Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country

by Andrew J. Bacevich

A blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war, from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power and Washington Rules The United States has been "at war" in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between America's soldiers and veterans and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." In Breach of Trust , bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich takes stock of the separation between Americans and their military, tracing its origins to the Vietnam era and exploring its pernicious a nation with an abiding appetite for war waged at enormous expense by a standing army demonstrably unable to achieve victory. Among the collateral casualties are values once considered central to democratic practice, including the principle that responsibility for defending the country should rest with its citizens. Citing figures as diverse as the martyr-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the marine-turned-anti-warrior Smedley Butler, Breach of Trust summons Americans to restore that principle. Rather than something for "other people" to do, national defense should become the business of "we the people." Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy―moral as well as fiscal.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, War, History, Military History, American History

238 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2013

About the author

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He is the author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism and The New American Militarism. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. He is the recipient of a Lannan Award and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...

Reviews

[Bob Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading by all citizens, especially those who blithely say "Thanks for your service" but have no idea what that service entails. Most Americans couldn't find the countries our military is deployed in combat operations on a map.

Sadly, neither could our politicians; this was written in 2013, but is even more timely. Look at the surprise expressed by members of Congress over casualties incurred by my Special Forces brethren in Niger-- they didn't even know we have 800 troops there. Congress has abdicated its role in declaring war since our last declared war: World War II.

I have tried in vain to find strategic goals for all these deployments. That is a failing on the part of our senior military leadership who are failing in the basic fundamentals of all they were taught.

There are few writers with the experience, education, and insight who can write about the growing gap between military and civilian. We are blissfully wandering down a very, very dangerous path.

A must read.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In this way, the bravery of the warrior underwrites collective civic cowardice, while fostering a slack, insipid patriotism.”
― Andrew J. Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country



Andrew Bacevich follows up on the threads he started with The Limits of Power and Washington Rules. In this book he explores how the post-Vietnam transformation of the military from a citizen-soldier force to an all-volunteer force has come with many unintended (but not necessarily unseen) costs. Not the least of which is the expansion of long almost perpetual wars and a limited exposure of the real cost of wars to either the politicians or general population of our country.

The last letter I received from my older brother (an Army helicopter pilot who served twice in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan) dealt with the idea of reconstituting the draft. While Bacevich doesn't actually recommend the draft, he does think a conversation about national service and the draft would be useful. We have reached a point where our nation's imperial impulses have grown dangerous, while at the same time, we have relegated the cost to either future generations (the lat two major wars were all fought with debt) and a small cadre of professional warriors (less than 1% of our nation's population). If we have no skin (financial or physical) in the game, we are more likely to allow our leaders to continue to push us into perpetual war.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each time I read one of Andrew Bacevich’s books I find myself deep in thought which leads me to reevaluate certain opinions that I once held. Upon completing this process I usually emerge rather upset bordering on anger. Bacevich’s previous work, WASHINGTON RULES: AMERICA’S PATH TO PERMANENT WAR is a case in point as he asked the question as to why the American people seem to have accepted the use of force as routine. I integrated the book into my courses while I was teaching and I found that students were appalled at what was taking place. Bacevich who retired from the military after twenty-three years and is currently what Rachel Madow calls “a crusty conservative Catholic professor who now teaches at Boston University” has now written BREACH OF TRUST: HOW AMERICANS FAILED THEIR SOLDIERS AND THEIR COUNTRY, a book I would encourage all former students to read as I am certain once they do they will again be appalled. For myself I am often incredulous when confronted with how our government implements its national security strategy. We have gone from a policy of containment that dominated the Cold War to what Bacevich calls “full spectrum dominance” that equates security with military superiority. Currently our goal seems to be one of liberation and pacification of the Islamic world and having the ability to project our power anywhere. Our main vehicles in achieving this is an all-volunteer fighting force, employing missiles and drones in targeted assassinations, and relying on private contractors to carry out tasks that formerly were carried out by the military based on citizen-soldiers. In reaching this conclusion Bacevich has analyzed our all-volunteer army by tracing its historical development and evaluating whether as Americans we are better off now or when our soldiers were drawn from all segments of society or as it is currently from a tiny slice of our population.

In reading the Prologue that describes a July 4th pre-game ceremony at Fenway Park that encapsulates the concept of how we honor our troops as a means of assuaging our collective guilt, it made me ponder whether this is accurate. Since in our society Americans are not willing to participate in military service or sacrificing anything from their everyday lives even when our country has been at war for over a decade, it would appear guilt is an accurate label. We have outsourced our defense to a small segment of society while the rest of us go on with our daily lives. This being the case we must honor our soldiers any chance we get whether thanking individuals for their service in airports, conducting lavish ceremonies at public events, or having a beer company produce commercials that we can view on television to make ourselves feel good. Recently I attended a Notre Dame-Navy football game in South Bend with my family. The atmosphere was heightened with pre-game ceremonies that included a Blue Angel flyover of the stadium. I felt goose bumps as the core of midshipmen marched on to the field and at halftime when the Blue Angel pilots were introduced. At that time it made me proud to be an American as over 80,000 people stood up and cheered. I never thought that these events had anything to do with collective guilt, but I do now.

The United States military was fed by a conscripted army since World War II. It drew it soldiers from society as a whole. Each male was drafted for a period of two years unless they agreed to a longer obligation. This model remained in place until the Vietnam War when due to how that war was conducted and the politics involved in supporting a corrupt regime produced massive domestic protests and a lessening of discipline, racial conflict, drug problems, and poor command in the field. President Nixon at the time was looking for a vehicle to offset the anti-war movement and agreed to “a lottery” to replace the existing draft structure. When implemented in 1971 it accomplished the goal of the Nixon administration. Overall the Vietnam experience had a profound impact on the military. Bacevich outlines the process of military self-reflection that led to the replacement of a military based on citizen-soldiers with an all-volunteer force. The author guides the reader through military missions in Lebanon in 1983, Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991, Somalia in 1993, Serbia and Kosovo in the mid-1990s, and attempts to enforce “no-fly zones” throughout the period. The chronological analysis brings us to 9/11 which Bacevich argues is the turning point in separating America from its own military. President Bush would govern from that point on as if there was no war, a period when we invaded two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and despite declaring “Mission Accomplished” Bush found himself with no exit strategy from Iraq and in the midst of an insurgency that lasted throughout his presidency. After the attack on the World Trade Center Bush implored the American people to carry on with their lives as usual. In his speeches he spoke about “our” grief, “our” mission, “our anger” etc. “Our” was meant as a rallying cry, but when you encourage people to go to Disneyland, spend as much money as you can, and not let the terrorists witness any change in how Americans normally conduct themselves, how does the “our” fit in. Bush used “our” as “a vehicle for posturing. Minimizing collective inconvenience rather than requiring collective commitment became the distinctive signature of his approach to war management.” (29-30). America’s settled on a “three first-person-plural axioms to describe the unofficial but inviolable parameters of their prospective role. First, we will not change; second, we will not pay; third, we will not bleed.” (31) As a result the war was never really paid for. Instead of raising taxes, we had the Bush tax cuts, and never factored in the cost of the war after its conclusion. Every American should read Joseph Stieglitz’s THE THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR to gain an appreciation of the final cost that the next generation will bear. When Bush came into the White House the national debt was almost non-existent, when he left it was well over $7 trillion. But, as a society we did not pay attention and we suffer from what Bacevich calls “collective anomie,” “unless the problem you’re talking about affects me personally, why should I care.” (42)

