The Limits of Power (Book Review)
The United States of America is without contention the largest standing military force on the planet. But is power everything? Conservative historian and former military officer Andrew J. Bacevich poses this question in his New York Times Bestseller The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. He asserts that America needs to realign its policies, strategies and political leadership or it will fall the way other empires have fallen.
Bacevich writes that America has to stop seeing itself as exceptional, chosen by God, charged with the endowed duty to live beyond their means as world rulers. The average American’s debt is greater than the average American’s earnings… do the math. No attempt to bully the Middle East or other corners of non-western society into conformity will change that simple fact. An America impaled on the ideology of consumerism, running up huge personal and governmental debt, fighting ongoing small wars at great cost for little return, with an ineffective leadership… equals a weaker America.
In The Limits of Power the conversation keeps coming back to some fundamental issues with the way successive administrations since 1945 have directed the country to their own ends. The big question is whether Americans are ready to face that truth in their everyday lives and start living within their means. I’d strongly doubt that’s even possible at this point, but Bacevich is hopeful.
The alternative is a fallen America that will never meet its debt commitments. Here’s a thought that wasn’t in the book – if China ever calls in that debt how long will the average American soldior stay effectively patriotically hammered in these ongoing wars? Have we forgotten the Cold War Russian army not being paid for months and years? No money into a system means that the system would stop. And what happens when your debts get called in and you can’t pay anymore… oh yeh, the money stops. Its worth considering along the way to exponential consumerist mall-joy, for sure. What’s financially true for each of us in the real world also applies to governments with apparent magic-money buckets.
Overall it was an interesting read simply for the detail provided about successive administrations and policies. Not everybody’s cup of tea though… oh I should acknowledge that I got this one for free from Amazon when they sent the wrong package of books for Christmas.
