Guard; the military leadership's role in developing the Weinberger Doctrine; the Weinberger Doctrine's subsequent manifestation, the Powell Doctrine; and the military's insistence on preparing for two "Major Regional Contingencies" at a time when one MRC seemed increasingly unlikely; all appear to match Vagts's criteria. More importantly, the military, according to Bacevich, ignored the lessons of Vietnam, preferring to focus on the defense of Central Europe, a mission that it likely would never carry out, but one that would help resurrect an army that had been morally destroyed in Southeast Asia. This emphasis on Europe suggests a military concerned with serving its own narrow interests.

But Bacevich quickly shifts gears to concentrate on the role people and institutions outside the military played in the growth of American militarism. After Vietnam, neoconservative writers such as Norman Podhoretz provided the intellectual basis for a larger military as well as for the use of force in circumstances that were not purely defensive. "As always," Bacevich writes, "crisis loomed. As always, Americans faced a choice that was as stark as it was clear-cut. As always, neoconservatives saw the way out: through war, the United States might save the world" (p. 96). President Jimmy Carter's response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis and to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan added substance to the neocon position and provided fodder for candidate Ronald Reagan. President Reagan subsequently immersed his administration in military imagery as no president had ever done and, according to Bacevich, sold the United States a romantic view of the military and of war. This, he concludes, "played well in Peoria" (p. 111).

As did military themes in popular culture. Top Gun, Rambo, and An Officer and a Gentleman, Bacevich contends, helped change Americans' perceptions of the post-Vietnam military, but none appear as important in this regard as the works of Tom Clancy. Clancy's books and films, according to Bacevich, have a standard plot line: "[T]he international order is a dangerous and threatening place. . . . That Americans have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of the American uniformed military and of its intelligence services have managed to avert those threats" (p. 117). Clancy's popularity speaks volumes regarding his influence.

Perhaps Bacevich's most surprising assertion is that modern American Christianity contributed significantly toward the rise of American militarism. During the Vietnam War, Christian conservatives, according to Bacevich, "saw the rise of antiwar sentiment, popular disparagement of the armed services, and the wasting away of American military strength . . . as indicators of the path down which the United States was headed," a view which melded easily with Christians' critique of American society (p. 127). "Many evangelicals," Bacevich continues, came to "view the requirements of U.S. national security in the here-and-now and the final accomplishment...