Not only did 9/11 change the relationship between the military and society it also changed our approach to national security. Using the credo “if you are not with us, you are against us” our approach to foreign policy was dramatically altered. This new credo replaced the concept of containment that had already been modified with Desert Storm in 1990-1991. Once the Cold War ended, who should the military prepare for? When we had the Red Army to focus on we had the support of the American people who approved enormous defense spending by electing and then reelecting Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. This money was channeled into the military-industrial complex and fueled growth. As Bacevich states “the Red Army was the gift that kept on giving,” as each time a defense increase rationale was needed there it was! When the Cold War ended we were promised a “peace dividend,” but the Pentagon was able to create a new danger-Saddam Hussein. The “New World Order” that we trumpeted was really one of disorder. We were now faced with “ethnic and religious hostility, weapons proliferation, power struggles created by the disappearance of the Soviet Union…radicalisms of a number of varieties, rising expectations of democracy and free markets coupled with the inability of government to meet those expectations.” (86) The United States went from containment to power projection. Prevention would replace deterrence. The all-voluntary army would be the strategic force that would bring decisive victory.

Bacevich argues that this became an illusion as the war in Iraq did not evolve the way the Bush administration led us to believe. Once it became a quagmire the all-volunteer force found that it was not large enough to deal with the problems that developed. The military had to attract more soldiers leading to higher pay and other amenities. Further it had to attract blacks, other minorities, and even allow women to join. Bacevich brings up an interesting argument as he explores the myth long held that if women entered the military it would break “the bonds of patriarchy” and contribute to wars elimination. Militarists did not want more women to enlist, but since the all-volunteer army was insufficient to carry out its mission they were forced to accept them. Feminists who always wanted to increase female enlistment were now allies with the Pentagon’s male hierarchy in an interesting community of fate. With an increased female presence Bacevitch points to the figures that show the United States is just as aggressive in deploying its forces as ever. Even with a $600 million recruiting campaign the all volunteer force is still short of troops leading to multiple tours of duty and the use of National Guard units, and a further fragmenting of American society. One of the arguments for the all-volunteer force and a massive use of technological weapons was we could “do more with less,” as Bacevich suggests we might have been better off doing “less with less.”

Despite the military fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan they have had little impact on the military’s overall reputation with the American people. The all-volunteer force is praised by the majority of Americans, but under careful scrutiny the force has produced winners and losers. The big winners include the institutions that comprise the national security state. “These include generals, admirals and civilians who fill the upper echelons of the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council staff; champions of the imperial presidency who reflexively support….global interventionism…..the professional military by its very existence enriches the list of conceivable alternatives.” (125) the professional army has created a warrior class that should also be seen as a winner—now embodied by the celebrated SEALS. We rely less on conventional troops and rely on the Special Forces that each branch of the military has available to them. They are especially well funded and have access to the best technology in the American arsenal. Perhaps the greatest victor in this scenario is military contractors. Since we do not have enough troops to carry out our mission we have outsourced many jobs that the former citizen-army did themselves. For example KBR received $40.8 billion in contracts in the last decade. In addition, as of 2010 contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan had 260,000 employees on their payroll, “more than the number of U.S. troops committed to those theaters.” (127) Few in Washington seem to want to correct this problem. With contractors giving enormous funds to political campaigns, “whenever the contractor goose travels, it leaves behind a trail of excrement. Yet given that the goose reliably produces such a bountiful supply of golden eggs, no one in a position of influence finds all that much cause to complain.” (128-9) If you are wondering who the losers are, look in the mirror.
Bacevich’s tirade continues as he believes that America as a whole is enablers for what has occurred during the last twenty years. Whether discussing the role of ordinary citizens, the intellectual community, our media talking heads, and the American people themselves for not recognizing what has taken place, all are guilty. Bacevich’s solution is to change the three no’s mentioned earlier. What needs to take place is a reversion from we will not change to a concept of citizenship where we all have responsibilities and “an obligation to contribute to the nation���s defense when the country is at risk.” Instead of we will not pay citizens can pay higher taxes, forgo benefits and reduce consumption; “any war not worth paying for is not worth fighting.” Finally, instead of we will not bleed “Americans should insist upon fielding a citizen army drawn from all segments of society.” (190-1)

Bacevich’s book is a call to arms for the American people, not necessarily to go to war, but to create a fair vehicle to employ when war is absolutely necessary. Hopefully Bacevich’s ideas will provoke discussion and possibly lead to much needed change. Whether you will agree or not with the themes Bacevich lays out in this book it is a stimulating and thoughtful read that is well supported with the necessary documentation. I would encourage all to pick it up.

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book has an interesting premise. The U.S. should reinstate the draft. By having a volunteer army the U.S. people have disengaged themselves their military and by implication the wars that its’ country engages in. The refrain “We Support Our Troops” is repeated over and over - as long as it is not my child on a far distant battlefield.

The author argues persuasively that the removal of the draft has essentially privatized the military and allowed the U.S. government and Pentagon to become more secretive about the wars they start. Also these wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) have become interminable and unwinnable – Iraq being a prime example. Politicians spout slogans on accomplishments – but there is still no democracy in the Middle East. Possibly the only accomplishment is our steady supply of oil.

The author examines the evolution of the military since World War II when the U.S. started to keep a large standing army in peacetime. Up to the end of the Vietnam War all levels of society served in the U.S. military – all levels of society protested against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. During and after Vietnam the U.S. military was in disarray – but it has improved since then in morale, in racial terms... There was a euphoric “can do” spirit in the military after the first Gulf War ended in 1991. The author states that the template should have been the Somalia fiasco of 1992 when the U.S. entered optimistically and made a quick exit after it was victimized by tribal warfare – similar to what happened on a much larger scale in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also with the privatization (removal of the draft) of the military it became smaller, but after entry into Afghanistan and then Iraq it became necessary to hire at great expense several Private Security Contractors (guns and mercenaries). There is even less control on the moral and ethical behavior of these groups than on the U.S. military. This influx of Private Security Contractors is an entirely new development to 21st century warfare. This increases the secretiveness and further distances the control that democracy has on the military.

