Bacevich spent a good deal of his time talking about an article recently released by the Wilson Center, "A National Strategic Narrative," [.pdf] signed by "Mr. Y." He started out by saying that the publication of the article is important less for the actual content of the piece and more because of who wrote it – "Mr. Y" is a pseudonym for U.S. Navy Captain Wayne Porter and U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Mykleby, who both work for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. As he describes it, "What they are saying is our approach to national security policy has been excessively militarized, we really need to pay more attention to what goes on inside the country."
What’s recognizable is not anything new: it’s the same old transnational progressivism that has animated the "internationalist" wing of the War Party since the days of Woodrow Wilson, albeit leavened with the spice of declinism – an admission that, for purely economic reasons, we simply cannot sustain our foreign policy of untrammeled imperialism and global dominance. It is a sigh of exhaustion coming from the pinnacle of power, a warning that our over-extended and obscenely expensive "defense" budget is diverting vital resources away from more productive uses.
At the heart of this Wilsonian – or, really, [Franklin D.] Rooseveltian – vision is a scheme to make imperialism work on the cheap. Recognizing the limits of American power, and yet still trying to maintain some façade of a "world order" – one that favors the US and its alleged "interests" – this is the task the transnational progressives have set for themselves. What they want, most of all, is a soft landing when the supporting structures of the Empire begin to crack. Since I live in that Empire, I, too, hope our fall will be sufficiently cushioned, but my sense of realism – call it pessimism conditioned by history – warns me to prepare for the worst.
Professor Bacevich is right: neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have the will to pull this country back from the abyss of financial and moral bankruptcy. The collapse, when it comes, will prove the case against Empire – but by then it will be too late.
