The Foreign Service Journal, March 2011

M A R C H 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 63 Gardens, Not Garrisons Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War Andrew J. Bacevich, Henry Holt and Co., 2010, $25, hardcover, 286 pages. R EVIEWED BY S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY Back in May 2003, just after Amer- ican forces entered Iraq, I reviewed Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History in these pages. I began my review by quoting Bobbitt’s magisterial prologue: “We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five cen- turies it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state.” He then advocated the use of pre-emptive war to deal with such threats. Andrew J. Bacevich’s latest volume, published at the other end of the Iraq War, is far slimmer than Bobbitt’s, but equally ambitious in its scope. How- ever, it presents a very different vision of U.S. national security priorities. In Bacevich’s view, the time has come for Washington to abandon “the abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order re- quire the United States to maintain a global military presence.” Bacevich calls this set of beliefs the “Washington Rules,” and devotes the bulk of his book to illustrating how this creed, forged at a historical moment when American power was at its height, has remained sacrosanct for two-thirds of a century despite periodic pledges by U.S. presidents to revisit it in light of new conditions. To make his point, Bacevich asks us to imagine our reaction if China’s de- fense minister announced plans to: • Increase military spending so that annual expenditures by the People’s Liberation Army will henceforth ex- ceed the combined defense budgets of Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, Ger- many, France and Great Britain; • Create a constellation of forward- deployed PLA garrisons to conduct war games and exercises in strategically sen- sitive areas around the world, including Latin America; and • Partition the planet into sprawling territorial commands, with one four- star Chinese general assigned respon- sibility for the Asia and Pacific, another for the Middle East, and so forth. Bacevich wryly adds: “No doubt the defense minister would caution other nations not to view this program as posing any threat, the People’s Re- public of China being sincerely com- mitted to living in harmony with others. The minister might even argue that China, both a venerable civ- ilization and a rising nation-state, has an inherent responsibility to con- tribute to global stability.” Such assurances would give cold comfort, of course. Yet, as Washington Rules documents, this imaginary pro- gram pales in comparison with the ex- isting military posture of the United States — a program that has literally become unaffordable. So far, so good. Alas, Bacevich’s so- lution, which he lays out in the con- cluding chapter, “Cultivating Our Own Garden,” is breathtakingly simplistic: bring our troops home. To be fair, such a move would be considerably cheaper than our current approach (at least in the short run), and has the real virtue of rolling back our society’s slide into acceptance of permanent war as the normal state of affairs. But as Bobbitt explained in his 2002 book, home gar- dening does not equip us to deal with genuine threats. Particularly disappointing is Bace- vich’s failure to explore the potential of diplomacy and soft power to obviate the need for armed conflict in the first place. (Indeed, other than taking a truly cheap shot at former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about mid- way through, he makes almost no ref- erences to the subject at all.) Still, despite that alarming blind spot, I highly recommend Washington Rules . As I said about Bobbitt’s book, whether you agree with Bacevich’s the- sis or not, it will change the way you think about the world. ■ Steven Alan Honley is the editor of the Journal . B OOKS