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The Limits of Power

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By the time the East-West standoff that some historians had termed the “Long Peace” ended in 1991, the United States had already embarked upon a decade of unprecedented interventionism. — location: 62 ^ref-57046

A political elite preoccupied with the governance of empire paid little attention to protecting the United States itself. — location: 85 ^ref-36040

In practical terms, prior to 9/11 the mission of homeland defense was unassigned. — location: 86 ^ref-9531

Seeing themselves as a peaceful people, Americans remain wedded to the conviction that the conflicts in which they find themselves embroiled are not of their own making. — location: 108 ^ref-51394

Certain of our own benign intentions, we reflexively assign responsibility for war to others, typically malignant Hitler-like figures — location: 109 ^ref-23499

In our public discourse, freedom is not so much a word or even a value as an incantation, its very mention enough to stifle doubt and terminate all debate. — location: 127 ^ref-40566

Good fortune and a position of apparent preeminence placed the United States “under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation.” — location: 151 ^ref-48800

Niebuhr once wrote disapprovingly of Americans, their “culture soft and vulgar, equating joy with happiness and happiness with comfort.”9 Were he alive today, Niebuhr might amend that judgment, with Americans increasingly equating comfort with self-indulgence. — location: 168 ^ref-49924

The actual exercise of American freedom is no longer conducive to generating the power required to establish and maintain an imperial order. If anything, the reverse is true: Centered on consumption and individual autonomy, the exercise of freedom is contributing to the gradual erosion of our national power. — location: 177 ^ref-23106

American power has limits and is inadequate to the ambitions to which hubris and sanctimony have given rise. — location: 203 ^ref-4150

While the defense of American freedom seems to demand that U.S. troops fight in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the exercise of that freedom at home undermines the nation’s capacity to fight. — location: 204 ^ref-15952

a state of perpetual national security emergency aggravates the disorders afflicting our political system, allowing the executive branch to accrue ever more authority at the expense of the Congress and disfiguring the Constitution. In this sense, the Long War is both self-defeating and irrational. — location: 208 ^ref-45540

Rather than insisting that the world accommodate the United States, Americans need to reassert control over their own destiny, ending their condition of dependency and abandoning their imperial delusions. — location: 228 ^ref-19437

Americans of an earlier generation worried about bomber and missile gaps, both of which turned out to be fictitious. The present-day gap between requirements and the means available to satisfy those requirements is neither contrived nor imaginary. It is real and growing. This gap defines the crisis of American profligacy. — location: 261 ^ref-12305

to credit the United States with possessing a “liberating tradition” is equivalent to saying that Hollywood has a “tradition of artistic excellence.” The movie business is just that—a business. Its purpose is to make money. If once in a while a studio produces a film of aesthetic value, that may be cause for celebration, but profit, not revealing truth and beauty, defines the purpose of the enterprise. Something of the same can be said of the enterprise launched on July 4, 1776. The hardheaded lawyers, merchants, farmers, and slaveholding plantation owners gathered in Philadelphia that summer did not set out to create a church. They founded a republic. Their purpose was not to save mankind. It was to ensure that people like themselves enjoyed unencumbered access to the Jeffersonian trinity. — location: 283 ^ref-27321

“our whole national history has been one of expansion.” TR spoke truthfully. The founders viewed stasis as tantamount to suicide. From the outset, Americans evinced a compulsion to acquire territory and extend their commercial reach abroad. How was expansion achieved? On this point, the historical record leaves no room for debate: by any means necessary. — location: 302 ^ref-62405

When it came to action rather than talk, even the policy makers viewed as most idealistic remained fixated on one overriding aim: enhancing American influence, wealth, and power. The record of U.S. foreign relations from the earliest colonial encounters with Native Americans to the end of the Cold War is neither uniquely high-minded nor uniquely hypocritical and exploitive. — location: 316 ^ref-325

The achievements of these preeminent American statesmen derived not from their common devotion to a liberating tradition but from boldness unburdened by excessive scruples. — location: 333 ^ref-40077

Notwithstanding the high-sounding pronouncements that routinely emanate from the White House and the State Department, the defining characteristic of U.S. foreign policy at its most successful has not been idealism, but pragmatism, frequently laced with pragmatism’s first cousin, opportunism. — location: 334 ^ref-35466

expansion fostered prosperity, which in turn created the environment within which Americans pursued their dreams of freedom even as they argued with one another about just who deserved to share in that dream. The promise—and reality—of ever-increasing material abundance kept that argument within bounds. — location: 349 ^ref-23761

By the end of World War II, the country possessed nearly two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves and more than half its entire manufacturing capacity.8 In 1947, the United States by itself accounted for one-third of world exports.9 Its foreign trade balance was comfortably in the black. As measured by value, its exports more than doubled its imports. — location: 363 ^ref-25672

Abundance, sustained in no small measure by a postwar presumption of American “global leadership,” made possible the expansion of freedom at home. — location: 394 ^ref-6792

Rebutting Soviet charges of racism and hypocrisy lent the promotion of freedom domestically a strategic dimension. Yet possibility only became reality thanks to progressive political activism. — location: 395 ^ref-42358

