The United States remains the world’s preeminent and most active military power, but Republicans and Democrats find other things to talk about. Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive administrations have enthusiastically put U.S. military might to work. In the last three decades, the flag of the United States Army has accumulated 34 additional streamers — each for a discrete campaign conducted by U.S. troops. The air force and navy have also done their share, conducting more than 100,000 airstrikes in just the past two decades.

Unfortunately, this frenetic pace of military activity has seldom produced positive outcomes. As measured against their stated aims, the “long wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq have clearly failed, as have the lesser campaigns intended to impart some approximation of peace and stability to Libya, Somalia, and Syria. An equally unfavorable judgment applies to the nebulous enterprise once grandly referred to as the “global war on terrorism,” which continues with no end in sight.

But saving the United States’ soul will require an honest reckoning with post–Cold War U.S. foreign policy and, above all, with the reckless misuse of military power that forms its abiding theme. At the end of his presentation, Dr Bacevich will open the floor for questions.

His latest article published in Foreign Affairs can be found here.

Andrew Bacevich
Andrew Bacevich grew up in Indiana, graduated from West Point and Princeton, served in the army, became an academic, and is now a writer. He is a retired US Army armor colonel who commanded at every level from platoon to regiment with combat assignments in Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War. Colonel Bacevich and is now professor emeritus from Boston University and the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books, among them The New American Militarism, The Limits of Power, Washington Rules, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, and The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory. He is also co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank.