A force for good.

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, by Andrew J. Bacevich (Oxford, 288 pp., $28)

ONE is not normally inclined to pay much attention to a book with the phrase "American militarism" in its title. The charge of "militarism" is too often an all-purpose indictment of American society, meaning as little today as it did when old-style Marxists hurled it. But I happen to know that Andrew Bacevich is a very serious person--and, indeed, The New American Militarism is a very serious book.

Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a Vietnam veteran, and a retired professional soldier who holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton. He is currently director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. His perspective is that of the "traditional" conservative: In the 1990s, he wrote frequently for NATIONAL REVIEW.

While it is clear that Bacevich doesn't think much of President Bush and his circle of advisers, this is not a Bush-bashing book per se. His self-proclaimed objective is to help restore good sense and realism to American thinking about war by calling attention to what he describes as the unholy marriage of the militarization of American society and utopian, eschatological ends.

According to Bacevich, American militarism manifests itself in a number of ways. The first is the tendency to value military power for its own sake, and view it as the truest measure of national greatness. The second is an increased propensity to use force, leading to the normalization of war. The third is the emergence of a new "aesthetic" of war in which the old vision of war as barbarism, brutality, ugliness, and waste has been replaced by one of high-tech, surgical, frictionless, and "virtual" war--war as spectacle, to be conducted at a safe distance. The fourth is the boost in the status of military institutions and a romanticized view of soldiers, creating a society in which the biggest sin is failure to "support the troops."

Bacevich rejects the "conspiracy theory" of American militarism, the simplistic idea that in 2000, the government was seized by a cabal of militarists. Nor was 9/11 the cause of the new militarism. He traces it instead to the confluence of a number of narrative strands that go back to the 1960s. "Out of defeat [in Vietnam]," he writes, "emerged ideas, attitudes, and myths conducive to militarism." His discussion of these is the most interesting and provocative part of the book.

The first narrative strand was the attempt by military officers to rehabilitate the reputation of their profession after Vietnam. This effort included the "Abrams doctrine" that, by making it impossible for the Army to fight wars without mobilizing the reserve and National Guard, effectively circumscribed the freedom of action of civilian leaders to take the country to war. Military officers also successfully argued that the military should be used only to fight conventional wars, not irregular wars such as Vietnam--a position that was codified in the "Weinberger doctrine" and the "Powell corollary." The beau ideal of this program was Colin Powell and its greatest success was Desert Storm in 1991.

The second narrative strand was the reaction of certain intellectuals--the neo-conservatives--who feared that the post- Vietnam loss of confidence at home would enable totalitarianism to triumph abroad. Noting that for many, "neocon" has become a term of opprobrium, Bacevich nonetheless gives a generally fairminded account of the arguments advanced by such writers as Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, who sought "to fuse American power to American principles, ensuring the survival of those principles and subsequently their propagation to the benefit of all humankind."

The third strand was the contriving of a sentimentalized version of the American military in order to paper over the gap between the armed services and American society. The fourth was the rise to political prominence of evangelical Christians, who "imparted religious sanction to the militarization of U.S. policy and helped to imbue the resulting military activism with an aura of moral legitimacy." The fifth was the attempt by a group of influential civilian strategists to repair their credibility--undermined by Vietnam--by essentially redesigning war, culminating in the "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) and the Bush doctrine of preventive war.

The sixth and final strand flowed from the shift in the U.S. strategic center of gravity from Europe to the Middle East. The author of this shift was Jimmy Carter. From 1945 to 1979, U.S. Mideast policy had two goals--stability and access to oil--and it sought them in a way that minimized overt U.S. military involvement. But Carter, in response to the overthrow of the shah of Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, announced that any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region would be regarded as an assault on vital U.S. interests--and would be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. According to Bacevich, the resulting overt presence of the U.S. military in the region has helped to fuel resentment in the Arab and Muslim world, resulting in 9/11 and subsequent events.

Bacevich has a series of proposals that he believes would make U.S. military policy more realistic. We should, he says, return to the intentions of the Founders; revitalize the separation of powers; view force as a last resort; enhance our strategic self-sufficiency; organize the military for national defense rather than the broader concept of national security; revive the concept of the citizen-soldier; and reduce the cultural gap between the military and American society.

The New American Militarism includes much that is correct and useful, especially about civil-military relations. But its overall critique is flawed. While Bacevich encourages us to heed the intentions of the Founders, he ignores the fact that while they agreed that the U.S. was to be a republic, the Founders differed concerning the sort of republic it should be. Thomas Jefferson envisioned an agrarian society incompatible with empire; Alexander Hamilton desired a commercial republic that could develop into a "republican empire." In the Federal Convention, Charles Pinckney--anticipating Bacevich --asserted the predominance of domestic policy: "We mistake the object of our government, if we hope or wish that it is to make us respectable abroad." To which Hamilton replied (in Madison's paraphrase): "It had been said that respectability in the eyes of foreign nations was not the object at which we aimed; that the proper object of republican Government was domestic tranquility & happiness. This was an ideal distinction. No Government could give us tranquility & happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad."

Our current foreign policy is very much in line with the vision of Hamilton, whose contributions to the American founding were at least equal to those of Jefferson. Yet Bacevich claims that the Bush doctrine smacks more of a Wilsonian crusade--an attempt to "democratize" the world no matter what the cultural or political circumstances. The Bush doctrine is, in fact, informed more by Thucydides than by Woodrow Wilson. Thucydides pointed out that an important goal of both Athens and Sparta was to establish and support regimes similar to their own, democracies in the case of Athens and oligarchies for Sparta. The implication is clear: The security of a state is enhanced when it is surrounded by others that share its principles and interests.

Bacevich may not approve, but the United States is just such a "hegemonic power"--and that is a good thing, not only for the U.S. but for the world. The overarching goal of U.S. foreign policy since World War II has been to create and maintain a liberal world order. The U.S. has been able, for the most part, to achieve this goal, by establishing and securing a commonality of interests among a broad array of other states, while deterring the use of force by potential aggressors. According to "hegemonic stability theory"--the intellectual foundation of the Bush Doctrine--such a liberal world does not just arise spontaneously. The conditions for peace and prosperity must be created and maintained by the U.S. or some other hegemonic power willing and able to provide the collective goods of economic stability and international security.

According to the theory of hegemonic stability, a decline in relative U.S. power would create a more disorderly, less peaceful world. A monitory precedent is the decay of Pax Britannica, which decay, many believe, created the necessary if not sufficient conditions for the two world wars of the 20th century. As British hegemony declined, smaller states that previously had incentives to cooperate with Britain "defected" to other powers, causing the international system to fragment. The outcome was depression and war. The decline of American power could lead to a similar outcome. The underlying assumption of the Bush doctrine is that the world is a dangerous place in which peace is maintained ultimately by the power of the strong. For the United States to be fully secure and prosperous, everyone must be secure and prosperous. Such a liberal world order has been possible only because the U.S. has been able and willing to make the effort to create and maintain it. Bacevich's prescriptions will not enhance the security of the United States, but diminish it.

Mr. Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.