Light Posting for the Next Couple of Days

Posting will be light this weekend - social obligations are keeping me away from my PC. I do have a couple more Think Tank items that I want to post and I'll be checking the book pages tomorrow to see if there is anything of interest. If time, wife and baby permit I'll also check out the fall issue of the National Interest which is now up. theCardinal bestows his blessings upon you and yours and wishes you great weekend!

In The Tanks - Our Indian Friends

Echoing a sentiment expressed by former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill in the Summer '05 issue of The National Interest (subscription required) Thomas Donnelly thinks that we need to get closeer to India.

In The Tanks - Measuring Economic Freedom

This is something I hope to make a regular feature but it promises to be quite a challenge. The idea is to check in on the think tanks and see what they have to say on foreign policy, strategy, domestic security and defense strategy. I will confess that I can only do this when I have some leisure time at my disposal.

The libertarian Cato Institute has put out its annual report - Economic Freedom of the World. Topping the list this year are free market havens Hong Kong and Singapore. The US is in third tied with both New Zealand and Switzerland. Overall the report notes an improvement in the free market enviroment worldwide. I always enjoy checking out the Cato report and comparing it with the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage list is also topped by Hong Kong and Singapore but there the similarities end. The US can't crack the top 10 on the Heritage list it finds itself knotted up at 12 with Switzerland.

Colin Powell Speaks...Again

I actually like Colin Powell for the most part but despite being cast as the prototypical stolid reticent general the man talks more than a twelve year old girl with her own phone (just ask Bob Woodward). First there is his interview with Barbara Walters in which he confesses that the memory of his speech before the UN is "painful." Apparently he implies that the US did not go in with enough troops to Iraq. He also does not like being lied to by intelligence agency types. He blames them for his speech at the UN. His account however does not gibe with that of his trusted deputy Richard Armitage. Armitage claimed that Powell showed up with a messy sheaf of papers containing intelligence and said that they had to make a speech out of it. The picture that Powell draws is of him sitting at CIA getting lied to as he gathers info. I was going to post this story anyway but I have to hat-tip IJ who also brought it to my attention.

Powell is also angling for the reconstruction czar job in New Orleans. Like any good (political) soldier he is going to point out someone's shortcomings, make a couple of suggestions and wait to get drafted.

Hu's Not Coming?

Now that I am on this China kick I should mention that Hu Jintao is in Canada and that his visit with W was postponed due to Hurricane Katrina.

China, China, China

I am not obsessed with the Reds - it just seems that way. Let's start with Hu Yaobang the reformist Communist Party leader whose death sparked the Tiananmen Square demonstrations that ultimately led to the Massacre of Innocents on June 4, 1989. The WaPost reports that Hu Jintao (no relation) has approved plans for events commemorating the 90th anniversary of Hu Yaobang's birth. Sure it's just a ploy but Hu Yaobang's rehabilitation is a positive signs.

China announced yesterday that the six party talks on N. Korean nukes are set to resume on Tuesday. The NYT notes that the talks could be muddied by the White House swearing in of Jay Lefkowitz as the new envoy on human rights for N. Korea. N. Korea really, really hates it when someone talks bad about them so Mr. Lefkowitz will probably upset them every now and then. Don't blame W. for complicating matters - he was legally obligated to pick someone and waited ten months before settling on Lefkowitz. For those of us who just finished reading New American Militarism it is interesting to note that Christian groups were the ones applying pressure on this issue.

A WashTimes op-ed points out a concerted Chinese effort to grow their technology sector. If we are not careful the op-ed seems to say - the Reds will clean our clocks.

Faded Orange

For those of us that were thrilled to see the Orange Revolution scuttle Putin's plans of lording over the Ukraine via proxy the latest developments are nothing short of disappointing. As most of you may know Pres. Yushchenko has dismissed his entire cabinet. The reform movement he headed is splintering and allegations of corruption are being tossed around. I hope that Yushchenko does not turn out to be another Vicente Fox, because the stakes are so much higher in (the) Ukraine.

