Andrew J. Bacevich

A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich,...

The purpose of U.S. foreign policy has, at least theoretically, been to keep Americans safe. As we confront a radically changed world, it has become indisputably clear that the terms of that policy have failed. Washington's insistence that a market economy is compatible with the common good, its faith in the idea of the "West" and its "special relationships," its conviction that global military primacy is the key to a stable and sustainable world...

Fifteen original essays from American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan offer first-hand perspectives on what made America's post-9/11 wars such costly and misguided exercises in futility, documenting how the world's self-proclaimed greatest military power went so badly astray.