After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed

by Andrew J. Bacevich

Overview

"Few critics [of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars] have been more penetrating than Andrew Bacevich . . . One can only hope that Bacevich is read and understood by a generation young enough to see through and reject those dismal elites."
—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

The purpose of U.S. foreign policy is, at least theoretically, to keep Americans safe. Yet as we confront a radically changed world, it has become clear that the terms of that policy have failed. Washington’s insistence on a market economy, its faith in the idea of the “West” and its “special relationships,” its conviction that military primacy is the key to a stable and sustainable world order—these have brought endless wars and a succession of moral and material disasters.

In a bold reconception of America’s place in the world, informed by thinking from across the political spectrum, historian Andrew Bacevich lays down a new approach based on moral pragmatism, mutual coexistence, and war only as a last resort in After the Apocalypse. Confronting the threats of the future—climate change, a shift in the international balance of power, and the rise of information technology as a weapon of war—his vision calls for a profound overhaul of our understanding of national security, setting out new principles to guide the once-but-no-longer sole superpower as it navigates a transformed world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250839343
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Series:	American Empire Project
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,048,280
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Andrew Bacevich is the author of The Limits of Power, Washington Rules, and, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the London Review of Books, and the American Conservative, among other publications. Having served in the army for twenty-three years, he is currently a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University and founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank dedicated to foreign policy. He lives in Walpole, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader xiii

Introduction: Not So Innocent 1

1 Old, New, Next 13

2 The Eclipse of the West 31

3 Not So Special 52

4 Strange Defeats, American-Style 69

5 Nature Bites Back 82

6 Why We Fought/Why We Fight 104

7 Kissing Your Empire Goodbye 131

8 The History That Matters 147

Conclusion: Facts, Not Feelings 160

Notes 173

Acknowledgments 194

Index 197

Editorial Reviews

"Few critics [of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars] have been more penetrating than Andrew Bacevich . . . One can only hope that Bacevich is read and understood by a generation young enough to see through and reject those dismal elites."
—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"A timely, angry, deeply necessary book about the habits of mind that have damaged America, and how to change them."
—Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism

"In a sane country, the estimable Andrew Bacevich would be Secretary of a much-shrunken Defense Department. Deepened by his sense of history, this up-to-the-minute book is his answer to the big question: why is the most powerful nation on earth so ill-prepared to deal with the world it faces?"
—Adam Hochschild, author of Spain in Our Hearts

"The proliferating crises of our moment have found their interpreter. In this piercing account, Andrew Bacevich explains how distinctively American attributes—from our national security state to our original sin of racism to our very self-concept as the world leader—have, in the 21st century, conspired to render the American people vulnerable where they live. Bacevich points the way forward in terms that Americans across party lines are likely to appreciate. Will their leaders?"
—Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy

"After the Apocalypse is a welcome act of heresy . . . that drives a central point home: America has stumbled, badly, and will complete its precipitous fall unless measures are taken to radically reform its failed and flawed relationship with itself and the world . . . A must read for any student or practitioner of American statecraft."
—Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer

"An excoriating call for change . . . Bacevich's arguments are well-informed and stoked by a sense of moral outrage. Readers will agree that U.S. foreign policy needs a massive rethink."
—Publishers Weekly

"With a reputation for knowledgeable, incisive, and provocative readings of history, Bacevich delivers his latest addition to a growing body of thought-provoking work . . . Broad in its scope yet concise, this is an important nonconformist interpretation of American history."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Although Andrew Bacevich never exonerates average citizens for their contribution to current problems, he excoriates elected officials for a shortsightedness based on both non-reflection and willful self-interest in dispensing blatant lies, failed solutions, and soothing nostrums. "
—CHOICE

From the Publisher

04/05/2021

In this excoriating call for change, Bacevich (The Age of Illusions), the cofounder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, links the U.S. government’s disastrous response to Covid-19 to faulty national security policies built on the myth of American exceptionalism. He cites the brouhaha over a U.S. Navy captain’s raising of the alarm about the spread of Covid-19 among his crew members as evidence that the military establishment misperceives threats and misallocates resources, and explains how the prioritization of national security over national defense has resulted in such “dubious” actions as the dumping of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Bacevich also describes the 2002 invasion of Iraq as “a classic case of fears... riding roughshod over facts,” and calls on the U.S. to “normaliz” relations with Israel and stop subsidizing the country’s military. Other policy suggestions include withdrawing from NATO “within the next decade” and building a North American Security Zone with Mexico and Canada. Bacevich has covered much of this ground before, and the connections to Covid-19 sometimes seem tenuous, but his arguments are well-informed and stoked by a sense of moral outrage (his son was killed in Iraq in 2007). Readers will agree that U.S. foreign policy needs a massive rethink. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2021-03-26
The vocal historian and foreign policy expert revisits the past to offer suggestions for current and future U.S. policymakers.

With a reputation for knowledgeable, incisive, and provocative readings of history, Bacevich delivers his latest addition to a growing body of thought-provoking work. A well-known critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and what he sees as American imperialism, the author, who served in the Army for more than 20 years, continues along those lines of argument while also addressing the added complexities caused by climate change, racial and economic injustice, and the global pandemic. Bacevich works in a historiographical mode. “Apocalypse didn’t come out of nowhere,” he writes. “It had antecedents, evident in the very way we have packaged the past—what we have chosen to remember and what to discard, what to enshrine and what to ignore.” He continues, “a defective approach to policy survives because those charged with thinking about America’s role in the world cling to a series of illusions that derive from a conveniently selective historical memory.” Building on the theoretical approaches of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the French historian Marc Bloch, among other thinkers, Bacevich consistently chips away at the myth of American exceptionalism, “unearthing the substructure of existing U.S. policy, the seldom-examined assumptions and taken-for-granted practices that have sustained the national security apparatus.” Moving beyond that myth requires the rejection of the idea of a unified Western monolith of culture or the concept of a “special relationship” in relation to political allies. It also means facing head-on the often grim realities associated with the ways in which a pandemic, climate change, and entrenched racism wreak havoc on American military, culture, and policy. Bacevich covers all of these issues with an admirable amount of context for such a relatively short work.

Broad in its scope yet concise, this is an important nonconformist interpretation of American history.

Kirkus Reviews