UN Reform and Oil for Food

I've probably posted more on this than I wanted to but in light of the forthcoming summit for reform it is interesting to see how this plays out. As can be expected the WashTimes is all over the UN. The first story notes that the Volker report could make Kofi's reform agenda that much more difficult to pass:

"Kofi Annan's vision of U.N. reform is to make the body more powerful and intrusive -- the exact opposite of what the U.S. administration wants to see," said Nile Gardiner, who has tracked the oil-for-food investigation for the Heritage Foundation. "Not only has Annan been damaged personally, but the case for giving the U.N. greater powers is much harder to make today," he said.

The Bush administration has argued consistently that plans to expand the United Nations' mandate -- through development aid targets, an international criminal court and an expanded Security Council, among other measures -- must take a back seat to fixing the organization's basic internal machinery. "We need to reform the U.N. in a manner that will prevent another oil-for-food scandal," John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the report's release Wednesday. "The credibility of the U.N. depends on it."

The next piece mentions that disagreements could derail the summit. The article provides the laundry list (terrorism, Human Rights Commission, nuclear arms) of issues that the US is challenging but also clues us in that Security Council expansion has been shelved for now - a pity. I personally wouldn't mind seeing India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and S. Africa taking permanent non-veto seats. There has also been a compromise on the Millenium Goals Development - I'll have to check later to see what Jeffrey Sachs has to say.

In another less than surprising development the WSJ editorial page blasted Kofi and the UN for the Oil for Food Scandal:

So it was that the largest fraud ever recorded in history came about. Press reports often cite the overall size of Oil for Food at $60 billion, but Mr. Volcker's report makes clear that the real figure was in excess of $100 billion. From this, Saddam was able to derive $10.2 billion from illicit transactions. But the important point is that he was able to steer 10 times that sum toward his preferred clients in the service of his political aims.

None of this happened by accident. Mr. Volcker's report is replete with examples of incompetent U.N. oversight and tales of political wrangling among the permanent members of the Security Council. But the abiding fact is that it was the Western powers, not Saddam, who wanted Oil for Food at virtually any cost, because it offered the appearance of a meaningful policy in the absence of a real one, namely regime change. And it was the political convenience of this chimera that led the U.S. and the U.K. to tolerate, and the rest of the Security Council to feast on, the opportunities for corruption that were inscribed in the very nature of the program.

Oil for Food Scandal

Am I the only one who doesn't get this whole Oil for Food scandal at the UN? It's not that I can't figure it out, it's just that I don't want to expend the energy. Fortunately the recently redesigned CFR site has a Q & A breaking it down for us morons. Here are some excerpts.

What is the controversy over the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program?

The UN Security Council started the Oil-for-Food program in 1996 to allow Iraq to sell enough oil to pay for food and other necessities for its population, which was suffering under strict UN sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War. But Saddam Hussein exploited the program, earning some $1.7 billion through kickbacks and surcharges, and $10.9 billion through illegal oil smuggling, according to a 2004 Central Intelligence Agency investigation.Wide-scale mismanagement and unethical conduct on the part of some UN employees also plagued the program, according to the UN Independent Inquiry Committee.

What are the latest revelations?

The committee’s September 7 report faults UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy, and the UN Security Council for allowing Saddam Hussein to graft over $10 billion from the humanitarian operation. “The inescapable conclusion from the committee’s work is that the United Nations organization needs thorough reform—and it needs it urgently,” says the report. In response to the report’s findings, Annan in his September 7 General Assembly address said the report’s findings “are deeply embarrassing to us all” and accepted responsibility for mismanagement of the program.

What does the committee’s final report recommend?

The report says its proposed changes should be enacted within a year, but experts say that is unlikely to happen. UN member states are already grappling with similar reform proposals ahead of September’s General Assembly meetings. Among the report’s recommendations:

• The UN Security Council should be clearer about UN operations’ purposes and criteria.
• A Chief Operating Officer should be nominated by the Security Council to provide needed focus for the Secretariat’s administrative responsibilities.
• An Independent Auditing Board should be established to fully review UN programs and hiring.
• Tasks should be coordinated more effectively between UN agencies.

