Andrew Bacevich

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andrew J. Bacevich (born 1947 in Normal, Illinois) is a professor of international relations at Boston University, former director of its Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), and author of several books, including the recently published The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002).

Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971. Afterwards he held posts in Germany, the United States, and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank of Colonel in the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. He has described himself as a "Catholic conservative" and initially published writings in a number of traditionally conservative American political magazines, but recent writings have professed a dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of American foreign policy.

[edit] Writings

Both his recent books are critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an overreliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially movies) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the population to produce in the American people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service is really like. Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of an American tradition going back to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century: Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams.

Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate about American foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one President (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, both Republicans and Democrats share responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation's best interest.

[edit] Bibliography

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford University Press Inc, USA, 2005) ISBN 0-19-517338-4
American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-674-01375-1