Andrew Bacevich: The impact of the post-9/11 decade on the American way of war

Andrew Bacevich speaking at the Kroc Institute

Guest post by Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations and history, Boston University. Bacevich addressed faculty, students, and members of the public at a Kroc Institute event last Friday (Sept. 9) marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11. He is a career officer (retired) in the U.S. Army and the author of, most recently, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

1. Prior to 9/11 Americans viewed war as an abnormal condition; today that is no longer the case; war is the new normalcy.
2. Prior to 9/11, Americans (to include the officer corps) believed that U.S. forces possessed the capability to “win” any war quickly, decisively, and economically; today that is no longer the case; Americans (to include the officer corps) accept the fact that the wars in which the United States engages are likely to be protracted. In all likelihood they will prove to be very costly and will probably yield ambiguous results. Victory as such is no longer a realistic expectation; war remains the continuation of politics by other means, but the relationship has become less clear-cut.
3. After 9/11 for a brief period of time, the concept of waging a comprehensive “global war on terror” endowed U.S. policy with theoretical coherence — U. S. military activities in various places in the Islamic world all ostensibly contributing to a common purpose of transforming or pacifying or democratizing the Greater Middle East; events discredited the GWOT framework, however, leaving the United States with no credible explanation for how Yemen or Somalia relate to Afghanistan and Pakistan; simply put, strategy as such has ceased to exist.
4. Decades before 9/11, as a result of the Vietnam War, Americans abandoned the tradition of the citizen-soldier in favor of what the Founders called “a standing army;” events since 9/11 have reaffirmed this popular wish to abrogate any collective civic responsibility to contribute to the nation’s defense; indeed, citizens today will not even pay for the wars waged in their names – the doubling of the size of the Pentagon’s budget being funded not through increased taxes but through borrowing and increases to the national debt.

All four of these “lessons” of the post-9/11 era have deeply problematic implications.

The prospects for effectively addressing them are not promising, however. The obstacles to doing so are formidable.  Among those obstacles are the following:

1. The preoccupation of the American people with pressing economic problems and their inability to see any link between economic distress and defective national security policies.
2. The commitment of the national security state to maintaining the status quo – an inability even to imagine an alternative to the habits that evolved over several around the concept of “American global leadership.” Put simply, the events of the past decade leave the national security consensus of the Cold War and post-Cold War periods fully intact.
3. The unwillingness or inability of either political party to mount an effective critique of U. S. policy, the obligation to “support the troops” taking priority.