The Hidden Establishment Agenda of "Washington Rules"

The book's title, Washington Rules, is a blatant double entendre, and the author's intent is twofold.On the surface, Andrew J. Bacevich's work is a history and critique of the rules by which the Washington establishment plays. It is a self-described progress report on the author's 20-year intellectual journey in learning to question political orthodoxy. Writing as a retired colonel, professor at a prestigious private university, and member of the Rockefeller-founded Council on Foreign Relations, Bacevich is hardly an apostate; his journey's just a short train ride.As epiphanies go, his is pretty low-rent. Bacevich describes himself as a "slow learner," and I concur. He traces the post-WWII development of American foreign and military policy from "nuke 'em all" Curtis LeMay to the present; from Cold War deterrence to Gen. Petraeus' version of counterinsurgency, genuflecting on the way to Allen Dulles and the many off-budget shadow warriors. Bacevich finds that through it all t
he players and the game remain remarkably the same. Not a bad read, but nothing new.The author's thesis that we should be "cultivating our own garden" is a turf war within the existing establishment, a factional dispute. As an academic rationale for a resurgent neo-isolationist or Fortress America position, it poses no threat whatsoever to the foundations and continuance of the Washington consensus.Indeed, it is by the author's omissions that the deeper, subtextual meaning of Washington Rules becomes clear: it is a strong restatement of establishment power in a fundamentally changed world. It is declarative, not descriptive.Most prominent of Bacevich's omissions is the role of oil, and more specifically, Peak Oil. There are no index entries for either. Yet the energetic basis of military adventurism and empire-building is indisputable. Historically, resource abundance and resource scarcity both drive policy. Maintaining our access to oil while denying access to select others
is key. The oil supply is shrinking; it's increasingly inaccessible geologically and geopolitically; and Washington's rulers intend to get theirs first.Oil is the elephant in the room, the essential resource of petro-industrial society. A policy book ostensibly written for the general public that ignores oil is intentionally deceptive.Likewise drugs. It is estimated that nearly $1 trillion a year in illicit drug money - a US deficit's- or Pentagon budget's-worth - is laundered through Wall Street. Drug money is a vital but unacknowledged prop to our bankrupt economy. Many of our post-WWII military interventions only make sense when seen as efforts to control the production and distribution of illegal drugs. Whether it is heroin from Southeast Asia to New York; opium from Afghanistan to Europe; cocaine from Latin America to LA; or marijuana everywhere, the US military, intelligence and financial establishments are and have been deeply involved. Drugs and their wars are inten
ded to pacify potentially restive populations at both ends of the pipeline, and keep the dollars flowing. The documentation is extensive and readily obtainable. Bacevich the historian can hardly plead ignorance.Another of Bacevich's omissions is any discussion of fundamental changes in the nature of war in the computer age. I came to this book as a link from John Robb's blog, "Global Guerillas," which discusses the open-source nature of warfare and individual superempowerment in the 21st Century. An era in which an individual or ad hoc group can take on an army or multinational corporation and win; an age of cheap IEDs and hollow states and staggeringly favorable ROIs for terrorists; must be deeply threatening to an entrenched industrial-era bureaucratic Washington establishment. Yet Bacevich appears unacquainted with Robb's book, Brave New War, or with his thinking; and ignorant of the internet and current affairs. Impossible.It is disingenuous to say, as Bacevich does, let
's fix Cleveland or Detroit or New Orleans, instead of wasting money and lives in Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran. We can't do the former and can't stop the latter, and Bacevich knows it. These cities are to become the next Baghdad or Jerusalem... or New Orleans. To hold onto power, the military-industrial-financial Establishment rulers must bring the permanent war home. So they need to construct a respectable academic argument for a DC-led Fortress America - with all that implies - because we're broke and running out of oil, and the Establishment knows it's sitting on a domestic powder-keg. That's the agenda for which Bacevich provides intellectual cover in Washington Rules.

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