Realist Vlogging
Posted on November 12th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Prof. Stephen Walt warns against an overly expansive definition of American interests in his conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter. In the short clip, he calls for more restraint and worries about Obama’s potential for excessive international activism. Those remarks brought to mind Prof. Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, which I had the chance to read on my flight back east this weekend. I agree with Clark that it is the book conservatives, and indeed anyone interested in a sane U.S. foreign policy, ought to read this year.
Here is an essay adapated from The Limits of Power that appeared in TAC earlier this year.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
This is an excellent Bacevich essay and has much that the liberal spectrum could also agree with. It is gratifying to read someone who recognizes the profound and enduring economic distortions introduced by the Vietnam conflict. I look forward to reading the book, as the article merely glances on many topics that require amplification.
A lot of this ground has already been explored by Paul Kennedy in his wonderful (in my opinion) book The Rise and Fall Of The Great Powers. For the last several years it has been fashionable among the neocons to deride Kennedy since the “fall” of the United States did not happen ten minutes after the book was published, even though the scope of the book is in decades and centuries. I think a new edition would be a good idea right now, though.
One of my other favorite bloggers had some recent observations on Bacevich’s thinking, Niebuhr, and American foreign policy.
http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/2008/08/power-observed-adams-always-thinks-it.html