How did the oil voucher scam work?

Under the Oil-for-Food program, the United Nations was supposed to monitor and approve all of Iraq ’s oil sales. All profits went into special escrow accounts that the United Nations controlled. Because the purpose of the program was to help feed and provide for the basic needs of the Iraqi people, Iraq was not permitted to buy military equipment or so-called dual-use items—items that could potentially be used in banned weapons programs—with its oil proceeds. But Iraq was given wide latitude to determine to whom it sold its oil, and was also permitted to select the vendors from which the United Nations would purchase goods with Iraqi oil profits. Saddam Hussein skimmed billions from the program by controlling these decisions.

Who received the vouchers?

The Duelfer report contains a list of more than 1,300 oil vouchers that Saddam Hussein gave to more than a hundred corporations, foreign officials, individuals, and political parties around the world. This information came from lists found at Iraq ’s state oil company and interviews with captured regime officials.

• Thirty percent of the oil vouchers were issued to beneficiaries in Russia, including individual officials in the president’s office, the RussianForeign Ministry, the Russian Communist Party, members of the Russianparliament, and the oil firms Lukoil, Gazprom, Zarubezhneft, Sibneft, Rosneft, and Tatneft.
• Fifteen percent of the beneficiaries were French, including a former interior minister, the Iraqi-French Friendship Society, and the oil company Total.
• Entities in China received 10 percent of the vouchers.
• Entities in Switzerland , Malaysia , and Syriaeach received 6 percent.
• U.S.companies and individuals received between 2 percent and 3 percent of the total vouchers—some 111 million barrels out of a total of 4.1 billion. These companies were not named in the report, because of U.S.privacy laws, but were later leaked to the press.

Which individuals were named in the report as voucher recipients?

Among them:

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian Liberal Democratic Party leader, and companies associated with his party were allocated 53 million barrels.
• Alexander Voloshin, chief of staff under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was allocated 3.9 million barrels of oil from May to December 2002.
• Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., a prominent Texasenergy investor with a long history of dealings in Iraq, received vouchers for 29.7 million barrels, according to press reports.
• Benon Sevan, the UN chief of the Oil-for-Food Program, received an allocation of 13 million barrels.
• Charles Pasqua, a businessman and former French interior minister, received an allocation of 11 million barrels.
• Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former Indonesian president, was allocated 6 million barrels.

Was it illegal to take vouchers?

Yes. If individuals and companies knowingly received profits from oil sales not approved by the Oil-for-Food program, they broke the rules of that program and violated the terms of UN Security Resolutions that established the program and the sanctions against Iraq, say investigators from the House International Relations Committee. In the case of UN employees, accepting bribes would also violate the rules of that body, experts say.

Whether individuals on the list will be prosecuted, however, would, in most cases, be the decision of their own governments and subject to the domestic laws of each nation. In the United States, as in some other nations, the sanctions became part of domestic law. Another key question in the American context would be whether these vouchers truly served as bribes that caused individuals to work on Saddam Hussein’s behalf to modify U.S. policy. A series of laws, including the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, regulates the overseas business practices of American citizens. In addition, U.S. firms could be prosecuted if they failed to receive the required approval from the U.S. Department of Treasury to purchase Iraqi oil.

What are the details of the allegations against U.N. Oil-for-Food chief Sevan?

The Duelfer report states that as Sevan was administering the U.N.’s program, he accepted Iraqi oil vouchers through various companies that he recommended to the Iraqi government. An investigation by the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council uncovered a letter linking Sevan to a Panamanian-registered company called the African Middle East Petroleum Company, which set up an oil deal on his behalf, the report states. Some 7.3 million barrels were allegedly sold by Sevan before 2003, which could have netted him between $730,000 to $2 million, depending on market conditions.

WANTED: Men With Deathwish PAY: $33,000 P/M

I would not call it easy money, but if you don't mind going to Iraq you could make a killing...you might also get killed.

