Over the past several years, I have wondered how after our victory over the Soviet Union, we have gone from being a super-power (at one time also called a hyper-power) to being a nation torn internally and failing internationally. From backing down from a red line in Syria, to leaving the Kurds to the debacle of our poorly planned and executed exit from Afghanistan, we seem to limp along, befuddled by third rate players who run circles around our “best and the brightest.”
Can anyone really look at our actions, internationally or nationally from the time of Clinton to today and point to actions that make us proud? What geniuses gets us involved in wars with no knowledge of the country, culture, or goals of its inhabitants? What type of military makes the same types of mistakes we made in Viet Nam again and again? How many times do we have to hear our leaders tell us that things are getting better when we can see our foreign policy failures with our own eyes? And why are we so divided when the road before us should be so bright? Indeed, it seemed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, we had a future with unlimited liberties, freedom, and prosperity. Where has it gone?
Bacevich, a professor and twenty-three-year veteran of the military, examines the ideas which have driven our foreign policy, from the neo-cons to the neo-liberals who often seemed to work together (accidently) as we tried to remake the world in our image through wars and international trade while ignoring the blatant problems caused by their policies. While they looked at the “big picture,” the small men and women paid the price by loss of jobs, a stagnating economy and deaths and dismemberment on the battlefield. He is brutal in his analysis of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama rating them as equals to three other failed Presidents, John Tyler, James Buchanan, and Grover Cleveland. Their failures led to Donald Trump who understood the cost to main street, both financially and morally. While Bacevice is critical of Trump, he understands how Trump was able to pick up the pieces left by his three predecessors.
Can the United States correct itself? Not by depending on those at the top. As he writes, “They all benefit from the status quo and are devoted to perpetuating its well-oiled mechanisms from bestowing wealth, status, and privilege on the few while withholding them from the many.” Anyone who doubts that statement need only look at our larges cities which have been run for generations by those who expound the same solutions and philosophies and fail to create safe streets, a clean environment, and meaningful jobs. Multiple that to the national level and you need not wonder what happened.
In the past in the U.S., real change can occur when the people rally around a large cause which can unite us. The fall of the Soviet Union eliminated one great cause and we have split since then. We were momentarily united after 9/11 but that time has come and gone. Can there be another great cause which will unite us, or are we so divided that not even a major war can bring us together? We cannot look for a man on a white horse for, Presidents seldom shape a nation. It is the people who will shape the nation in the form of the President. Our judgment over the past quarter of a century has been less than stellar.
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