So this book has some provocative ideas – I would think it highly unlikely that any candidate for higher office could get elected on a platform of reinstating the draft. Also there were more anti-war protests during the Vietnam era because (among several reasons) more American soldiers were being killed in Vietnam (over 57,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam).

This book can meander. I found Part I overly rhetorical. There were digressions - I didn’t see what William Boykin, a General turned evangelist, had to do with the author’s overall thesis. Also I felt the book U.S. centric; Islamic terrorism and fanaticism is a world wide threat – it continues to disrupt lives and spread a nihilistic faith.

But at less than 200 pages this book got my attention.

[Clif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Bacevich, West Point graduate and veteran of the Vietnam War served through Desert Storm (1991) before retiring as a colonel to become a professor of history at Boston University, and is today retired from there.

With this background, Bacevich is worth hearing when he comments on the armed forces of the United States. This book takes the reader through the evolution of the U.S. Army, it's activities, the philosophies of it's leaders and most of all it's relationship to the people and government of the country.

To put it simply, Bacevich makes the case that the change from a force of draftees to a volunteer force has been a disaster and in large part has brought U.S. foreign policy to the mess it is in today.

Tracing army history from Nixon's ending of the draft in 1972, the pressure to find enough people to volunteer put necessity behind what appeared to be liberalization after the Vietnam War ended. It was necessary to broaden eligibility for soldiering, opening the field to women and the LGBT community, in spite of griping by the old school generals.

The lesson learned from Vietnam was not what would appear to be the obvious one from that epic failure which was to avoid any such adventures in the future, but to limit those in service to those wanting to serve. This conveniently stopped the protesting within the corps that in Vietnam got to the point of the rank and file threatening the lives of their officers when the pointlessness of the war became impossible to ignore.

To attract people, almost all the traditional grunt work was farmed out to private contractors. No more washing dishes or scrubbing down barracks. Pay was increased. Emphasis was placed on training, "be all you can be in the US Army." The professional army, something the founders of the U.S. were very anxious to avoid, was embraced.

With all the outsourcing, a host of private contractors joined the very profitable arms industry to finance an army of lobbyists to influence Congress.

While the move to volunteers brought equality of opportunity for those interested in a military career, Bacevich warns that the armed force of the country has been severed from the democracy it represented when the draft was in force. The professionals would not protest and would go anywhere and everywhere when ordered to do so, even when pressed at great personal cost to return for service repeatedly. Administrations in Washington need no longer fear the use of this obedient and willing fighting force, in fact it can abuse it.

Thus, no end in sight to the 18 year operation in Afghanistan. There is no resistance as in Vietnam. Nobody can say they are forced to serve. For the citizenry at home the army is forgotten. Few serve because most don't want to and relieved of the call to duty long term wars and operations all over the globe can be forgotten. What has always been a responsibility of citizenship is gladly given up. The wealthy and famous, unlike in WW2, escape completely from service without feeling guilty and a jobs program is achieved for the working class and the poor. To be a patriot, all you need is a "support our troops" magnet for the car.

Though Bacevich doesn't mention it, the next step, outsourcing the fighting to a purely mercenary army that likes to fight and is eager for action, is waiting in the wings with Erik Prince (of Blackwater and a former Navy Seal) pushing for it.

This book provides answers to anyone who wonders how a country that was hesitant to fight a real threat to democracy, WW2, can now be active around the globe with over 800 military bases in a time of peace at home with no military threats to the United States. It makes it clear why there was no peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. It tells of how what appeared to be a conclusive action, Desert Storm in 1991, was only the opening act of the intractable mess in Iraq that continues long after the end of Saddam Hussein.

The U.S. is now a warfare state, with arms exports our principle manufacturing export that only partially offsets the flood of consumer product imports. Too many Americans benefit from endless conflict, though at least we have an opponent of it on the national stage, Tulsi Gabbard, that is running her bid for the presidency on the issue. And we shouldn't forget - there is no victory to be had.

Bacevich writes well. Two statements struck me in particular...

Reliance on an all-volunteer force...suits a long list of beneficiaries. For those who ride the gravy train, doing what's necessary to keep it rolling takes precedence over contemplating its ultimate destination or the wreckage left in its wake

Referring to the well known video of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton watching the raid on Osama bin Laden...

This small group operating behind closed doors in Washington had rendered its decision; as an immediate consequence a hardly larger group of Navy SEALS was executing a daring covert operation on the other side of the world. An elite that conferred in secret was directing an elite that operates in secret - with Americans offered a tiny, alluring, carefully selected, after-the-fact glimpse of what had occurred.

Just as a distorted economic system has brought us too-big-to-fail that continues on in spite of an epic crash that was not allowed to have consequences to those who brought it on, our professional volunteer army with endless war show the same terrible inertia that the American public has proven helpless to alter. We know what is common to both: the takeover of our government by lobbyists. Andrew Bacevich does an excellent job of explaining how it happened with the military and why change must come.