What the Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen Feared

It struck many outside observers as odd that in the Senate race in Florida that the Cuban-American delegation was lukewarm about the Mel Martinez candidacy. It should have not been that surprising. It is all about provincialism and who gets to be the top dog in the Cuban political ghetto. As long as Castro's nephews could convince the White House the Cuban-American community is in ideological lockstep and that they and only they, Castro's nephews and the housewife from Westchester, could speak for the Cuban diaspora then they would hold the keys to power.

Now here comes Mel Martinez the usurper - this self-made pol from Orlando of all places holding impecable Cuban creditionals (he came in on Pedro Pan). He owed nothing to hyphen posse in the Congress or to the hardliners that lord over Miami politics. So it makes complete sense that the posse would not welcome this newcomer's acension to the Senate. Well the deed is done and now Mel is making his own noises and not taking cues from the nephews. He said that we should accept Castro's offer to send doctors. Now everyone knows this was a cynical gesture, but Mel knows how to play this game better than Cuban Ghetto Kings and Queen. They play into Castro's hand each and every time. Mel knows that in this propaganda war you can't just throw up your hands in the air and start complaining about the embargo and sexual tourism every time Castro ticks you off. Let's invite these doctors to New Orleans...the best that Cuba has to offer and see how many go back. By the way that's Mickey Kaus's idea not mine. Anyway I raise my Hatuey beer to you Mel...

I'm Annoyed

It is absurd that the web filter at work won't let me access the site for the American Enterprise Institute but I have no problem getting to the white supremacist site vdare.com. Ok it's true I shouldn't be posting at work but Hurricane Katrina took out my internet connection so I have no choice.

S. Korea Cuts off American Enterprise Institute

I actually came away with a greater respect for AEI after having read about the S. Korean gov't ceasing its donations to the think tank. AEI Senior Fellow Nicholas Eberstadt has upset them the most referring to the S. Koreans as a "runaway" ally and stating that the government is anti-American. I can understand the S. Koreans wanting to turn off the trickling spigot to AEI but I have to congratulate AEI for not shutting Eberstadt up. The equally conservative Heritage Foundation developed a relationship with the Red Chinese in the 90's and for a decade the normally hawkish Heritage played nice.

And We Complain About the Patriot Act

Allegedly Yahoo did its part to help the Red Chinese jail, Shi Tao, a journalist. Mr. Shi's crime was posting information anonymously about media restrictions surrounding the 15th Anniversary of the Massacre of Innocents at Tiananmen Square. His trial lasted two hours and he was sentenced to ten years.

The Great Leap Forward?

Guess who figured out that voting could be a good thing - the Sunnis in Iraq. The WaPost reports that they are registering to vote in droves. I guess they are feeling kind of stupid for boycotting last time.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

Egypt takes baby steps to democracy.

How Inept is Kofi?

So much so that even the NYT criticizes him in an editorial. Paul Volker's report on the oil for food scandal is out and it blasts the UN for mismanagement. Kofi is part of the problem but the Times can't bring itself to ask for his ouster. The Security Council also takes its licks in the report because it looked the other way as Saddam plundered money meant for his people. The report notes that Council members were benefitting from the arrangement.

How Bad Was Yasir Arafat?

So bad that one of his most trusted aides and his cousin, Mousa, was taken out by "about 100 gunmen." What kind of kleptocratic ass do you have to be that over 100 Palestinians can get together and decide to kill you. The Popular Resistance Committees, which took responsibility for the killing, said that Mr. Arafat "was famous for his corruption, and he committed many other crimes against the Palestinians..." Too bad that they waited this long to take out an Arafat.

Egypt Voted Today - Any Bets on the Winner

Hosni finished off his campaign pleading for voters to show up at the polls. It is percieved as doubtful that the voters will comply with his request. International observers have also been barred from monitoring the proceedings.

Bangladesh: Islamic Radicalism on the Rise

Everyone in Bangladesh is now coming to terms with the fact that Islamic radicals were responsible for the highly coordinate bombings that took 3 lives. More than 300 have been arrested since the bombings as the government tries to understand the terror group, Jama'atul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB), which launched the attacks.

