1. 1
Review of Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans
are Seduced by War. Oxford: OUP, 2005.
By Oleg Nekrassovski
In the “Introduction” to his book, the author claims that “American political leaders
have demonstrated their intention … to reshape the world in accordance with American values”
(p. 2). Moreover, in the author’s view, this is so because the vast majority of Americans have
long subscribed to the view that American ideals “represent universal truths, valid for all times”
(p. 2), which are destined to triumph around the world. At the same time, the author claims
that, more recently, Americans have become skeptical of non-military solutions to international
problems, and “To a degree without precedent in U.S. history … have come to define the
nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the
fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals” (p. 2).
“Already in the 1990s America’s marriage of a militaristic cast of mind with utopian ends
had established itself as the distinguishing element of contemporary U.S. policy. … The New
American Militarism examines the origins and implications of this union and proposes its
annulment” (p. 3). Thus, this book’s overall purpose is to criticize and show the dangers
inherent in this new ideology, which the author calls the new American militarism.
However, the author does not shy away from pointing out his own biases. In fact, in the
“Preface,” he states that the overall argument of his book, his selection and interpretation of
evidence, and the conclusions he draws from that evidence, rest, or at least, are influenced by,
his four presumptions or predispositions: (1) He is a veteran of the Vietnam War, of its bleak
later stages, during which many of his friends have died or been injured. Consequently, he
states that the Vietnam War is his frame of reference, within which he interprets everything
else. (2) After returning from Vietnam, he stayed on in the US Army as a professional officer.
During this time he claims that he became convinced that the preservation of freedom, rather
than “conquest, regime change, preventive war, or imperial policing,” was the only true and
honorable calling for an American soldier (p. X). (3) The author believes that the effectively two-
party system of American politics is responsible for severe social inequality in US society, the
presence of which, he believes, is related to the rise of militarism in America. Moreover, the
author states that his book attributes “great significance – perhaps too great – to the 1960s …
the locus of all the ills afflicting contemporary America. But it is also an account of someone
who understands that many … conservatives share responsibility for those afflictions, the
excessive militarization of U.S. policy not least among them” (p. XII). (4) The author believes
that “Rather than bending history to their will, presidents [especially modern presidents] and
those around them are much more likely to dance to history’s tune” (p. XII); while the problem
of American militarism is larger than a particular president or a single administration.

2. 2
The New American Militarism discusses, whenever it’s relevant to its purpose, the
history of civil-military relations in the United States in the 20th
century. It places special
emphasis on US civil-military relations since the 1960s, especially more recent decades. In the
course of its historical, though rather non-chronologically presented, narrative, the book shows
multiple functional, and especially, conflicting societal imperatives that were constantly putting
pressure on the US armed forces. It also does a fairly good job of showing how, throughout the
period of American history that it covers, US military leaders were in constant disagreement
with US civilian leaders over the proper usage of the American armed forces, and were,
whenever possible, attempting to make the American military less submissive to the whims of
American civilian leaders.
The book relies primarily on secondary sources to support its arguments. And its first
chapter uses them to critique Wilsonian interventionism and its contemporary legacy; and
blames Wilsonianism for the demise of old American tradition of the citizen-soldier, and its
replacement by professional military elite, and the subsequent erosion of civilian control over
it. This is followed, in chapter two, by an analysis of “how the cultivation of military
professionalism … assumed self-regenerating momentum”1
The third chapter carefully
evaluates neoconservatives and accuses them of laying the intellectual foundation for the new
American militarism; while analyzing that foundation and attempting to show how it evolved
from the views of dissenting leftists.2
Chapter four focus on the alleged role of Ronald Reagan
in creating the myths that nurture and sustain the American militarism of today, and how this
legacy influenced subsequent administrations. In a similar vein, chapter five explores the
alleged roles of the religious right in reinforcing militarism’s basic values, by giving religious
sanction to the militarization of US policy, and by giving an aura of moral legitimacy to the
resulting military activism.3
Chapter six deals with the institutionalization of the doctrines that
pushed the George W. Bush administration towards militarism, and lays considerable blame for
these doctrines on the development of the concept - the Revolution in Military Affairs - by the
academia and think tanks. Chapter seven focuses on several decades of America policies in the
Middle East; how these policies have been shaped and distorted by the oil trade; and how
these policies provoked radical Muslim reactions, such as terrorism.4
Finally, chapter eight
provides ten recommendations, for making the US less militaristic, which are: listening to the
nation’s founders, strengthening the separation of powers, employing armed force only as the
last resort, increasing the self-sufficiency of the US, focusing on the actual defense of the
nation, controlling defense spending, using more soft power, promoting the citizen-soldier
ideology, properly using the National Guard and reserves, and improving the civil-military
relationships within the US.5
This book raises multiple theoretical issues and topics for further discussion, in virtue of
its many, controversial conclusions. For example, the above mentioned, alleged role of Ronald
Reagan in creating the myths that nurture and sustain the American militarism of today, and

3. 3
how this legacy influenced subsequent administrations, is open to considerable further
debate.6
Even more questionable, and hence worthy of a serious further discussion, is the
book’s already mentioned claim about the religious right’s roles in reinforcing militarism’s basic
values, by giving religious sanction to the militarization of US policy, and by giving an aura of
moral legitimacy to the resulting military activism.7
Overall, I found this book to be poorly organized and full of discussions, for which the
author failed to provide clear conclusions. Nor did he make it clear to me how these discussions
relate to each other and support his central arguments. What’s worse, some of these
discussions appeared to be contradicting each other. For example, one of the author’s
recommendations, for countering American militarism (Ch. 8), is to stop using the reservists as
a supplement to, or in place of, regular troops in overseas missions; even though his other
recommendations are to revive the concept of the citizen-soldier, so as to make sure “the army
has deep roots among the people”, and to “reconcile the American military profession to
American society.” Also, earlier in this book, the author approvingly describes the policies of
Creighton Abrams, a post-Vietnam Army chief of staff, who attempted to make it more difficult
for civilian leaders to make America go to war. The author notes that Abrams did that by
making the regular army operationally dependent on the reserves, and hence forced every US
president, who wanted the US Army to engage in war, on any significant scale, to call up the
reservists to action – an economically costly and politically sensitive step (p. 39). As a result of
all these problems, I found the book’s main arguments to be unconvincing.
Notes
1. Edward A. Olsen, Review of The New American Militarism: How Americans are
seduced by War, by Andrew J. Bacevich, The Independent Review 10, no. 3 (2006),
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=569.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.