1. a historian at the army war college

Kelly Shannon

8. Andrew Bacevich. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 288 pp.

In 1995, Michael Sherry wrote In the Shadow of War, which argued that militarism has permeated American politics and culture since the Great Depression. As Sherry looked to the future, however, he was cautiously optimistic, suggesting that perhaps this militarism was waning. Twelve years and one unfinished global war later, it appears that he was wrong. In The New American Militarism, historian Andrew Bacevich continues where Sherry left off. Bacevich argues that certain military, political, and religious groups found common cause in the wake of the Vietnam War. Though motivated by different interests, these groups nevertheless effected the same end, a new wave of American militarism. According to Bacevich, the resulting foreign policy is governed by the use of preemptive force, dismissive of peaceful avenues of statecraft, gluttonous in defense spending, and disdainful of governmental checks and balances. The new militarism transcends presidential administrations and political parties—it is systemic, pervasive, and dangerous. If we are to believe Bacevich, the stakes are nothing less than freedom itself.

Bacevich sees the roots of this resurgence in Wilsonian idealism. The melding of utopian ends with military means legitimated the expansion of American power. Meanwhile, the American people were lulled into a daze of militant self-righteousness. They watched Top Gun and Rambo, read Tom Clancy thrillers, and generally internalized the patriotic myths of Ronald Reagan. In such a world, much could be justified in the name of freedom and democracy.

The purveyors of the new American militarism are a curious mixture of military officers, neoconservatives, Christian conservatives, and defense intellectuals who generally did not intend to foster militarism so much as they wished to recoup what was lost in the wake of Vietnam. The military lost popular prestige and faith in the utility of force. Neoconservatives sought to reinvigorate the lost reverence for American ideals abroad. Christian conservatives bemoaned the immorality of the counterculture movement. Defense intellectuals aimed, once and for all, to adapt warfare to the imperatives of the nuclear age. Increased military power and its projection, particularly in the Middle East, served these ends. The result, according to Bacevich, is World War III, global in its scope and indefinite in its ends.

Bacevich concludes by identifying ten ways to curtail the new militarism, most of which focus on reviving Americans’ historic distrust of military power implicit in the Constitution. Bacevich is well-intentioned in this regard, and should be applauded for rightly proposing a more restrained foreign policy and increased national self-sufficiency. These principles, however, are abstract and idealistic, nothing concrete for the reader to grasp save budgetary cutbacks in defense spending. Implicit in the book, however, is the simple truth that military officers, politicians, and religious leaders did not take the right lessons from the Vietnam War. Instead of facing the reality of defeat, they went about repairing the damage by reasserting the status quo. Today we are engaged in a war reminiscent of that conflict. If the new militarism is to abate, perhaps Americans need only to take the right lessons away from this experience.

For Bacevich, like Sherry before him, the concept of militarism is problematic. Whenever it is uttered in reference to the United States there is a collective cringe, not only because it smacks of warmongers gone amuck, but also because of the fuzziness of the word itself. Bacevich cites a number of definitions, but generally is concerned with militarism insofar as it has “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” (2). But who defines the nation’s strength and well-being? At what point do military ideals reach nostalgic proportions? Bacevich is largely concerned with military, political, and religious elites, but is American culture militarized as well? The popularity of country singer Toby Kieth’s song, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” suggests that perhaps it is. Without a more comprehensive examination of popular culture, however, the existence of a cultural militarism remains unproven.

Criticism aside, this is an important book that advances the general argument of In the Shadow of War into the twenty-first century by taking into account the important events of the last six years. For military historians and historians of civil-military relations, Bacevich has some interesting things to say about the professionalism of the military’s officer corps since Vietnam. His portraits of generals Creighton Abrams, Colin Powell, and Wesley Clark are scathing. Historians in general will also appreciate the way Bacevich integrates militarism into the larger political, religious, and cultural milieu. Ultimately, The New American Militarism is a work that should spark debate and further scholarship while the immediacy of his subject and the clarity with which he presents it will appeal to a broader popular audience. Little more can be expected from such a short, but important, book.

Jason Smith

9. NEWS FROM CENFAD FACULTY, ALUMNI, AND STUDENTS

compiled by Michael Dolski

FACULTY

Dr. Regina Gramer, Assistant Director of CENFAD, served as chair and commentator for the panel on “Arms Embargoes Assessments: Theory, Policy, and Practice” at the 48th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in Chicago on February 28, 2007. In Fall 2006 she attended the inaugural lecture of Joschka Fischer, Germany’s minister of foreign affairs from 1998 to 2005 and a member of the German national parliament, at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. BM a.D. Fischer currently holds a one-year appointment as the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professor of International Economic Policy, with the rank of lecturer of public and international affairs, and has accepted her invitation to come to Temple University for the CENFAD Colloquium on May 2, 2007.