A proper understanding of contemporary history means acknowledging an ironic kinship between hard-bitten Cold Warriors like General LeMay and left-leaning feminists like Ms. Friedan. — location: 413 ^ref-58814

In the twenty years following VJ Day, wrote Maier, “Americans traded wealth for preponderance,” providing assistance to rebuild shattered economies in Western Europe and East Asia and opening up the U.S. market to their products.15 America’s postwar status as leader of the free world was bought and paid for in Washington. — location: 426 ^ref-7240

Prior to the Vietnam War, efforts to expand American power in order to promote American abundance usually proved conducive to American freedom. After Vietnam, efforts to expand American power continued; but when it came to either abundance or freedom, the results became increasingly problematic. — location: 437 ^ref-29307

The first protracted economic downturn since World War II confronted Americans with a fundamental choice. They could curb their appetites and learn to live within their means or deploy dwindling reserves of U.S. power in hopes of obliging others to accommodate their penchant for conspicuous consumption. — location: 454 ^ref-8270

Reagan mainly indulged American self-indulgence. — location: 594 ^ref-61497

“the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.”23 In international politics, the chief danger of hypocrisy is that it inhibits self-understanding. The hypocrite ends up fooling mainly himself. — location: 625 ^ref-61366

What we can say with certainty is that events in our own time, most notably the Iraq War, have refuted Reagan’s assurances, with fateful consequences. — location: 630 ^ref-62757

In Washington, confidence that a high-quality military establishment, dexterously employed, could enable the United States, always with high-minded intentions, to organize the world to its liking had essentially become a self-evident truth. — location: 635 ^ref-64009

In Afghanistan, jihadists took on a superpower, the Soviet Union, and won. They gained immeasurably in confidence and ambition, their efforts funded in large measure by the American taxpayer. — location: 670 ^ref-18835

As long as it had remained, however tenuously, within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, Afghanistan posed no threat to the United States, just as, before 1980, the five Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, forming a crescent north of Afghanistan, hardly registered on the Pentagon’s meter of strategic priorities (or American consciousness). — location: 685 ^ref-65258

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, planned in Afghanistan, all of “Central Asia suddenly became valuable real estate to the United States.”29 In a sort of reverse domino theory, the importance now attributed to Afghanistan increased the importance of the entire region. — location: 688 ^ref-59487

Whereas expansion into the Caribbean a century ago paid economic dividends as well as enhancing U.S. security, expansion into Central Asia is unlikely to produce comparable benefits. — location: 715 ^ref-54999

“The paths of progress . . . proved to be more devious and unpredictable than the putative managers of history could understand.” — location: 723 ^ref-27932

By the time that Reagan retired from office, this had become the basis for national security strategy in the region. — location: 757 ^ref-3748

none of Reagan’s successors have taken any meaningful action to address this addiction. Each tacitly endorsed it, essentially acknowledging that dependence had become an integral part of American life. — location: 779 ^ref-16768

the cease-fire that terminated Operation Desert Storm in February 1991 did not end the Persian Gulf War. After a brief pause, hostilities resumed. Over time, they intensified, with the United States conducting punitive air strikes at will. — location: 818 ^ref-56020

Yet soon after 9/11, the American people went back to business as usual—urged to do so by the president himself. “War costs money,” Franklin D. Roosevelt had reminded his countrymen after Pearl Harbor. “That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other non-essentials.” — location: 883 ^ref-38891

that way of life, based for at least two generations on an ethic of self-gratification and excess, drastically reduced the resources available for such an all-encompassing imperial enterprise. Encouraged by President Bush to attend to their personal priorities, Americans lost no time disengaging themselves from the war he had launched. — location: 913 ^ref-60525

The horrors of September 11 notwithstanding, most Americans subscribed to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasized the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack. — location: 931 ^ref-24631

to put our house in order would be to open up a whole new array of options, once again permitting the United States to “choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.” — location: 963 ^ref-41503

Expansionism squanders American wealth and power, while putting freedom at risk. — location: 967 ^ref-43877

Truman’s successors presided over a system defined by the concentration of power, both in Washington and, within Washington, in the executive branch. To describe the result as a republic is to misconstrue the essential nature of the thing, like calling Adolf Hitler a dictator or the weapon dropped on Hiroshima a bomb. — location: 981 ^ref-60583

No one today seriously believes that the actions of the legislative branch are informed by a collective determination to promote the common good. — location: 1006 ^ref-21347

To provide a specific and execrable illustration of politics-as-theater, one need look no farther than the actions of the Democratic Party in relation to Iraq. Midterm elections in November 2006, widely seen as a referendum on the war, created a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The new Senate majority leader Harry Reid and the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed that their party had a mandate to change course. “The American people made clear in last fall’s election,” Pelosi announced in early 2007, that “they want a new direction on Iraq.” She promised “tough accountability leading to the responsible redeployment of our troops.” — location: 1021 ^ref-31784

The rise of the imperial presidency and the demise of the Congress as a coequal branch of government have produced periodic bouts of hand-wringing. — location: 1030 ^ref-50779