China: The People Don't Love Us Anymore

CSM has an article on how the US is not that popular in China anymore. Apparently we are trying to keep China down and attempting to contain the Reds. I'm not going to even argue those points. What I am going to argue is the piece suggesting that this is our problem and that we need to fix it. That is all fine and dandy until you consider that most of the information that the Chinese reads comes from gov't approved sources - there is no way for us to communicate directly with the Chinese population. That makes it kind of hard to change our image...unless we kowtow to the regime, then we can count on them to say all sorts of nice things about us. So if we have no problem with human rights violations, slave camps and autocratic regimes with interests that run contrary to ours we can expect our reputation to improve.

Oh by the China isn't too popular here either...

CAFTA: Free Trade Me but Not For Thee

Who comes out winning in the CAFTA? Well the special interests of course. Sure there are some improvements but sugar and textiles get some protection. An Independent Institute op-ed goes on to say:

Among the protected products are cotton, tobacco, wool, cashmere, and, oddly enough, hairnets. Import quotas will remain on beef, peanuts and peanut butter, and a range of dairy products including milk and cheese. Consumers in the U.S. would enjoy the lower prices on beef, peanut butter, and dairy products that free international competition brings. It’s too bad CAFTA doesn’t ensure this.

The New American Militarism: A National Interest Review

I forgot to post this review that I found on our book of the month. Preble tries to play the realist card, which is the fashionable thing to do for neo-isolationists these days, but his libertarian colors seep through.

Resisting the Charms of War By Christopher Preble

Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 272 pp., $28.

"Today as never before in their history", explains Andrew Bacevich, "Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys--and is bent on perpetuating--has become central to our national identity." In other words, the military is no longer a means to an end--namely, safeguarding our physical security--but instead has become an end in itself. Our military prowess defines us as Americans.

While some in the military might welcome the centrality of their chosen profession within the nation's identity, Bacevich--Vietnam veteran, professional soldier and West Point graduate--does not. Instead, as Bacevich warns repeatedly in this book, a failure to reverse American militarism will have dire effects. Ending his opening chapter with a quote from James Madison ("No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare"), Bacevich explains that he seeks "to bring American purposes and American methods--especially with regard to the role of military power--into closer harmony with the nation's founding ideals."

This is a tall order. Bacevich, now a professor of international relations at Boston University, must first convince his readers that Americans have in fact become "enthralled with military power." He must then explain how and why this has occurred. Finally, he must provide an alternative framework for national security. Happily, he succeeds on all counts.

The new American militarism is manifested first and foremost by "the scope, cost and configuration of America's present-day military establishment." Throughout most of American history, the size and character of the nation's military changed according to the threat. Not so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the Pentagon's inflation-adjusted budget is 12 percent larger than the average defense budget of the Cold War era. The numbers are staggering, yet they elicit little comment. In Bacevich's telling, virtually no one seems to care.

The government is not simply content to spend vast sums of money on defense; it is also more disposed to use force than it was during the Cold War. The record is incontrovertible. By Bacevich's numbers, there were only six "large-scale U.S. military actions abroad" during the entire Cold War era, from 1945 through 1988. "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall", however, "they have become almost annual events." This is no exaggeration; there have been at least nine instances in which the United States has used military force since the end of the Cold War: Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Operation Desert Fox, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Iraq War.

Another sign of militarism in American life is "an appreciable boost in the status of military institutions and soldiers themselves." Of course, Americans should be confident and proud of their military. This is not a bad thing. What troubles Bacevich is the extent to which this is tied to an enthusiasm for using these soldiers. Madeleine Albright's impatient query of Colin Powell--"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"--must be considered in this context.

Having established the pervasiveness of militarism in American life, and having shown the extent to which this represents a departure from America's founding traditions, Bacevich explains how this change came about. The advance of militarism has been aided by an odd coalition of groups and special interests, from the military itself to Christian evangelicals, and from as diverse a set of politicians as one could imagine, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton.

