Breaking the Rules

Taking on the foreign policy elite

Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew Bacevich. Metropolitan, 2010. $25.00, 304 pp.
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”
No, this isn’t “Team America: World Police.” These words were delivered by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1998.
In his new book Washington Rules, Boston University professor of international relations Andrew Bacevich seeks to explain why all policymakers, Republican and Democrat alike, subscribe to this “indispensable nation” credo that gives the United States the right and the duty to police the world as it sees fit. Bacevich offers an insightful history of modern U.S. foreign policy, from Eisenhower’s farewell speech on the dangers of the military-industrial complex to the Obama administration’s recent escalation in Afghanistan.
Enforcing the Rules
In the wake of World War II, American policymakers adopted a set of values that Bacevich dubs “the Washington Rules.” The Rules mandate an unswerving commitment  to the sacred trinity: maintaining international peace, protecting American power, and intervening to counter anticipated threats. While this doctrine was initially established to combat Soviet aggression, a goal that the staunchly conservative Bacevich endorses, he argues that it has lost its way in the post-Cold War world. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Washington Rules have persisted behind a facade of foreign policy transformation.
In this thorough but accessible read, Bacevich tells the tale of those who made  global military dominance the foremost national priority, and who entrenched this view in popular American culture. Americans now see themselves as the protectors of the world, even though recent efforts ostensibly designed to bring peace and stability seem only to have done the opposite. Bacevich forcefully exposes this gap between American ideals and American behavior overseas.
One of the most convincing arguments Bacevich makes is about the culture that the Rules have cultivated. He calls Washington D.C. “one of the most captivating, corrupt, and corrupting places on the face of the Earth.” And the foreign policy establishment extends far beyond the Beltway. The beneficiaries of an oversized global presence include everyone from generals to think tank academics, from Kennedy School professors to private contractors. The mere suggestion of cuts in military spending is political suicide. Any politician who doesn’t conform runs the risk of “[marking] oneself an oddball or eccentric, either badly informed or less than fully reliable; certainly not someone suitable for holding national office.” In the 2008 presidential election, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul challenged the Washington Rules and were immediately labeled as daft and outside-the-mainstream.

COINdinista!
Nowadays, counterinsurgency is the sexy new manifestation of our misguided pursuit of “perpetual global military supremacy,” Bacevich argues. In this model for protracted dithering overseas, we have a “conception of warfare in which victory [has] essentially become indefinable and the benefits accruing to Americans [are] at best obscure.”
Bacevich strongly criticizes our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, where, according to General David Petraeus, “winning the hearts and minds [has] now become the essence of the soldier’s calling.” Bacevich, whose own son recently died in Iraq in the service of this cause, pulls no punches in his criticism of the “COINdinistas” who legitimize futile overseas adventures.
A Change is Gonna Come?
While much of the book is devoted to railing on the political class, Bacevich does offer alternatives to the Washington Rules. Most basically, the U.S. military’s priority should be to protect the country rather than to attempt to remake the world in our image. Therefore, American soldiers should generally be stationed in the United States, not abroad. The United States should only “employ force as a last resort and only in self-defense.” However, compared to the amount of energy he spends opposing the status quo, Bacevich spends disappointingly little time detailing how we could accomplish his vision of our proper role in the world.
Clearly, change won’t come from Washington. Bacevich shows that those in power have too much to lose from scaling back our vast national security apparatus. The impetus to change course must come from the people, but in a society where war without end has become an accepted part of life, that prospect seems distant to say the least.
Skyler Hicks ’14 is a Contributing Writer.