Andrew Bacevich at the Wisconsin Book Festival

I attended a stimulating talk given by Boston University Professor Andrew J. Bacevich

yesterday at the Veterans Museum as part of the 2009 Wisconsin Book Festival. Bacevich is generally considered a 'conservative', but the subject of his talk centered on what he terms the "Sacred Trinity of global power projection, global military presence, and global activism - the concrete expression of what politicians commonly refer to as 'American global leadership.' "

The Book Festivals' preview accurately said Bacevich "would describe the national security consensus that has informed US policy since World War II, and why this consensus persists. He will make the case that the consensus has become antithetical to the nation's well-being and should be abandoned."

He is concerned that Obama will carry on the same policies, which he also calls "Washington Rules": what Washington says goes and it will be enforced with the US military if need be.

He said new book is due to the publisher next month and will be based on this 'scared trinity' concept he discussed during the lecture. His most recent book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project). His argument was set forth recently in the WAPO.

A few interesting points:

• He has had little success in getting his students at BU to see the war in Afghanistan as anything other than ordinary. It just does not register with them.
• One reason Washington can engage in the endless war without much dissent from the public is that war directly effects a very small slice of the American public. Because of the professional army, few American families suffer the ultimate loss - even while conducting two shooting wars at the same time. (Bacevich's family is among those families. His opposition to the war predated his son's death in combat.)
• This national security consensus is like the wallpaper - it goes unnoticed.
• The Nobel Committee giving Obama the Peace Prize was an 'atta boy' to the American public. Obama's election is viewed as a return to sanity after the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004.
• The current debate over General McChrystal's global counter-insurgency campaign is critical.
  

If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly:

■ Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-building - as the new American way of war.

■ Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has jettisoned the label “global war on terror’’).

■ Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for decades.

***

BTW, Bacevich seemed genuinely amazed at the packed house on a Saturday afternoon (during the Badger football game) and I felt more than a little hometown pride when he added "I guess that's Madison."