Andrew J. Bacevich

Andrew J. Bacevich is chairman and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His book, On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, was published in 2022. He is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He is the author of The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory (Metropolitan Books, 2020) and of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (Random House). He received his PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New Republic.

Democracy

What I Learned after the End of History

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” So declared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ah, if only it had proved to be so. Although my respect for MLK is enduring, when it comes to that upward-trending curve connecting past to present, his view of human […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israel’s War on Gaza shouldn’t be America’s War

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – One way of understanding the ongoing bloodbath pitting Israel against Hamas is to see it as just the latest chapter in an existential struggle dating back to the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. While the appalling scope, destructiveness, and duration of the fighting in Gaza may outstrip previous episodes, this […]

Pentagon

The Compulsion to Intervene: Why Washington Underwrites Violence in Ukraine

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in […]

military

On Missing Dr. Strangelove: Or how Americans learned to Stop Worrying and forgot the Bomb

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – Bosley Crowther, chief film critic for the New York Times, didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Strangelove at the time of its release in January 1964. Stanley Kubrick’s dark antiwar satire was “beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across,” he wrote. But if the film […]

Russia

Annals of American Folly: Was Civilization Really at Stake in Iraq? Is it in Ukraine?

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “To defend civilization, defeat Russia.” Writing in the unfailingly bellicose Atlantic, an American academic of my acquaintance recently issued that dramatic call to arms. And lest there be any confusion about the stakes involved, the image accompanying his essay depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin with a Hitler mustache and haircut. Cast […]

China

Deaf to History’s Questions: A Tale of Two Elizabeths, One Joe, One Donald, and Us

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Britons mourned the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II, and understandably so. The outpouring of affection for their long-serving monarch was more than commendable, it was touching. Yet count me among those mystified that so many Americans also professed to care. With all due respect to Queen Latifah, we decided way […]

Pentagon

US Smug about Russia’s Failures in Ukraine, Forgetting the Iraq and Afghanistan Quagmires

Andrew J. Bacevich

(Tomdispatch.com) – In Washington, wide agreement exists that the Russian army’s performance in the Kremlin’s ongoing Ukraine “special military operation” ranks somewhere between lousy and truly abysmal. The question is: Why? The answer in American policy circles, both civilian and military, appears all but self-evident. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has stubbornly insisted on ignoring the principles, […]

Donald Trump

Imperial Detritus: Henry Luce’s “American Century” Comes Undone

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – “The American Century Is Over.” So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper’s Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: “What’s Next?” What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the […]

Far Right

Let’s avoid the Other F-Word: If it is Democracies versus Fascism, We’re Stuck in Forever Wars

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale University, is a scholar of surpassing brilliance. His 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin chronicles in harrowing detail the de facto collaboration of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union that resulted in the murder of millions of innocents. On any […]