Andrew J. Bacevich - America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History

Americas War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew Bacevich lays out in excruciating detail the disasters orchestrated over decades by the architects of the American empire in the Middle East. Blunder after blunder, fed by hubris along with cultural, historical, linguistic and religious illiteracy, has shattered cohesion within the Middle East. The wars we have waged have given birth to a frightening nihilistic violence embodied in radical jihadism. They have engendered an inchoate rage among the dispossessed and left in their wake a series of failed and disintegrating states. These wars have, as Bacevich writes, laid bare the folly of attempting to use military force as a form of political, economic and social control. Bacevich is one of our finest chroniclers of the decline of empire. Americas War for the Greater Middle East is an essential addition to his remarkable body of work.

C HRIS H EDGES , former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt

Andrew Bacevichs thoughtful, persuasive critique of Americas crusade for the Greater Middle East should be compulsory reading for anyone charged with making policy for the region. We cannot afford to repeat the past misjudgments on the area, for as Bacevich wisely argues, the stakes are nothing less than the future well-being of the United States.

R OBERT D ALLEK , presidential historian

In this fascinating work, one of Americas most provocative thinkers confronts our greatest geopolitical conundrum: the Middle East. No other book shows so clearly how U.S. interventions there have blended into a single long war. This is not just invaluable history, but also a cry of protest against policies that have devastated the Middle East while undermining Americas own national security.

S TEPHEN K INZER , senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University

Andrew Bacevich has done a great service by providing a much-needed continuum in a foreign policy area that remains frustratingly random for too many Americans. He is one of a very few in academia with the credibility to outline dispassionately the shortcomings of responsible civilian and military leaders, on the facts and without histrionics or bitterness. His military background and training as a historian have enabled him to lay out not only the evolution of policy but also the details of the military endeavors themselves.

J IM W EBB , former U.S. senator

Andrew Bacevich is a warrior academic who understands war and has the great talent to make the complex understandable. And so he has done with our Middle East conflict, which started with Desert One and endures today. A must read for soldiers, politicians, and the American citizen.

M AJOR G ENERAL P AUL D . E ATON , U.S. Army (Ret.)

Of Balzac, Henry James wrote, The way to judge him is to try to walk all round him, undertaking a preliminary survey to reveal how remarkably far we have to go. The history that follows, an account of U.S. military efforts to determine the fate and future of the Greater Middle East, is itself a preliminary walk around, or through, a comparably large subject. If nothing else, Americas War for the Greater Middle East seeks to reveal how remarkably far we have to go to understand what those efforts have produced and what they have cost.

Questions raised by this undertaking will preoccupyand perhaps confoundscholars for decades to come. I have limited myself to four of the most fundamental, the answers to which lay the basis for further inquiry. First, what motivated the United States to act as it has? Second, what have the civilians responsible for formulating policy and soldiers charged with implementing it sought to accomplish? Third, regardless of their intentions, what actually ensued? And fourth, with what consequences? In short, the book links aims to actions to outcomes.

As an American who cares deeply about the fate of his country, I should state plainly my own assessment of this ongoing war, now well into its fourth decade. We have not won it. We are not winning it. Simply trying harder is unlikely to produce a different outcome. Some may consider this history premature. Yet only by remembering and confronting what we have largely chosen to disregard will Americans be able to choose a different course.

Andrew J. Bacevich

Walpole, Massachusetts

December 2015