America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich Read Free Book Online

of course, but at intervals Central Asia, the Levant, the Maghreb, the Horn of Africa, and even the Balkans have vied for attention. More recently still, West Africa has emerged as an active theater. These periodic changes of venue do not mean that the United States is closing in on its goal, however. Opening up some new front (or reopening an old one) testifies to the reality that U.S. forces in 2016 find themselves caught in a predicament no less perplexing than the one that ensnared the armies of Germany, France, and Great Britain a century ago. Take whatever definition of purpose you want; after more than three decades of trying, for U.S. forces the mission remains unfinished. Indeed, “unfinished” hardly begins to describe the situation; mission accomplishment is nowhere in sight. Put simply, we’re stuck.

    So why can’t we get out? Why in this instance doesn’t the ostensibly superior power of the United States confer choice? How can it be that even today, large segments of the policy elite entertain fantasies of salvaging victory if only a smart president will make the requisite smart moves?
    To understand the persistence of such illusions requires appreciating several assumptions that promote in Washington a deeply pernicious collective naiveté. Seldom explicitly articulated, these assumptions pervade the U.S. national security establishment.
    The first assumption posits that those responsible for formulating U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East—not only elected and appointed officials but also the military officers assigned to senior posts—are able to discern the historical forces at work in the region. Indeed, discernment is theirs as a direct consequence of ascending to high office. Position implies enlightenment, along with adherence to a suitably correct worldview.
    The worldview to which individuals rotating through the upper reaches of the national security apparatus subscribe derives from a shared historical narrative. Indeed, their fealty to that narrative, which they routinely affirm by reciting various clichés and platitudes, forms a precondition of their employment.
    This narrative recounts the story of the twentieth century as Americans have chosen to remember it. It centers on an epic competition between rival versions of modernity—liberalism vs. fascism vs. communism—and ends in vindication for “our” side. Ultimately, the right side of history had prevailed. Presidents and cabinet secretaries, generals and admirals see no reason why that narrative should not apply to a different locale and extend into the distant future. In other words, they are blind to the possibility that in the Greater Middle East substantially different historical forces just might be at work.

    A second assumption takes it for granted that as the sole global superpower the United States possesses not only the wisdom but also the wherewithal to control or direct such forces. In the twentieth century “our” side won because American industry and ingenuity produced not only superior military might but also a superior way of life based on consumption and choice—so at least Americans have been thoroughly conditioned to believe. The United States manufactured a version of freedom that its principal adversaries were hard pressed to match. In Europe and in the parts of Asia that Washington cared about, the competition between glitzy and drab, autonomy and conformity, self-indulgence and self-denial proved to be not much of a contest. That this formula might not work quite so easily in an environment where glitz, autonomy, and self-indulgence may constitute provocations raises the possibility that freedom may not be universal—that it can take alternative forms. Few American policymakers and even fewer senior military officers are able to countenance such a possibility.
    A third assumption asserts that U.S. military power offers the most expeditious means of ensuring that universal freedom prevails—that the