Andrew J. Bacevich, whose work on American militarism we have drawn your attention to, has a brief review of five books in The Nation, April 23 issue. Titled “The Semiwarriors” he reminds us that the Bush presidency is not by itself the problem. [Not that it’s not a serious problem of course.] It, and all presidencies preceding it from the time of Harry S. Truman, have been symbiotically joined to a national security apparatus which takes as its foundational belief a permanent, national security crisis. Faced with this crisis, which can only be dealt with by firm, decisive, militaristic response, democratic debate is a fateful weakness.
For Forrestal and other members of the emergent national security elite, fired by the need to confront a never-ending array of looming threats, the presidency served as an accommodating host. Semiwarriors built the imperial presidency. On behalf of the chief executive–increasingly referred to as the Commander in Chief–they claimed new prerogatives. They created new institutions that became centers of extra-constitutional power: the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the various agencies that make up the intelligence “community.” When out of office, they inhabited think tanks, consulted, lobbied and generally raked in the dough, all the while positioning themselves for a return to power.
They also imprinted on the capital city a new style, one that emphasized perils without precedent, activism on a global scale and a preference for hard power. In 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt became President, the District of Columbia was merely a seat of government and the United States was still a republic. When FDR’s successor left office twenty years later, Washington fancied itself the center of the universe, with the United States now the self-anointed Leader of the Free World.