Dr. Richard Immerman's The Central Intelligence Agency: Security Under Scrutiny, which he co-edited with Athan Theoharis and contributed the lead chapter on the CIA's history, came out in 2006. He has devoted much of his recent research since then (and his return from London) to his manuscript, Empire for Liberty?, which is due at Princeton University Press in September. The chances of his meeting that deadline are slim to none. On January 1, 2007, he added to his administrative roles at Temple the presidency of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. At SHAFR's annual meeting in June he will deliver his presidential address, “Intelligence and Strategy: Historicizing Psychology, Policy, & Politics.”

Professor of History and CENFAD Assistant Director, Dr. Jay Lockenour, received a Research and Study Leave for Fall 2007 to finish the research on his project on Erich Ludendorff, tentatively entitled, “Dragonslayer: The Life of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic.”

Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin, Professor of History and CENFAD Associate Director, spent much time on the road during the several months delivering invited lectures. He presented “When Freedom Wore a Red Coat: A Social History of Cornwallis’ 1781 Virginia Campaign” as part of the 39^th Annual Perspectives in Military History lecture series on November 15, 2006, at the U.S. Army War College and Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He tested a shorter version of that lecture a few days earlier at the Jamestown/Yorktown History Club Forum at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Urwin made his second appearance at the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania, to lecture on “‘Through Fields of Blood . . . until Tyranny is Trodden under Foot’: Dr. Joseph Warren’s Last Oration, March 6, 1775” on October 19. Urwin returned to his roots as a historian by presenting “Sheridan’s Spearhead: Custer and the Appomattox Campaign” at the 2006 annual conference of the Little Bighorn Associates in July in Richmond, Virginia. Urwin also participated in a panel discussion with two other historians exploring the merits and flaws of George Armstrong Custer and other Civil War cavalry commanders. Urwin took an autobiographical turn on September 30 at the Ninth Annual Civil War Symposium at the First Division Cantigny Museum in Wheaton, Illinois, with “Glory and Me: A Professor’s Short/Love Hate Affair with Hollywood.” He repeated that lecture as part of the CENFAD Colloquia series on March 26, 2007. Two months earlier, Urwin gave his Dr. Warren lecture for the second time to the American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia. Finally, Urwin delivered the keynote address to the Seventh Annual Conference of the Bucks-Mont Council on Social Studies on March 14 at Central Bucks South High School in Warrington, Pennsylvania. His topic was atrocities and warfare and how to address such things in primary and secondary school social science classes.

Urwin published “John Saunders of the Queen’s Rangers: The Portrait and the Man” in the summer 2006 issue of Military Collector & Historian: Journal of the Company of Military Historians.

Urwin appeared prominently in Washington: The Warrior, a two-hour documentary special that aired on the History Channel last Memorial Day, May 29, 2006. The showed turned out to be one of the most highly rated programs broadcast by that cable network. Urwin participated in a Revolutionary War marathon when the History Channel broadcast a six-part series, Washington’s Generals, on December 29. Urwin appeared in four back-to-back one-hour episodes profiling Daniel Morgan, Lord Charles Cornwallis, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Benedict Arnold. Urwin has also been interviewed for an educational film on the Battle of Bunker Hill forthcoming from Little Warsaw Productions and a separate documentary on flags, patriotism, and warfare produced by independent filmmaker John Foley.

During the past twelve months, Urwin published book reviews in Military Chronicles: The Magazine of Warfare & History, On Point: The Journal of Army History, North & South: The Magazine of the Civil War Society, H-CivWar , Civil War Book Review, Alabama Review, and Military Collector & Historian: Journal of the Company of Military Historians.

Finally, Urwin just received an Academic Fellowship from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to spend ten days this summer studying counter-terrorism in Israel.

Professor of History and CENFAD Associate, Dr. David Waldstreicher, was elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and was on the Fellowship Selection Committee, American Philosophical Society, in 2005. Waldstreicher is on the Academic Advisory Council, David Library of the American Revolution, for the year 2006-2007, and on the editorial board of the Journal of the Early Republic beginning in 2007. He has presented extensively on Benjamin Franklin over the past few years with papers and lectures such as “Benjamin Franklin and Slavery,” “Reflections on the Franklin Extravaganza,” “Slavery, Race and the Founding: Jefferson and Franklin,” and “Franklin, Quakerism, and Slavery.” Waldstreicher published “Two Cheers for the Public Sphere…and One for Historians’ Skepticism,” in William and Mary Quarterly (January 2005). He wrote chapters entitled “Capitalism, Slavery, and Benjamin Franklin’s American Revolution,” in The Early American Economy: Historical Perspectives and New Directions, edited by Cathy Matson (Penn State UP, 2006) and “Benjamin Franklin, Religion, and Early Antislavery” in The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Race, and the Ambiguities of Reform, edited by Steven Mintz and John Stauffer (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).

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