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 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 |
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Views Monday, October 19, 2020 Reframing America’s Role in the World The so-called Age of Trump is also an age of instantly forgotten bestselling books, especially ones purporting to provide the inside scoop on what goes on within Donald Trump’s haphazard and continuously shifting orbit. With metronomic regularity, such gossipy volumes appear, make a splash, and... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 13, 2020 Joe Biden Wins... Then What? Assume Joe Biden wins the presidency. Assume as well that he genuinely intends to repair the damage our country has sustained since we declared ourselves history’s “Indispensable Nation,” compounded by the traumatic events of 2020 that demolished whatever remnants of that claim survived. Assume,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 23, 2020 Racism, Yes, But What About Militarism and Materialism? In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans are finally—or is it once again?—confronting the racism that afflicts this country and extends into just about every corner of our national life. Something fundamental just might be happening. Yet to state the obvious, we’ve been here... Read more |
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Views Sunday, June 14, 2020 Rename the Army Posts—These 10 Soldiers Deserve the Honor The United States must be the only nation in the world that names military posts after traitors. The police killing of George Floyd has brought renewed attention to this absurd practice, in which U.S. Army and Army National Guard installations across the South bear the names of secessionist... Read more |
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Views Monday, May 25, 2020 US Public Remain the Tacit Accomplice in America's Dead End Wars Not least among the victims claimed by the coronavirus pandemic was a poetry recital that was to have occurred in March at a theater in downtown Boston. I had been invited to read aloud a poem, and I chose “On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines,” written in 1899 by William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910... Read more |