10/24/13 – Andrew Bacevich – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton.
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And next up is Andrew Bacevich.
He's got a new one at Tom Dispatch.
Of course, he's professor of history and international relations at Boston University.
He's the author of many books, including The New American Militarism and Limits of Power.
And the latest is Breach of Trust, How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, which I haven't read yet, but that sure is a topic I'm interested in talking about.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Andrew?
Very fine.
Thank you.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
And what a great read today.
I really like this essay.
Fighting isolationists while at war in the world.
It's a really great piece.
But if it's okay with you, I actually wanted to start out with something that Tom wrote in his introduction to your essay.
As people familiar with Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com.
Of course, he writes these introductory little essays to his guest essays.
And in this one, he quotes from the New York Times.
There's another one from defensenews.com that has an almost exact quote along the very same lines.
And the quote is here, with the United States military out of Iraq and pulling out of Afghanistan, the army is looking for new missions around the world.
And basically, this is, it's just, we're going to invade Africa as a make work program for the army.
Is that really the bottom line here?
Well, I mean, it's not quite an invasion.
But I mean, this is sort of standard bureaucratic behavior, not just on the part of the military.
But when you find your old mission going away, you need to gin up a new one in order to have some rationale for, you know, why you should continue to have a claim on the nation's resources.
And after the failures and frustrations of Iraq and Afghanistan, it doesn't seem likely that we're going to be invading and occupying any countries anytime soon.
And so the army, my old service, finds itself trying to justify its existence.
And so the latest idea, which I find troubling, to put it mildly, is not that we're going to invade African countries, but we're going to be sending missions to train or equip or advise or work with the indigenous forces in sub-Saharan African countries, supposedly because that will enhance their ability to resist terror.
I fear that the effect will be to involve us in problems that we don't understand, can't handle, and that in effect, our mucking around is going to probably lead to some larger military involvement down the road.
Yeah, and I'm sorry about that, because I was certainly using the phrase invasion loosely, if not lightly.
It's only because I had in mind the piece by Nick Terse, also at Tom Dispatch just two weeks ago, I think, about the military's humongous, or I forgot exactly his term, gigantic light footprint, that it almost amounts to an invasion of the entire continent when you look at how far and wide and it is, again, small numbers and mostly at the invitation of the local governments, training forces and these kinds of things.
But it's just, wow, it is a gigantic new project here, maybe even more so than the Asia pivot is the Africa pivot here, no?
Oh, I think you're exactly right.
And, you know, one of the things we should ask ourselves is what are the interests that are at risk?
I mean, there was a time, and I think for, frankly, understandable reasons, that the United States didn't fancy that it had all kinds of vital national security interests at stake in sub-Saharan Africa.
But now suddenly, apparently we do.
And that's that finds expression in this greater willingness to send U.S. forces there.
And I, you know, apart from the bureaucratic interests that are being served, it's difficult for me to see what are the strategic interests.
And it ought to be strategic concerns that shape our military policy.
Well, I have an idea that maybe there are strategic concerns, just not good enough ones.
Namely, keeping China out, that at some point if we ever have a conflict with China, we've got to be able to control every drop of oil on the planet so that they can't get it.
That kind of thing.
More than more than because that's what Houston wants, although maybe that's what Houston wants, too.
Well, I mean, I mean, I think you can make an argument that we have an interest in keeping China out or maybe, you know, minimizing the influence or limiting the influence they would wield.
But the question is whether or not sending in U.S. forces is the way to do that.
My understanding, it's not a very deep understanding, is that China's growing influence in places like Africa stems from the fact that they offer things that Africans want, that they have programs to build infrastructure, that they are making investments in the exploitation of African natural resources, particularly material, mineral resources.
So if you want to counter Chinese influence, then it seems to me you need to play the Chinese game and do a better job of playing it than they are.
And again, sending in a bunch of missions of U.S. forces seems to me to be not particularly relevant to that to that issue.
Hmm.
Well, I guess you're just an isolationist or something if you don't want to control everything in the world.
You know, when I read your essay this morning, I was reminded of a thing I read.
Yours is you're just picking on the New York Times here.
And boy, you just pick a hole right through them.
But I always remember one from Newsweek from, say, 1998 or 99 or something.
And they actually had a picture of the dark, shadowed corner of a dingy room.
And then the headline was, Will the American people retreat and cower into the shadows of isolationism?
Or will we face the brave new 21st century tall and proud?
And I mean, it was really like that.
You're you're just weak and you're just afraid and you just don't want to lead.
And so get the hell out of the way if you don't want to take over the whole planet.
Professor Bacevich, come on.