[Dick Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrew Bacevich opens his latest book on Washington’s use of our military establishment with a July 4, 2011 salute to American men and women serving in the armed forces. Held at Fenway Park and sponsored jointly by the Pentagon and Boston Red Sox, a gigantic ceremony with aircraft flyovers, marshall music and a choral ensemble, you can almost see the cynicism dripping from the author’s lips. His point, convincingly repeated and made throughout the book, is that events like these and current policies embraced by our political leaders ease the collective consciences of America at large and take us off the hook. We’ve supported our troops in a brief show and are now free to forget all that and get on with our lives.
Bacevich shows the composition of our military starting with WWII when we had the draft and most families had relatives fighting in Europe or the South Pacific. In his view, everyone “had skins in the game.” A retired U. S. Army colonel and now professor of history and international relations at Boston University, Bacevich speaks with compelling insight and evidence of detailed research. The draft continued during the Korean War and followed with our vastly unpopular operation in Viet Nam to fight a political war instead of a military one. As a precursor to what is now happening, he cites examples of disobedience in the ranks with murders of officers by enlisted men, “fragging” with grenades, and other criminal incidents which the media made a point of not advertising. [I’m a retired USMC veteran of twenty-four years and witnessed almost identical incidents during my time in RVN.] After Richard Nixon declared “victory” and pulled another one of his tricks by eliminating the draft, slowly but surely the ranks of military volunteers began swelling. Great efforts were made to entice minorities to volunteer for military service including better pay and signing up bonuses. The percentage of African-Americans serving in the military has grown and today we see women and gays allowed to serve in combat with virtually no restrictions. In one short paragraph that made me skip a breath, Bacevich notes as an aside that a woman medic cared for his son, First Lieutenant A. J. Bacevich, who was killed in combat north of Baghdad in 2007.
Today we have a small volunteer force, all with “skin in the game,” while the greater American public is continually urged to support our troops. Bacevich’s argument throughout is that we are not supporting our troops. We’ve breached their trust and abandoned their care to a group in Washington with their own agenda, not to mention contractors of the military-industrial complex, the guys Dwight Eisenhower warned us about, who are profiting from our excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bacevich shows us the downside: troops serving multiple tours of combat duty in each of those countries, the heartbreaking results of PTSD, divorces, broken families and alarmingly increased rates of suicide. He points out that many Reservists have been called up for active duty to fill necessary gaps, a clearly broken contract between Washington leadership and reserve units which should be used only in the event of wars declared by Congress.
Bacevich concludes with recommendations for resumption of a law mandating some kind of national service. Not a draft, per se, but an obligation to serve in the armed forces, an organization like the Peace Corps, or perform some other type of civic duty. The unstated dilemma is that if the U. S. is ever again faced with a large scale war, we could be faced with the kind of rapid mobilization experienced just before WWII and the Korean War. Preparation for such conflicts, i.e., sweating in peacetime means less bleeding in wartime, will be to our advantage in the long run.
This book should be read by each member of Congress, every person in the Pentagon and all members of the White House. In addition, anyone considering enlisting in any of our armed forces should be given a chance to read this book and change his or her mind before raising a hand and swearing to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. The pity is that none of these people will probably read it and we’ll go about our merry way, letting that small contingent of our all-volunteer forces do their honorable duty in response to the whims and caprices of Washington politicians.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country is the 2013 continuation of the Andrew Bacevich anti-interventionist view of the history of U.S. foreign policy as it is implemented by the U.S. Executive Branch and military. He takes a most dim view of the volunteer armed services that have existed since Vietnam. And he is not shy about suggesting well footnoted changes:

Is the past prologue ? If so, here is what Americans can look forward to: more needless wars or shadow conflicts sold by a militarized and irresponsible political elite; more wars mismanaged by an intellectually sclerotic and unimaginative senior officer corps; more wars that exact huge penalties without yielding promised outcomes, with the consequences quickly swept under the rug even as flags flutter, fighter jets swoop overhead, the band plays the “Marines’ Hymn,” and commercials tout the generosity of beer companies doing good works for “the troops.”

Averting this dismal fate will not be easy. But here’s one place to begin: repeal the three no’s that have defined the American military system since the advent of the all-volunteer force. In place of the three no’s, substitute three affirmative commitments.

Instead of we will not change, Americans should revert to a concept of citizenship in which privileges entail responsibilities . Among those responsibilities, one in particular stands out: an obligation to contribute to the nation’s defense when the country is at risk or when interests said to be essential to the American way of life require the use of military power.

Instead of we will not pay, Americans should fund their wars on a pay-as-you-go basis. Payment can take several forms. Citizens can pay higher taxes, forgo benefits, or reduce consumption. The rule of thumb should be this: any war not worth paying for is not worth fighting.

Instead of we will not bleed, Americans should insist upon fielding a citizen army drawn from all segments of society. The creation of the all-volunteer force reduced the importance of securing a popular buy-in as a prerequisite for military action. In Washington, this latitude fed an appetite for armed intervention. Curbing that appetite will require the restoration of popular leverage in matters relating to war. There is but one way to do this: abandon the model of the warrior-professional with his doppelgänger the private security contractor. General McChrystal’s belated discovery is correct. When it comes to war, citizens should have skin in the game. Only then can they expect to have any say in how (and whether) the game gets played.

Bacevich is direct with his opinions and blunt in his criticism of those who disagree with him. He is not diplomatic. I admire him for his bluntness and personally identify with his occasional lack of tact.

The all-volunteer force is not a blessing. It has become a blight. Americans can, of course, choose to pretend otherwise, but those choosing such a course cannot be said to love their country. Nor can they be said to care about the well-being of those sent to fight on the country’s behalf.

This is the last paragraph of this well documented and footnoted book. I moved eagerly into this book immediately after finishing Washington Rules. I highly recommend that book as my favorite of the several books of his that I have read. I like his strong anti-interventionist position in world politics and foreign policy. This book gives a good deal of background about the history of the U.S. military, presented in a fairly straightforward manner.

I give this book three stars because I do not think the writing is as compelling as Washington Rules. It is, however, a good way to end 2014 with its heavy criticism of how a long string of Presidents have managed U.S. foreign policy. In some ways Backvich is a 21st century military whistleblower. He served over two decades in the belly of the beast and knows whereof he speaks. As far as I am concerned, he is a refreshing if somewhat brash voice that should be heard.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual, there is excellent analysis and critique from Bacevich in this book. Yet the solution he proposes, in my opinion, is a poor one. I feel strange saying this because I am a genuine admirer of this writer - particularly his two works The New American Militarism and The Washington Rules. That said, I could not help but feel somewhat let down at the end of this. Bacevich himself admits, realist that he is, that there is probably not going to be a draft or any serious change in the way Washington conducts foreign policy until the material means to wage war diminish. What is this book then? An exercise in futility?

I also feel that Bacevich shortchanges the American people somewhat. The recent outcry against intervention in Syria is a case in point: the U.S. public does not view foreign military interventions the way they did in 2003 and they are not afraid to say so (they even wrote their congressmen!). Likewise, the Democrats were able to seize control of the senate in 2006 because people were so fed up with the Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq War. Perhaps neither of these things are earth-shattering events, but they give one a slightly more favorable view of the American public than Bacevich's outright dismissal.

Now, to my biggest objection: the notion that conscription can restore virtue and effectiveness to our foreign policy. Let me be blunt, drafting people into the military against their will is a terrible idea for both moral and practical reasons - as evidenced by the author's description of his time in Vietnam. Bacevich sidesteps the unpleasant nature of what he is proposing by giving a general outline of "national service". In his view, not everyone would have to serve in the military - they would be able to choose from several options like helping the elderly or cleaning up the environment. The problems with this are obvious. If there is an unpopular war no one will want to choose military service, much less service in a combat unit. It will then be necessary (that is the government will find it so) to coerce people into military service in order to effectively prosecute the war. How does this prevent and/or shorten unnecessary military actions?

Bacevich implies that the mutinous state of the US Army in Vietnam and the US Anti-War movement somehow served this function in the past. When confronted with these movements US policy makers changed their views. This is simply ridiculous. The anti-war protests peaked in 68-69 and US ground troops remained in South Vietnam until 1972. Nixon waged the war for another three years! Not to mention the fact that half the casualties we sustained in Vietnam were during his first term as president. The reality is that the war dragged on regardless of peace protests and mutinous soldiers. The draft did not empower US citizenry to end the war swiftly.

