Andrew Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, is the author of "America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History" (2017). He is also editor of the book, "The Short American Century" (2012), and author of several others, including: "Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country" (2014, American Empire Project); "Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War" (2011), "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" (2013), "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" (2009, American Empire Project), and "The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II" (2009).
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, March 29, 2021 America's Long Wars Are Losers: No Bang, No Whimper, No Victory Ours is the cause of freedom. We’ve defeated freedom’s enemies before, and we will defeat them again… [W]e know our cause is just and our ultimate victory is assured… My fellow Americans, let’s roll.” — George W. Bush, November 8, 2001 In the immediate wake of 9/11, it fell to President George W... Read more |
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Views Saturday, March 13, 2021 Recalling the Travails of the 'Big Stick' A year ago this month an outbreak of Covid-19 on board the nuclear aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt forced the giant warship to take refuge at Guam. Not since World War II had a U.S. Navy carrier been knocked out of action. An attack from an unexpected quarter had sidelined the “Big Stick.” A... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 11, 2021 Biden Seems Intent on Falling in Line With America's History of Failed Foreign Policy You may have noticed: the Blob is back. Beneath a veneer of gender and racial diversity, the Biden national security team consists of seasoned operatives who earned their spurs in Washington long before Donald Trump showed up to spoil the party. So, if you're looking for fresh faces at the... Read more |
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Views Thursday, February 11, 2021 Can America's Soul Be Saved From Poison Injected by Trump? When Martin Luther King preached his famous sermon “ Beyond Vietnam ” at Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, I don’t recall giving his words a second thought. Although at the time I was just up the Hudson River attending West Point, his call for a “radical revolution in values” did not... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 20, 2021 Curb Your Presidentialism: Some Post-Trump Advice for a Biden Administration As a self-professed conservative with no party affiliation, I join with my progressive friends in viewing the approaching end of the Trump presidency as cause for celebration. To quote a notable piece of presidential oratory, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Let us hope... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 22, 2020 The Lessons of Two Failed Wars: Reflections on Vietnam and Iraq In choosing a title for his final, posthumously published book , the prominent public intellectual Tony Judt turned to a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village , published in 1770. Judt found his book’s title in the first words of this couplet: Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey... Read more |
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Views Friday, December 18, 2020 Neocons Want Us to Belly up for One More Round of War The Foundation for the Defense Democracies has just issued a collection of (mostly warmed over) essays that carries the title “Defending Forward: Securing America by Projecting Military Power Abroad.” But it’s the subtitle that tells the tale: The volume’s overarching purpose is to argue against... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 15, 2020 The Endless War to Preserve American Primacy For nearly two decades now, the United States has been waging a war to preserve American primacy. That’s not the official name, of course, but that describes the war’s actual, if unacknowledged, purpose. Much depends on how the incoming Biden administration appraises thewar’s prospects. The fate of... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 24, 2020 Yes, It's Time to Come Home—Now Let's open up and sing, and ring the bells out Ding-dong! the merry-oh sing it high, sing it low Let them know the wicked witch is dead! Within establishment circles, Donald Trump's failure to win re-election has prompted merry singing and bell-ringing galore. If you read the New York Times or... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 17, 2020 Trump Demands Afghan Withdrawal and Washington Panics. But It’s Time To Leave, Now. With metronomic regularity, Washington discovers Afghanistan and then forgets it, a pattern that has continued for over three decades since the Soviet invasion of that country in 1979. Rarely has U.S. policy there reflected a realistic appraisal of actual American interests. That pattern continues... Read more |