Ironically, the rise of the new American militarism started with Vietnam, when anti-militarism prompted a counter-response. Bacevich tells of the "Herculean exertions" required to turn the military around. Military leaders were intent on reaffirming the importance of warfighting, thereby ensuring an important role for themselves, but they feared losing control of the conduct of war, much as had happened in Vietnam. Reform entailed, first, restoring the bond between military and civilians, and second, shifting more authority for the actual conduct of war toward military professionals.

Bacevich explains the Weinberger and Powell doctrines in the latter context. "The purpose of the Weinberger Doctrine was not to facilitate the effective use of American military power but . . . to insulate the armed services from another Vietnam-like disaster." Colin Powell supplemented the Weinberger Doctrine with his own conditions, including the demand that military operations have a clear exit strategy and that the military be allowed to employ overwhelming force in the interest of securing a quick, decisive victory. Both of these conditions were intended to further impede the political leader's propensity to intervene.

From Bacevich's perspective, Kosovo was a defining moment in the military's post-Vietnam transformation. It eviscerated the Powell Doctrine because there was no exit strategy, and the forces used were hardly overwhelming. Meanwhile, General Wesley Clark's misjudgments prompted civilian second-guessing of military experts.

Bacevich implies that the mere existence of an enormously powerful and capable military precluded a meaningful discussion of the role of the military in the post-Cold War environment. But most of the blame should be placed on political leaders. Rather than questioning the need for a Cold War-era military after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bill Clinton pledged to maintain U.S. military supremacy. He also exhibited a willingness to use force, even in situations and places that had little, if any, relevance to safeguarding U.S. security.

Whereas military leaders may have inadvertently contributed to the rise of militarism in American society, another group set out very deliberately to do so. The "ultimate ideological objective" of the neoconservatives, Bacevich explains, "was not to preserve but to transform. They viewed state power not as a necessary evil but as a positive good to be cultivated and then deployed in pursuit of large objectives." Somewhat adrift after the Cold War, new convictions were grafted onto earlier neoconservative positions, such as "the certainty that American global dominion is, in fact, benign and that other nations necessarily see it as such." Anything short of American dominance would result in global chaos. There was no middle ground, no alternative. Military power was essential, and this power was to be employed not simply to defend America, but also to remake the world.

Neoconservatism is a new phenomenon, but the rise of the new American militarism also ties into a very old American tradition, that of American exceptionalism imbued with Christian religiosity. Bacevich notes that the character of American religious beliefs has been altered by the rising influence of Christian evangelicals, many of whom abandoned "their own previously well-established skepticism about the morality of force" in favor of "a highly permissive interpretation of the just war tradition . . . ."

The tendency to see the exercise of American military power as a positive expression of American values, indeed as an essential feature of the fight between good and evil, is at the very core of the new American militarism that Bacevich decries throughout this book. These same sentiments are manifested in the Bush Doctrine, which is based on a penchant for action over inaction, and an expectation of quick and decisive victory. But war is rarely decisive and always messy. Accordingly, restoring the utility of military force, and overcoming some of the moral objections toward war, depended upon making war more predictable and manageable.

In documenting yet another intellectual thread paving the way for resurgent militarism, Bacevich examines the project to remake war, a project originally begun more than sixty years ago by Bernard Brodie of the RAND Corporation. Brodie believed that nuclear weapons had rendered war obsolete, and he focused his efforts on averting war entirely. But he was mistaken. Nuclear weapons had not eliminated war. Albert Wohlstetter, another RAND theorist, seized on this flaw in Brodie's reasoning to become the new high priest of militarism. Wohlstetter despaired over the complacency of the late 1950s when deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to be settling into an uneasy balance. For Wohlstetter, "safety lay in devising more effective ways of actually using force." The key to security was action. Defensive ends required offensive means.

His criticisms were timed for maximum effect. John F. Kennedy was attracted to a strategic doctrine that shifted attention away from nuclear deterrence toward a more activist posture in which the United States would use conventional weapons to thwart the spread of communism. But the experiment to make war more effective did not start out well. Wohlstetter believed that war could become part of the bargaining process, whereby military escalation, or the threat to escalate, would compel adversaries to either negotiate or capitulate. But the North Vietnamese refused to bargain. Their willingness to endure horrible suffering to drive the Americans out of their country baffled theorists, who envisioned all combatants as rational actors. Theorists schooled in the Wohlstetter tradition are similarly unable to account for the suicide bombers in Iraq today.