World War II and The Civil War both feature prominently in this book as ideal cases of the draft "working". This view lacks nuance. Neither of these conflicts were as justified or effective as Bacevich suggests. It is possible (who really knows?) that slavery could have been abolished without a war, which is what happened in Brazil by 1887. It is also very clear, in retrospect, that FDR manipulated the US into the Second World War (Bacevich himself would almost certainly acknowledge this). This was totally contrary to the desires of a significant portion of the US general public. Both these wars were also the most destructive in our country's history. If I had to choose between them and Iraq /Afghanistan I would choose our current wars any day of the week. So the draft works well during a bloodbath. How is this a positive thing?

If there is an answer to the problems Bacevich discusses then it involves changing the way our leaders and citizens think about foreign policy, not giving our government the chance to resurrect the press gang.

[Remittance Girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long admired Bacevich since I read his The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Politically speaking, we are almost at opposite poles, but perhaps they are opposite poles of an honest, ethical conversation. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, has been a serving officer and holds a PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. He lost his son in 2008 in Iraq.

Breach of Trust takes a very thorough and deeply critical look at the evolution of America's professional (as opposed to a conscripted) military. From its inception after the Vietnam war to the present, he examines who has benefited from its evolution, how it has shaped the rise of the industrial military complex, fed and grown a voracious bureaucracy and enabled disastrous foreign policies and defense strategies.

The book takes acidic aim at a population that pays only superficial lip-service to 'honoring' those who serve, while demanding the right to sacrifice nothing and continuing to consume with relish while lives are wasted on foreign adventurism that is not only unsuccessful, but does little if nothing to ensure the security of the US.

It is essential reading for any American who truly cares about their culture, their democracy and principles of fairness. Its implications stretch far beyond the constitution of a military and address questions of what it means to be a citizen - its benefits and its responsibilities.

By necessity it covers certain parts of history in depth in order to build the author's arguments. When he offers examples to illustrate his point, he doesn't settle at one - he lists many - and because of this, there is a certain tone of academic writing to the text. This does make for dense, but it is all the more rewarding and persuasive for it.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an analysis of the reasons the military embraced an all-volunteer army, its development and the consequences of this decision for the military, politicians and citizens. It also addresses related policies such as doing more with less and the army as a projection of American imperial power. Although the all-volunteer army has largely solved the problems the military was addressing after Vietnam, the author argues persuasively that the consequences for the army and especially the American people have been overwhelmingly negative. Along the way he points out that this smaller volunteer army has not "achieved anything approximating victory in any contest larger than policing exercises" since 1945, and that the US has increasingly adopted the Israeli military ethos, for example anticipatory self-defense as seen in pre-emptive war and targeted assassinations. I recommend this thought-provoking book.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old saying about British foreign policy goes something like this: "British foreign policy is just like American foreign policy, but less." Well, I agree with Andrew Bacevich, but less. He is probably the best commentator on the US military's relation to society today, but I can't agree with many of his most severe critiques.

This book's purpose is to examine the consequences of the shift to a professional, all-volunteer force in the 1970's. There are a lot of them, but two stand out. First, Bacevich argues that the all volunteer force broke a key element of the social contract: that all citizens should contribute to the national defense. The upside of the draft was that it brought people from all backgrounds into the military and distributed the burden of service relatively evenly across society. Bacevich holds up WWII as a good example: professional athletes, politician's sons, and Harvard students fought and died in high numbers. In fact, Bacevich notes that roughly as many Harvard students died during WWII as West Point students. Today, the military burden affects only a small, disproportionately poor and diverse portion of the population. Bacevich claims that the response of guilty Americans who don't serve is the "insipid and shallow" thank-you-for-your-service/support-the-troops culture seen from ball games to beer ads to bumper stickers. Really supporting the troops for Bacevich means paying attention to what kinds of messes they get sent into, and he believes this can only be achieved if average Americans have "skin in the game" (in Stanley McChrystal's phrasing) in the form of tax money, restrictions on consumption, or the risk of being drafted. Our ignorance of and detachment from Iraq and Afghanistan speak volumes for this argument.

The second main consequence of the shift to the all volunteer force is increased military adventurism abroad. Bacevich contends that Nixon calculated that the US would be freer to intervene around the world without the lingering threat of Vietnam protests. Decoupling the military from society makes the military a more flexible, easily used force, which can be a blessing or a burden depending upon how it is deployed. He is definitely critical of this idea, arguing that the military brass and political leaders have been far more reckless in their interventionism since the 1970s. He has a point, although the US certainly got involved a lot around the world in the early 20th century with just a small professional/volunteer force, including the Philippines-American war. The military went along with voluntarization because the citizen-soldier concept of Vietnam brought way too many social conflicts into the military and exposed the military to greater criticism.

As usual, I'm totally on board with many of Bacevich's criticisms of USFP, especially the Bush administration's disastrous decisions and poor judgement. The Bush team's failure to make Americans do anything except wave flags and chant slogans to bear the burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan should go down in history as one of the greatest leadership failures of American history. At the minimum, he should have imposed a war tax on Americans rather than draining the budget to pay for the war. That would have kept a modicum of the social contract in place. Bacevich also had a really interesting section on how the US military drank a lot of neocon kook-aid in the 1990's, buying into ambitions of global hegemony and ending superpower competition while avoiding "dirty wars" or humanitarian intervention (possible dissertation topic here???). Politicians who use military spending and hackneyed patriotism to win votes and get money share much of the blame for America's foreign policy decisions.

Still, Bacevich is too harsh in many areas, and his desire to critique USFP takes the book off topic. He draws too many parallels between Obama and Bush and doesn't give Obama enough slack for inheriting Bush's messes and cleaning at least one of them up reasonably well. He really doesn't like continued Obama war on terror strikes and interventions, but he doesn't present any alternative strategies. I for one will take Obama's scalpel (special forces and drone strikes, avoiding ground-troop interventions) over Bush's sledgehammer any day. Moreover, he tends to treat all interventions as bad, when Clinton had really good reasons for getting involved in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. To lump those conflicts together with Iraq and Afghanistan is too simplistic, although he is right that the all-volunteer force and the American people's disengagement from war made facilitated both of those interventions to a great degree. Readers of The New American Militarism and The Limits of Power will find a lot of repeat material here. I recommend reading those books first, especially the NAM.

