The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

• Author: Heineman, Robert

* The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism By Andrew J. Bacevich New York: Metropolitan Books and Henry Holt, 2008. Pp. 206. $24.00 cloth, $14.00 paperback.

With The Limits of Power, Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University and retired U.S. Army colonel, continues his critical examination of American foreign policy since World War II. In American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), Bacevich argued that American foreign policy since the end of World War II, regardless of the party in the White House, has been geared toward achieving U.S. global dominance. In a following book, The New American Militarism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), he focused on the reconstitution of the military in American life, especially its reinvigorated role in the conduct of foreign policy since the Vietnam War, and he concluded that the military has integrated itself so successfully into official U.S. dealings with the rest of the world that it has come to be seen as essential to effective foreign policy.

In his latest effort, Bacevich concentrates on the lessons to be learned from U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he reaches conclusions that, not surprisingly, differ from those of many public leaders and pundits. In his view, the war in Iraq exposed clearly for the first time the hypocrisy of the "morality tale" (p. 19) that had been the staple of American foreign policy since World War II. Sprinkled throughout his critique are the thoughts of the prominent Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who expressed a deep concern about Americans' tendency to parade their power and prosperity before the rest of the world and to believe that they could use these assets to spread their worldview to others, if not to impose it on them. In this respect, Niebuhr's views provide a prescient framework for Bacevich's analysis.

In chapter 1, "The Crisis of Profligacy," the author portrays American society as imbued with a culture of "entitlement." Because Americans see themselves as the global good guys, they believe that other nations should welcome their ideas and institutions. Thus, President Jimmy Carter's famous 1979 "crisis of confidence" speech cautioning Americans to temper their hubris and sanctimony was rapidly overshadowed by President Ronald Reagan's optimism and assurances of...