Andrew Bacevich | |
|---|---|
 Bacevich in 2012 | |
| Born | Andrew Joseph Bacevich Jr.[1] (1947-07-05)July 5, 1947 (age 77)[2] Normal, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | United States Military Academy (BS) Princeton University (MA,PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, writer, professor;Colonel, U.S. Army (retired) |
| Employer | Boston University |
| Known for | Analysis of U.S. foreign policy |
| Spouse | Nancy |
| Children | 4 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service |  United States Army |
| Years of service | 1969–1992 |
| Rank |  Colonel |
| Battles / wars | Vietnam War Gulf War |
Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. (/ˈbeɪsəvɪtʃ/,BAY-sə-vitch; born July 5, 1947) is an American historian specializing ininternational relations,security studies,American foreign policy, andAmerican diplomatic andmilitary history. He is a professor emeritus of international relations and history at theBoston UniversityFrederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies.[3] He is also a retired career officer in theArmor Branch of theUnited States Army, retiring with the rank ofcolonel. He is a former director of Boston University's Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), now part of thePardee School of Global Studies.[3] Bacevich is the co-founder and president of theQuincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Bacevich has been "a persistent, vocal critic of theU.S. occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure."[4] In March 2007, he describedGeorge W. Bush's endorsement of such "preventive wars" as "immoral, illicit, and imprudent."[4][5] His son, Andrew John Bacevich, also an Army officer, died fighting in theIraq War in May 2007.[4]
In July 2024, he signed an open letter against inviting Ukraine into NATO.[6]
Bacevich was born inNormal, Illinois, the son of Martha Ellen (née Bulfer; later Greenis) and Andrew Bacevich Sr.[7] His father was of Lithuanian descent, and his mother was of Irish, German, and English ancestry.[8] Bacevich described himself as a "Catholic conservative."[9]
He graduated from theUnited States Military Academy in 1969 and served in theUnited States Army during theVietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971.[10]
Later he held posts in Germany, including in the11th Armored Cavalry Regiment; the United States; and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank ofcolonel in the early 1990s. His early retirement is thought to be a result of his taking responsibility for theCamp Doha (Kuwait) explosion[10] in 1991 in command of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.[11] He holds aPh.D. in American Diplomatic History fromPrinceton University, where his 1982 doctoral thesis was entitledAmerican military diplomacy, 1898–1949: the role ofFrank Ross McCoy.[12] Bacevich taught atWest Point andJohns Hopkins University before joining the faculty atBoston University in 1998.[citation needed]
Bacevich initially published writings in a number of politically oriented magazines, includingThe Wilson Quarterly. He advocates for anon-interventionist foreign policy.[13] His writings have professed a dissatisfaction with theBush administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of U.S.foreign policy.
On August 15, 2008, Bacevich appeared as the guest ofBill Moyers Journal onPBS to promote his book,The Limits of Power. As in both of his previous books,The Long War (2007) andThe New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005), Bacevich is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the U.S. people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially films) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the U.S. population to produce in the U.S. people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service are really like.
Bacevich conceivedThe New American Militarism as "a corrective to what has become the conventional critique of U.S. policies since9/11 but [also] as a challenge to the orthodox historical context employed to justify those policies." Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of a U.S. tradition going back to the Presidency ofWoodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century:Charles A. Beard andWilliam Appleman Williams. Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate aboutU.S. foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one president (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, Bacevich sees both Republicans and Democrats as sharing responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation's best interest.
In March 2003, at the time of theU.S. invasion of Iraq, Bacevich wrote in theLos Angeles Times that "if, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history."[4]
Bacevich's bookAmerican Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy, published in 2004, was highly praised by Professor of International Relations and authorPeter Gowan for being "a tonic to read: crisp, vivid, pungent, with a dry sense of humour and sharp sense of hypocrisies." Gowan describes Bacevich as a "conservative, who explains that he believed in the justice of America's war against Communism, and continues to do so, but once it was over came to the conclusion that U.S. expansionism both preceded and exceeded the logic of the Cold War, and needed to be understood in a longer, more continuous historical durée."[14]
Bacevich wrote an editorial about theBush Doctrine published inThe Boston Globe in March 2007.[5]
In an article ofThe American Conservative dated March 24, 2008, Bacevich depicts Democratic presidential candidateBarack Obama as the best choice forconservatives in the fall. Part of his argument includes the fact that "this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival."[15] He also goes on to mention that "For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion."[16]
In the October 11, 2009, issue ofThe Boston Globe, he wrote that the decision to commit more troops to Afghanistan may be the most fateful choice of theObama administration. "If the Afghan war then becomes the consuming issue of Obama's presidency – as Iraq became for his predecessor, as Vietnam did forLyndon Johnson, and as theKorean War did forHarry Truman – the inevitable effect will be to compromise the prospects of reform more broadly."[17]
In his article "Non Believer" in the July 7, 2010, issue ofThe New Republic, Bacevich compared President George W. Bush, characterized as wrong-headed but sincere, with President Obama, who, he says, has no belief in the Afghanistan war but pursues it for his own politically cynical reasons: "Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?"[18]
In an October 2010 interview withGuernica Magazine, Bacevich addressed his seemingly contradictory stance on Obama. While Bacevich supported Obama during the 2008 presidential race in which Obama repeatedly said he believed in the Afghanistan war, Bacevich has become increasingly critical of Obama's decision to commit additional troops to that war: "I interpreted his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan as an effort to insulate him from the charge of being a national security wimp. His decision to escalate was certainly not a decision his supporters were clamoring for."[19]
Regarding nuclear policy in particular, Bacevich noted inThe Limits of Power that there is no feasible scenario under which nuclear weapons could sensibly be used and keeping them entails many other risks: "For the United States, they are becoming unnecessary, even as a deterrent. Certainly, they are unlikely to dissuade the adversaries most likely to employ such weapons against us – Islamic extremists intent on acquiring their own nuclear capability. If anything, the opposite is true. By retaining a strategic arsenal in readiness (and by insisting without qualification that the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945 was justified), the United States continues tacitly to sustain the view that nuclear weapons play a legitimate role in international politics ... ."[20]
Bacevich's papers are archived at theHoward Gotlieb Archival Research Center atBoston University.
On May 13, 2007, Bacevich's son, Andrew John Bacevich, was killed during theIraq War by animprovised explosive device south of Samarra inSaladin Governorate.[21] His son was afirst lieutenant in the U.S. Army,[22] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment,1st Cavalry Division. Bacevich also has three daughters.[22]
