Andrew Bacevich:

Bacevich has a powerful point when he argues that the Cold War was uniting the USA and the end of the Cold War, ironically, created a big internal crisis because it broke that unity. Throughout World War II and the Cold War the USA saw itself as engaged in a Manichean and almost divine battle against evil (first fascism and then communism). Bacevich is right that in reality that battle was more about geopolitics than about ideology. The USA was anti-communist at all costs: it even defended fascist dictators and even befriended Mao.

He is also right that something epochal happened in 1890 when the Frontier was declared closed and the USA became an imperial power (in 1898 it went to war against to Spain and seized some of its colonies): it opened a new "frontier".

Most of the books is about what happened after the end of the Cold War. He picks on Fukuyama's book "The End of History" as expressing the arrogant mood in the USA after the Soviet Union fell. He calls Fukuyama "the godfather of post-Cold War consensus". Bacevich has interesting things to say about the 1992 presidential campaign, when George Bush I (under whom the Cold War ended) was facing Pat Buchanan for the Republican primary and then Ross Perot and Bill Clinton for the election. Bacevich finds the seed of internal US discord in that campaign. Buchanan was the first moden prophet of "America first", the first modern nationalist, who advocated against interventionism abroad and at the same time lamented the culture war against traditional moral values. Perot was the first modern populist and outsider (outside the political establishment), who advocated protectionism, criticized the inequitable trade deals like NAFTA (which was just being negotiated), and promised to "drain the swamp" of Washington. Bacevich basically argues that "Buchanan + Perot = Trump". And he has a good point. It is instead wildly exaggerated the role that he credits on Hillary Clinton. He thinks that in 1992 she represented the trend against the traditional values and i am sure that was the case but at the same time she played such a minor role in that campaign that it's hard to believe she cause any major undercurrent. It is true that the end of the Cold War almost immediately opened two cans of worms: isolationism/ nationalism and protectionism/ populism. He is less clear about the polarization between traditionalists and progressives, and about the role that religion played. If i understand correctly, he claims that the Cold War was a battle between a USA inspired by God and a godless Soviet Union, and after the Cold War ended God was removed from the picture. He also claims that the US president became a demi-god during the Cold War but i don't see the power of the US president increasing so dramatically before and after, unless he is referring to the power of the president to destroy humankind by pressing the nuclear button.

He also points out that, from a military point of view, the Cold War never ended because the USA continued to deploy soldiers in dozens of places around the world. In fact the US share of worldwide military expenditures increased (and, before the rise of Asia, reached comical dimensions, dwarfing all the other major nations combined together). He mocks the shift towards high-tech warfare because it gave the USA the feeling that wars could be won easily and quickly.

The book also contains brief and rather superficial analyses of the various presidents. Bacevich likes Nixon and Reagan (my two least favorite presidents, whose actions in my opinion caused all the troubles of the following decades) and ignores the World-wide Web when talking of the Clinton era (and downplays the political and economic benefits of Clinton's efforts towards globalization - globalization has indeed increased the standard of living both in the USA and around the world). Bacevich provides instead a profound analysis of the Obama presidency. While widely viewed as the candidate of "change", Bacevich points out that Obama's main function was to save the established values: he saved globalization after the Great Recession, he perpetuated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which even expanded to Syria and Libya), and he did nothing to curb income inequality. He criticizes George Bush II's idea of the USA as the global peace enforcer, and for creating a myth of an infallible USA over a much more complex reality. But Bacevich fails to tell us what he would have done in their shoes.