Well, and I mean, that argument, which is made repeatedly, is one that is intended to discipline the American people, I think, to to suppress any serious debate or consideration of alternatives and therefore to perpetuate this notion that we have to exercise global leadership primarily by relying on our on the military instrument.
And it's a shame that it works so well.
And it's really a travesty that so many institutions like The New York Times engage in this kind of this kind of practice.
Well, you know, what's kind of funny about it to me is how hollow it rings, especially now.
And I guess it is still very effective, you know, on some.
But, you know, if you stop and think about it for a minute, come on.
Nobody accuses Brazil of being isolationists because they're not out invading and toppling and regime changing and leading everything.
They're minding their own business.
They're doing what a normal nation would.
But for any American to want that, I mean, well, I'll put it this way.
I would say there are actual isolationists in this country, the very crankiest guys in the comment section at the American Conservative Magazine.
But I wouldn't even say the writers there.
I mean, the even the paleocons are they're very anti-war, but they're not even really isolationist, even favoring trade restrictions.
Well, it doesn't really make them isolationist.
They're very, very few.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
But you I think you put your finger on the key issue that a normal nation doesn't necessarily have to be to strike the posture that we habitually do.
But remember, in the eyes of many, many Americans, to include people who congregate in and around Washington, we're not a normal nation.
We're a different and we're special.
And in order to demonstrate that specialness or to fulfill our special mission, the argument is made.
That's why we have to establish this kind of global posture.
If we were able to simply acknowledge that we we are one nation among many, the nation we happen to love, but we are one among many, then it would become easier, I think, for us to evaluate things from a pragmatic point of view.
Where do we need to be and where do we not need to be?
Where do we need to exercise our power and where where are we foolish to try to employ our power and to make decisions based on pragmatic considerations rather than what are in essence vast, ideological, imagined, ideological claims, which which which seem to you know, be impossible to eliminate, even even when our vast claims, for example, in the wake of 9-11 end up creating such catastrophes for ourselves and for others.
Well, you know, I picked up on one thing here.
I could be off, but it's something I thought of when I was reading your essay was that I mean, you really focus on how they always call it.
Oh, and you go back for decades here.
The isolationists, the isolationists.
Oh, you're all a bunch of pro-Hitlerites or cowards or whatever you are.
But it's always the new isolationism, the new isolationism.
And it occurred to me that in a sense, what they're doing there is they're trying to deny any continuity that this is really there is a peaceful tradition in America.
It's just we never win the peaceniks, we never get our way.
But there's always been a strain of Americans, not all just hippies and not all pro-Hitlerites who don't want to intervene all around the world, but by calling it the new isolationism whenever they do, they sort of just skip all of any continuity and tradition and go straight back to the worst thing that Charles Lindbergh ever said into an open mic.
Right.
I think I think you put your finger on it.
Exactly right.
Yeah, that's funny about that.
How it really well, I'm a George Karlinian at heart when it comes to all this stuff.
And the manipulation of languages is just so powerful the way an entire massive kind of subtle screwjob, you know, brainwashing manipulation, you know, yeah.
Brainwashing is a little a little strong, harsh, but it gets to the point that, you know, there are certain terms which are privileged, even if there's no real empirical justification for them.
And there are other terms that simply are not allowed in discourse.
And and and I'm not one of these guys who think there's some kind of a big conspiracy in the mainstream media, but but these most authoritative organs of opinion, like The New York Times, perpetuate these false notions and thereby, I think, make it very difficult for us to evaluate realistically what our policy achieves, what it doesn't achieve, what it costs and what might be some alternative approaches.
Right.
And by the way, I didn't mean to make it sound like I accept their premise that the America First movement before World War Two were a bunch of pro Hitlerites.
Just that's what they say.
Obviously, John T. Flynn was no Nazi.
Come on.
Right.
Those were American patriots there.
I just I realize that it sounded for a minute like I was accepting their.
No, no, no, no.
All right.
Anyway, listen, I know you've got to go, but I really appreciate you coming back on the show.
And I'm going to try to make it a point to read your book, because I certainly agree without even getting into it, that this whole foreign policy amounts to a betrayal of the soldiers that are sent out there to do it.
Most of whom are believe that they're doing the right thing for God and country and all that kind of stuff.
And so I want to get it and read it and interview you about it.
I hope I can soon.
OK, I enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
That is Andrew Bacevich, again, professor at Boston University.
And you got to read this thing.
It's really funny history here.
Bashing isolationists while at war.
Every time America is bombing somebody, somebody in The New York Times is writing how America is just backing down from the world and whatever is going to happen without our leadership.
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