To conclude, the American discourse about war and society benefits greatly from Bacevich's criticisms. His idea of expanding national service programs for young people is worth thinking about as genuine (non-resume building) service to the nation. His best idea is that Americans should have to pay war taxes on a "pay as you go" basis so that they will actually pay attention to this conflicts. While he is harsh and uncompromising, you have to admire Bacevich's honest outrage.

[Bob H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Col. (ret.) Andrew Bacevich has an important and accurate critique of current US military policy -- or, rather, its failure and misdirection. He focuses on the US Army, which, he tells us, "ranks among the least of these several services," yet is the force that took perhaps the heaviest burdens and wear-and-tear in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as in Vietnam before that. The book is not a military history so much as a critical look at national military strategy and policy, his central thesis being that the powers-that-be seem to send the Army into wars without impacting the American public, without the participation of a broad spectrum of the American public -- let alone conscription -- and without paying for it. He spares no scorn for this situation: wars touted as existential, yet fought without selling a single War Bond, fought with other people's kids as enlistees, and without burdening an American public that might otherwise balk at another such adventure.

It's a sharp, albeit short and succinct, treatise by a retired Army officer who knows what he's talking about (and who lost a son in the Iraq war). And it's current: though the US ground presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is over -- maybe -- the current policies and mind-sets remain in place. A quick read, and worth reading, and pondering.

[Dan Dundon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Breach of Trust” is one of those books that make imminent sense but are clearly impossible to achieve.
Andrew Bacevich lays out in excruciating detail how the all-volunteer force has failed our country. Not because of the quality of the fighting men and women but because of the way these professionals have been misused by our political leaders. Without the American citizen having “skin in the game,” it has become much more likely that this country will become involved in conflicts that it can’t win and it certainly can’t pay for. Future generations will pay for the mistakes of current and past leaders.
His arguments make perfect sense and coming from a former military officer have immense credibility. Nevertheless, his suggestion that the country embark on a mandatory service of two years for all able-body citizens is about as likely as Congress abolishing the income tax. It doesn’t matter how much common sense such a proposal makes; the president and Congress will never give up the power of being able to send our troops into regional conflicts without having the pay the consequences at home. I'm not sure the majority of American would even agree to such a sacrifice.
I wish Mr. Bacevich the best of luck in his future writing career, but I hope he explores some more realistic alternatives in future projects.

[Ryan Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacevich documents some of the historical changes that have taken place since the end of the vietnam war and also the end of the cold war. Readers may agree with few, most, all, or none of his assessments.

One of his suggestions is that a return to compulsive national service will prevent Americans from supporting leaders that make bad decisions. It never has before, but perhaps a return to progressive income taxes to pay for all this defense and war stuff will.

His depiction of David Brooks was infinitely valid.

At the end readers will have a clearer understanding of - if not the line of reasoning- the lines of rote that fired up american leaders to invade Iraq. There was no sound reason to do this. That is why unsound reasons are better: viet nam was full of jungles and swamps. Iraq is a desert, it is easier to see enemies and hit them with weapons.

[Sam Motes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voices concern with the move away from the citizen soldier prior to Vietnam to a professional soldier class that is not a true representation of the US population with certain segments populations carrying the burden. There is a pronounced gap between the children of the privileged class and those of the lower class. He does not push for a draft but rather a two-year national service requirement for all US young adults to serve their county in military, peace corps or some other avenue of service to help society. Military service as does all national service callings are honorable endeavors that demand respect. It is a very interesting take that drives beyond just saying “Thank you for your service” to taking an active role in doing something about it.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacevich is the premiere critic of American power, having served in Vietnam as a colonel and closely observed what he notes as the squandering of America's post-Cold War uni-polar position.

He's also the father of a son who died fighting in Iraq, a war he opposed. So it's not surprising that this volume details argues how American elites—along with the American people—have jointly failed its military service members, particularly the army.

In a nutshell, the post-Vietnam shift from the citizen-soldier (defence of the nation as a responsibility of citizenship itself) to the professional-soldier (defence of the nation as a purely voluntary endeavour) has been a disaster. It divorced the country from its defenders, giving the latter up as a responsibility purely for the state as opposed to the people. The state and its national security elite in particular, is thus free to commit the greatest weapon on earth with relative impunity, away from the purview of a mostly divested citizenry.

This disastrous drift became glaring in the post-Cold War era, as the US became the world's dominant power, but without a Soviet-style enemy. The military tried to stay relevant through technological upgrades, proclaiming itself capable of shaping any part of the world according to Washington's vision, all without prolonged boots-on-the-ground investments. This, Bacevich (and just about every other critic) points out, was always a fantasy. The First Gulf War in the early 90s was supposed to be the open demonstration of such global dominance. In hindsight, it was just the first salvo in a deeply prolonged entanglement with the Greater Middle East.

9/11 kicked everything into high gear as the US, led by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, gradually turned toward a preventive global posture, buoyed by the idea that any enemy can be smashed into submission if punished long/hard enough by the American military. But neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were quick or decisive. And neither can be called victories. Meanwhile, the American soldier is overworked, each asked to go on three or four combat tours. Obama changed the military tools (in an effort to escape the Middle East altogether), but more or less kept the same kick-ass-first principal through drones, special operation units, and cyber-warfare. Aside from a flickering anti-war movement, the American people are basically cool with this structurally unfair status quo.

I would liked to have seen Bacevich talk a bit more about how the post-9/11 generation have never lived with anything but an all volunteer force. That's the absolute norm for a huge chunk of the American population who simply don't know what it's like to be conscripted or mandated to perform national service. It's not part of our universe. He should have touched on just how different society would be when every family—from celebrities to plumbers—must commit someone to the country's defence. The world would suddenly look very different to everyone.

Otherwise, this volume is a cogent and passionately argued j'accuse against American apathy at the expense of a damaged and violated warrior class. This spartan force is perpetually condemned to perform ill-conceived wars or operations in numerous corners of the world, and most Americans don't really mind that much. The national security state won't reconsider its post-9/11 ways because such conflicts generate a lot of promotions, purpose, wealth, and attention. The jingoistic right pushes this exploitation of the American soldier through superficial gestures of support-our-troops "patriotism." The left complains more about the application of such a volunteer force, but not its inherent position as a voiceless group of warriors doing the bidding of DC overlords.

Bacevich argues that there should either be a draft or one-two years of national service (eg. help the elderly, clean streets, fix infrastructure, military, etc.) by every American citizen, whether it's right after high school or whatever. That would involve the whole country in how US leaders use the military. It would democratize such decision-making by force, as everyone would have skin in the game, as opposed to a few voiceless volunteer families. It's a compelling argument, but not one that's likely to gain much traction. You can feel Bacevich's moral anguish as he talks about pro-troops bumper stickers and reunions of veteran families during halftime.

