Like Cicero in the Roman Republic, there are always a handful of chroniclers who can see and articulate clearly the social, cultural, and political realities of empires in terminal decline. They call out the bankruptcy of an inept and corrupt ruling class, blinded by hubris, as well as a populace that has checked out of civic life and is entranced by bread and circus spectacles. In his trilogy “Blowback,” “The Sorrows of Empire,” and “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,” Chambers Johnson does a masterful job of showing how and why we are disintegrating. So does Andrew Bacevich, who, in his newest book of essays, “On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century,” writes about the debacles that have beset the American empire since the Vietnam war, a conflict he fought in as a young army officer. Bacevich warns that Americans’ inability to be self-critical, to dissect and understand the litany of disasters that have followed on the heels of Vietnam, including decades of fruitless warfare in the Middle East, will have terrible consequences for us and much of the rest of the globe.
Andrew Bacevich is a retired army colonel and Emeritus Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University. He is the cofounder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the author of numerous books, including “The New American Militarism,” “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,” “America’s War for the Greater Middle East,” and “After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.”
Studio: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, Darian Jones
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Kayla Rivara
Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
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