Book Alert / The Limits of Power

The Limits of Power -- The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich, Metropolitan Books '08, $24, 206 pages, ISBN #0805088156. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

A guiding principle of American political conservatism has been that the United States deserves to lead in world affairs because its vision, divinely inspired or not, is superior to those of the world's other nations. This seemed to be an increasingly easy sell with the fall of communism, leaving America as the world's sole superpower.

But, as we keep learning again and again, the only constant is change. With the first decade of the new century bringing disastrous developments in geopolitics and economics, the notion of American exceptionalism seems increasingly laughable. Now a noted conservative and Boston University historian argues it's time to banish exceptionalism to the archives.

Andrew J. Bacevich argues that America today faces a triple crisis: "The economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; the nation's involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic."

Elements of the corrective realism he proposes are: "respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences;....skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving the use of force; and a conviction that, at the end of the day, the books will have to balance."