These are all indirect ways that Americans use to justify this broken system of professional soldiers, who are exploited by a corrupt national security establishment more interested in palace intrigue and promotion than the country and its warriors. This set-up wreaks havoc around the world, leading to unspeakable atrocities and no victories. But it's fine because only a tiny fraction of America is actually affected ("the 99% exploiting the 1%") and has to see their sons/daughters/ fathers/mothers/etc. committed in such a fashion. This critical framework fits Bacevich's generally anti-hawkish, realist foreign policy positions. I would have also liked to have read more about what Bacevich thinks when, even as a professional/volunteer force, the American military is the only force available to intervene in clear atrocities like in Bosnia or Syria.

I recommend this work to anyone, but especially to more left-leaning anti-war readers interested in gaining a morally powerful critique of the national security establishment, but one that uses a bigger picture of how the US military relates to society as a whole, instead of just taking aim at soldiers or the military.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In summary, 1)ALL Americans should have an obligation to contribute to the nation's defense, 2)Americans should pay/fund their wars as they declare them, as in "any war not worth paying for is not worth fighting." and 3)Americans from all segments of society should serve in some way, as in what Bacevich refers to as a "citizen army".

It's a thoughtful book that will go ignored, which is kind of too bad.

[Florence Millo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been saying for years that if we had to pay for Iraq from current tax dollars and if everyone's son or daughter was as risk for being sent, we would never have spent the lives, limbs, and treasure that we did. Excellent book.
My only disagreement is his suggestion for a 2 year universal service requirement. No way.

[Keith Boyea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seemed to cover a lot of ground Bacevich has covered in the past. For fans of Bacevich, you won't be disappointed. For those that disagree with his thesis, you may find it thin. In some places I struggled to tie the thesis directly back to the argument, but nonetheless, a well done effort.

[Cindy Person · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written, thought provoking and non-partisan book on American foreign policy, the relationship between American civilians and the military, and the limitations of military force. Bacevich is a retired army colonel who now teaches history and international relations at Boston University.

[Public Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best I've read from Bacevich, but I completely agree that we need to rethink how we're using our military. His suggestion that we end voluntary service has given me a lot to think about.

[Voyt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soldier-citizen of WWII vs. Warrior-professional since 9/11...
POSTED AT AMAZON 2015
USA has become driven by a war industry and its military is a subject of Andrew Bacevich book. Bacevich dismantles the warrior myth we civilians and politicians so enjoy worshiping from afar, and replaces that idol with flesh and blood, vulnerable humans/soldiers by conscription, who deserve better than the profligate, wasteful way in which we treat them.
Some important excerpts from the book:
-For the Pentagon peace after the Cold war posed a concrete threat. Its aim was to establish the service's continuing and expand relevance to U.S. national security policy.
-Here was a new world disorder to which the U.S. military was going to have to attend.
-Apart from handful of deluded neoconservatives, no one believes that the US accomplished its objectives in Iraq.
-In 2011 one out of every five active duty soldiers was on ADs, sedatives or other drugs.
-General Smedley Butler, the syndrome's progenitor announced in 1933 that he had spent decades being a muscle -man for Big Business for Wall Street.
-Like pearl Harbour itself (not to mention assassination of JFK, 9/11 and Obama's birth place), official explanations intended to suppress doubts exacerbated them...
-Tenure offers near-ironclad guarantees of lifetime employment.
-Among the big winners are individuals, group and institutions comprising the nat. security state: generals, Pentagon, the State Dept., Nat. Security Council staff - advocates of global interventionism.
-All it takes to bomb Belgrade, invade Iraq, or send SEALS into Pakistan is concurrence among a half dozen people and a nod from the president.
-..a Senate investigation found that collusion between companies profiting from war and government officials "constitutes an unhealthy alliance".
-Senator Gerald Nye denounced the munition business as "an unadulterated, unblushing racket" (Nye Committee).
-From Bagdad's "green zone" Colonel Theodore Westhousing's job was to oversee the training of Iraqi police by USIS company ($79 million contract.
-Three threads emerge from bloody sequence of wars: ideology, geography and operational purpose.
-As a consequence, US national security policy increasingly conforms to patterns of behavior pioneered by the Jewish state.
-By contracting out many core functions, the US military is ceding its professional jurisdiction to private enterprise and chooses slow professional death.
-As a consequence of Vietnam, the Americans had jettisoned the tradition of the citizen soldier. Leaders devised and promoted the model of the warrior-professional as a replacement.
-General George C. Marshall warned against the temptation to create a standing army, its ranks filled with professionals instead of citizen -soldiers.

So, this is how Bacevich goes, delivering a blistering critique of the gulf between America’s soldiers and the society that sends them off to war.
National defense should become the business of “we the people.” Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, Bacevich warns, the prospect of endless war, waged by a “foreign legion” of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy—moral as well as fiscal.

[FellowBibliophile KvK · Rating 1 out of 5]

The one positive thing about this book is that Bacevich at least honestly admits that, in Vietnam, he and other 10th Cav (the same failed regiment Bacevich's fellow Clausewitizian fanatic Gian Gentile served with in Iraq) officers had an unofficial agreement to do "the least possible." That means that unlike Gentile (who, in his section in Bacevich's subsequent book Paths of Dissent claimed to have served in Clint Romesha's unit instead of in the failed 10th Cavalry), no one will ever accuse Bacevich of Stolen Valour.

Bacevich either does not know pre 1898 US history, or is playing fast and loose with it in the hopes that his readers will not verify his allegations.

First, he mentions serving in the failed 10th Cavalry in Vietnam, yet throws in a reference to Little Big Horn a few paragraphs later, when the identity of the units at Little Big Horn are well known (hint, the 10th Cavalry was not one of them. Simply look up where Ben Grierson was.)

Then, he talks about "citizen soldiers" during the Civil War--either not knowing or deliberately obfuscating the fact that fully 1/3 of the US Army during the Civil War were German mercenaries and Irish terrorists. As Peter H. Wilson, Clayton K.S. Chung and Daniel Sharfstein have all noted, the US Army continued to hire foreign mercenaries during the major phase of the Indian Wars.

Bacevich, in this book and in Paths Of Dissent perpetuates a backdoor Dolchstosselegende/stab-in-the-back theory. He blames ignorant civilians for the army's woes, just like Ludendorff blamed civilians for Germany's loss in 1918. In this regard, Bacevich, Gentile and Douglas Porch are like von Schleicher and Ludendorff, protecting their fellow officers at the expense of everyone else. Bacevich and Porch were both officers during the Vietnam War. Yet, unlike the late Colonel David H. Hackworth, neither of them had, at the time, objections strong enough to the war to cause them to resign.