But while the Vietnam experience appeared to demolish his theories, Wohlstetter saw the problem rooted not in his theory, but rather in how the military had implemented it. Force needed to be targeted and skillfully applied through the use of precision weapons, weapons that would increasingly be directed by political leaders. The key to effective use of the military was more, rather than less, involvement by political leaders.

The next test came in the Gulf War. When the harvest from Desert Storm proved meager, this was interpreted as a function of President Bush's unwillingness to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Wohlstetter's theory was sound, his supporters believed, if only political leaders had the will to follow it to its logical conclusions. When President George W. Bush finished the job in 2003, Richard Perle credited his mentor Wohlstetter. This was "Albert's vision of future wars", Perle said in May 2003, "That it was won so quickly and decisively, with so few casualties and so little damage, was in fact an implementation of his strategy and his vision."

Will anything reverse the trend toward American militarism? Bacevich only touches on the question, but the answer may lie in the cost of militarism, or more accurately, a growing sense that the actual (as opposed to the advertised) benefits of militarism are vastly outweighed by its costs. After all, Americans do not embrace militarism in their personal lives. While they admire the professionalism, dedication and courage of members of the military, very few want their sons (or daughters) to serve.

Wilsonian ambitions remain a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, as evidenced by the president's soaring rhetoric in his second inaugural address and the 2005 State of the Union address. But the Washington Post reported in March that the public is growing weary. "People just think this is not our mission, that we should not be the democracy policemen", explained James Steinberg of the Brookings Institution. "Even though they think [the Iraqis] are better off, [Americans are] leery about the U.S. going out and doing these things." Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was even more blunt: "Americans don't like putting Americans in harm's way and fighting wars for humanitarian reasons. . . . [T]his means, by and large, the United States will not be spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet."

Time will tell. Hopefully, if public skepticism continues to grow, Americans will ultimately reject militarism. Critics can best facilitate this process by emphasizing time-tested American values such as Thomas Jefferson's "peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations" or John Quincy Adams's affirmation that America "is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all" and "the champion and vindicator only of her own." Such principles successfully guided U.S. foreign policy for over 150 years and earned the respect and admiration of those abroad.

In the modern era, scholars must not merely document the flaws of militarism, but also offer an alternative that can address the types of threats that the Founders could not have imagined. This, thankfully, Bacevich does in the penultimate chapter. The book is well worth the purchase price if only for the ten principles that Bacevich outlines therein.

One hopes that Bacevich's background and reputation will inoculate him against charges that he is "un-American." Ultimately, his considerable intellectual skills--even more than his unique credibility and perspective as a former professional soldier and a political conservative--allow Bacevich to overcome such charges. He deserves enormous credit for his courage in attempting to reverse a dangerous tide. He will deserve still more credit if he is successful at doing so.

Our Book of the Month: The New American Militarism

Tonight at Books and Books we are going to be discussing Andrew Bacevich's The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. Mr. Bacevich, as all the reviews attest, is a graduate of West Point, Viet Vet and eventually ended up at the Center for International Relations at Boston University. You can find a moderate left critique of the book here and a loony left one here. A review from the moderate right can be read here. The one completely fawning review is by paleo-conservative Paul Craig Roberts. This makes sense since as even the review from the mod right noted Bacevich's ideas seem rooted in the old right. A great deal of what Bacevich writes reminds me of Robert Nisbet and his remarkable bookform essay The Present Age. Writing in 1988 the rabid anti-Communist Nisbet bemoaned the fact that starting with WWI the US had essentially been at war for 75 years. He deplored militarism and shared Bacevich's aversion to Woodrow Wilson and his ideas. Further evidence of the paleo-con love for Bacevich can be found at LewRockwell.com.

You can find an interviews with Bacevich here and here. You can read an article wrote about "the living room war" for The American Conservative here and a piece on Tommy Franks for the New Left Review here.