Book Review – “The American Way of War” by Eugene Jarecki

This one’s a bit longer than my normal posts, just to forewarn you. Not much longer, but a bit longer.

I just finished Eugene Jarecki’s “The American Way of War.” The focus of this book is on the evolution of American foreign policy throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. He explores the ‘mission creep’ in American foreign policy, the rise of the military-industrial complex (MIC), the reshaping of our political structure towards an inherently more militaristic versus diplomatic posture and orientation, and the concentration of power in the executive branch that began with FDR and has expanded steadily since.

Jarecki focuses extensively on the Bush Jr. administration and the Second Iraq War. This book is somewhat of a hybrid in that he spends a lot of time tying the present day to the past. We find Jarecki often flips back and forth between the past and present. I found myself struggling a bit reading this book. One, I find Jarecki’s writing to be a little incoherent and disorganized. Two, I found myself disagreeing with several minor and major points he made. Three, I had to keep reminding myself that this book was published in 2008 and the tide has shifted decidedly in our favor since then.

Ok, back to the book. In the Introduction and Chapter 1, Jarecki started by providing an excellent overview of the evolution of American foreign policy from the Monroe Doctrine to the Truman Doctrine, as well as a brief overview of the origins of the neoconservatives. It’s one of the best quick summaries of the evolution of US foreign policy that I’ve seen. I would’ve liked to have seen it go all the way to the Bush Doctrine, but I can understand why he didn’t.

Chapter 2 discusses World War 2 and the immediate aftermath. Jarecki covered a lot of ground here. He showed that the concentration of executive power really began with FDR, that our entry into World War 2 wasn’t as ‘unprovoked’ as it may seem, how FDR helped establish and mobilize the MIC to win World War 2, and the decision process that drove Truman to drop the atomic bombs on Japan following Germany’s surrender.

Chapter 3 focused a bit on the Truman Doctrine and the Domino Theory, but predominately on 1947’s National Security Act, which established the Department of Defense (DOD), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Council (NSC), and the Air Force. Jarecki details how each of these contributed to the concentration of military power into the executive branch (and shifted the power within the executive branch away from a diplomatic orientation toward a more militant one) and how these institutions contributed to various foreign policy incidents since 1947, with a special focus on the Bush Jr. administration.

Chapter 4 focused on Dwight Eisenhower, whom Jarecki portrays very favorably. The central focus was his farewell address, the first use of the term ‘Military-Industrial Complex’. After reading this chapter, it’s hard not to view him favorably as a prophet.

Interestingly, Jarecki portrays JFK negatively, as an opportunistic politician. Nobody ever portrays JFK negatively. It must be some kind of rule and I never got the memo. I found myself hoping he would take this further and attack JFK for causing the Cuban Missile Crisis and escalating our presence in Vietnam. Even though he didn’t, it was still courageous nevertheless to even remotely attack JFK. Also, this chapter makes me think that Jarecki didn’t view the USSR as a threat, which I think is incorrect.

Chapter 5 discusses the idea of military transformation as envisioned by John Boyd, but implemented by Donald Rumsfeld. Basically, the purpose of this chapter was to detail how poorly the government planned the Second Iraq War and how, if the plan truly applied Boyd’s principles, it would’ve been more successful. History has proven this view correct because that’s basically what we did.

In Chapter 6, Jarecki explored the MIC more deeply. He mentions that Eisenhower originally planned to call it the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC), but instead opted for MIC. He also threw the executive branch in there, so it really should be the Corporate-Congressional-Military-Executive Complex (CCMEC). I prefer the one I coined myself, namely Military-Industrial-Congressional-Executive (MICE) Complex, because mine flows better. The most interesting numbers in the chapter were the numbers of employees in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the national level, namely 5,000,000 versus 30,000 versus 34,000.

Jarecki starts Chapter 7 with a thorough list of the actions taken by the Bush administration that violate the Constitution. He also goes after Congress, the judicial branch, and corporations (Halliburton). However, his last section in this chapter, discussing John Yoo and the balance between security and liberty, is by far the most enlightening and insightful content in the entire book.

In the Conclusion, Jarecki discusses two particular experiences that shaped this book. One was his interactions with John McCain’s chief of staff (McCain appeared in Jarecki’s recent film called “Why We Fight”), and the other involves a series of visits Jarecki made to West Point. Here, he makes the effort to provide some solutions to the problems he’s detailed over the past seven chapters.

I would not be surprised to see this book end up on some college-level US history course syllabi. It was a work-in-progress while I was in college. Though I found Jarecki’s style to be a bit incoherent and hard to follow at times, there were flashes of profound insight, such as the John Yoo section of Chapter 7. This is a good read for anyone who wants to learn about the evolution of American foreign policy and the MICE complex, and in particular how these previous events set the stage for the Second Iraq War.