What is more, Bacevich and Gentile are both tank officers,i.e., they are nominally in the same branch as Michael Wittmann and Franz Bäke were. Yet, what did they choose to do their doctoral dissertations on? A career REMF desk jockey in the case of Bacevich and air bombardment campaign in Europe in the case of Gentile. Neither of them--despite Gentile's 21st century screed on the "Death of the Panzerwaffe"--were dedicated enough panzer officers to take notice that, in Southwest Africa and Angola, the Police and Army had developed dedicated, purpose-built and highly effective mine-resistant troops carriers called Casspirs and Ratels respectively.

The death of every US trooper killed by an IED in a vehicle in Iraq and Afghanistan is directly attributable to Bacevich studying McCoy's REMFing about and Gentile abscessing with attacking the 8th Air Force instead of doing their duty as panzer officers and studying Casspirs and Ratels.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started to be aware of Mr. Bacevich's writing not long ago, and have read most of his books. They're provoking, thoughtful, and most importantly, right.

Recently I read Stephen Walt's The Hell of Good Intention, which describes the people in the foreign policy have all the incentives to keep status quo, apparently, the same applies to national security folks as well, who benefit from the same arrangement.

I've argued for reinstate the draft to blunt the interventionist foreign policy for many years, but I doubt we'll see that any time soon, unfortunately. Well, from this book, my opinion on Gen. Crystal is much better (I don't necessarily follow all the developments).

Everyone cares about the future of the country, and world, should read this book.

Finally, I'm really sorry for his loss in the Iraqi War.

[Stephen Bublitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bacevich is a voice of sense in a world full of nonsense. His assertion here is that the advent of the professional army (ie, abolition of the draft) has driven a wedge between the population and the army in a way that makes pointless war inevitable. His solution, simplified here, is a discussion of the reinstatement of the draft, which, he suggests, will result in the public being fully engaged in whether the country goes to war. At least, there should be a requirement for national service. His hope, here, is that the population will not allow for "police actions" such as Iraq or Afghanistan. I don't know enough about this to know if he's right, but I don't think he's wrong.

[Matt S · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must read. I can't help but think of the military trope from Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship." In Bacevich's sense, this could not be truer. The gulf of resentment between servicemembers and civilians is so cavernous that healing isn't something I would ever hold my breath for in our lifetime, let alone the period ending this conflict.
Bacevich perfectly captures an ambivalence and lack of true sacrifice on behalf of the American people which is seen all too clearly by the Warrior class.

[Lena Denman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a clarion call to end endless wars. Eighteen year old males and females should participate in some form of service for a two year period according to Bacevich. The book describes how Americans currently fawning over the all volunteer forces belies massive problems. Americans need to have skin in the game by sending our young people to war on a conscription basis, so that a corrupt cabal of people don’t get the nation into foreign policy catastrophes.

[Stacy Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of great points in this book. I agree with the majority, however there are times throughout the book that Bacevich seems to be ranting. The most important point that I agree with, is eliminating the all volunteer force.

[Gary Misch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: The author sets forth in this book a point of view that I have been privately stating for several years; I agree with him in all respects.

Andrew Bacevich wants you to know that the United States, both as a national entity, and as individual citizens, has failed its military. In this context he is talking primarily about its Army, which has done the lion's share of the fighting over its last twelve years of continuous warfare. In fairness, he gives the other services their due, while noting that they have retained much more focus than the Army. It is our military as a whole that is the problem, but as he points out, no other service has been so broken by our never ending wars than the U.S. Army.

The problem, he notes early on, is not really the Army, or the military. It is the all volunteer military, or more properly, our all professional military. I know of what he speaks; I was a member of it for twenty-one years. As a retired Army colonel, I suppose that he was my very distant colleague.

Bacevich is now a highly respected professor of history and international relations at Boston University, and a widely read editorialist on the foibles of American overseas misadventures. His pieces often carry a very useful analysis of how the wheels of the Department of Defense mesh (or don't mesh) with the various non western cultures throughout the world that successive administrations have insisted on interacting with on an intimate military level.

His premise is presented with near perfect non technical clarity. We fought the Vietnam War with a citizen (draftee) army. The citizens owned the war, until they were fed up with it. Part of the process of getting fed up may have involved the tightening, or ending of student deferments.(We can argue whether or not the war could have been prosecuted more competently, and ended before support evaporated, but that's another story)

When Richard Nixon ended the draft, and created the "all volunteer military," the military became completely decoupled from society. Bacevich points out that what we really got wasn't a military where a fair chunk of society served for a short time. We got a military where no more than one per cent of society serves. This military constitutes a separate warrior class, available for use by politicians when they wish, without the consent of the population at large. As he argues, why should the general population care? They aren't being taxed to fight these wars. Our endless wars are being fought with other people's kids, and borrowed money. The result is a constant temptation to engage in military adventures. It has become too easy to say that we should intervene, and there is seldom any consequence for the politician who does. This temptation to intervene is no longer confined to old line conservative hawks. Most liberals seem to have jumped on the band wagon, though there is an odd anti war alliance between Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan. Society soothes itself by celebrating the warrior. We are all "heroes" now. Even beer companies are in on the act. Of course, celebration doesn't equal participation.

Assisting us in sustaining this giant standing army is, of course the military/industrial complex, now supplemented by the support contractor complex. With the increased pay and respect of our professional military, we can't afford to use even a junior enlisted man or woman on kitchen duty. Well compensated contractors do everything from guarding bases, to cooking, to cutting grass.

Bacevich's prescription is unlikely to be adopted - slim down the military, and reinstitute the draft. Even consider using draftees for other services such as environmental service, caring for the sick and elderly, &c, just to get people into national service. I object to that. When President Clinton first proposed his AMERICORPS, I suspected that he was looking for a way to confer GI benefits without military service. There are few, if any things as strenuous as military service; I'm reluctant to draft people for anything but that. In any case, the chances of imposing the inconvenience of a peace time draft are nil, no matter what the service.

As dessert, Bacevich acquaints the reader with the Pentagon's world wide command structure, which gives a taste for just how ready we are to "go in" to the next hot spot. How eager should we be to do that? Only our banker knows for sure. And the mothers of our children. This book should be mandatory reading for all. Bacevich is saving us the trouble of wading through "The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire," and several other highly instructive histories about over reach. As an exercise, the reader could list all recent conflicts, and determine which were important to our national security: Afghanistan, Iraq II, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq I, Beirut, USS Stark attack, Kuwaiti tanker reflagging, Gulf of Sidra Incident, Grenada invasion, Panama Invasion, the mining of Nicaraguan coastal waters &c. (the author does this for us - there are more, but perhaps you've had enough war for this review). How many readers realized there were that many?

[Mick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth your time if you are interested in western society's relationships with their military. Focused the US.