The chief attribute of the actually existing system—all of the institutions, structures, and arrangements implied by the word Washington—is dysfunction. — location: 1034 ^ref-63842

Posterity” poses a clear and present danger to those it is meant to serve. This is the political crisis confronting Americans today. — location: 1044 ^ref-24529

the Bush administration did not create the problems that came home to roost on September 11, 2001. It inherited them. — location: 1065 ^ref-20639

It’s not the superficial distinctions that matter but the subterranean similarities. — location: 1071 ^ref-29442

“The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” — location: 1096 ^ref-28297

Appearing in 1846 under the guise of Manifest Destiny, it lent moral cover to James Polk’s efforts to secure the lebensraum Americans coveted. — location: 1103 ^ref-57000

only since World War II has this ideology established itself as the fixed backdrop for policy. — location: 1106 ^ref-31209

the inclination to portray almost any heavy not to Washington’s liking as another Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, with the failure to confront that adversary as tantamount to “appeasement” and with nothing less than the survival of civilization itself at stake. — location: 1108 ^ref-57812

At a time when pundits and policy makers routinely liken the threat of Islamic radicalism to the threat posed by the totalitarianisms of the last century, it is worth recalling that U.S. officials once compared the totalitarians to historic Islam. “The threat to Western Europe,” wrote Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, in his memoirs, “seemed to me singularly like that which Islam had posed centuries before, with its combination of ideological zeal and fighting power.” — location: 1110 ^ref-34655

The ideology of national security does not serve as an operational checklist. It imposes no specific obligations. It functions the way ideology so often does—not to divine truth or even to make sense of things, but to provide a highly elastic rationale for action. — location: 1119 ^ref-9635

provide policy makers with a moral gloss that can be added to virtually any initiative by insisting that, whatever concrete interests might be at stake, the United States is also acting to advance the cause of freedom and democracy. — location: 1126 ^ref-61634

This was a rendering of history with all the details air-brushed away—no allusions to Vietnam, no reference to CIA coups and attempted assassinations, no mention of collaborating with venal autocrats like Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza Debayle, or the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos. — location: 1146 ^ref-55872

“At moments of great peril in the last century,” declared Senator Barack Obama,   American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world— — location: 1156 ^ref-15893

“The security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders.” — location: 1168 ^ref-39601

“The mission of the United States,” he proclaimed, “is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.” — location: 1170 ^ref-51529

the role that the ideology of national security plays in shaping electoral politics. That role is chiefly to provide a reductive and insipid, if ultimately reassuring, view of reality. Accept the proposition that America is freedom’s tribune, and it becomes a small step to believing that the “peace process” aims to achieve peace, that Iraq qualifies as a sovereign state, and that Providence has summoned the United States to wage an all-out war against “terrorism.” — location: 1172 ^ref-31789

In this way, ideology serves as a device for sharply narrowing the range of policy debate. Dissent, where it exists, seldom penetrates the centers of power in Washington. Principled dissenters, whether paleoconservatives or libertarians, pacifists or neo-agrarians, remain on the political fringes, dismissed as either mean-spirited (that is, unable to appreciate the lofty motives that inform U.S. policy) or simply naive — location: 1180 ^ref-7135

The ideology of national security persists not because it expresses empirically demonstrable truths but because it serves the interests of those who created the national security state and those who still benefit from its continued existence— — location: 1184 ^ref-17635

To say that a power elite directs the affairs of state is not to suggest the existence of some dark conspiracy. It is simply to acknowledge the way Washington actually works. Especially on matters related to national security, policy making has become oligarchic rather than democratic. The policy-making process is not open but closed, with the voices of privileged insiders carrying unimaginably greater weight than those of the unwashed masses. — location: 1196 ^ref-5833

Perceived threats, even when faint, improbable, or (like that Iraqi nuclear program) at worst distant, invariably demand an urgent response, — location: 1213 ^ref-57512

Realpolitik leaves only limited room for consistency and high-mindedness. Yet from the late 1940s to the present day, members of the power elite have shown an almost pathological tendency to misinterpret reality and inflate threats. The advisers to whom imperial presidents have turned for counsel have specialized not in cool judgment but in frenzied overreaction. — location: 1221 ^ref-64073

The ideology of national security underwrites a bipartisan consensus that since World War II has lent to foreign policy a remarkable consistency. While it does not prevent criticism of particular policies or policy makers, it robs any debate over policy of real substance. — location: 1228 ^ref-64246

Lewis Mumford described the already expansive national security state’s modus operandi this way: “one-way communication, the priestly monopoly of secret knowledge, the multiplication of secret agencies, the suppression of open discussion, and even the insulation of error against public criticism and exposure . . . which in practice nullifies public reaction and makes rational dissent the equivalent of patriotic disaffection, if not treason.” — location: 1244 ^ref-3421

it would not be wrong to suggest that an eagerness to advance institutional interests and protect institutional reputations trumps all other considerations and routinely provides the basis for behavior that is dishonest, unprofessional, unethical, and frequently at odds with the nation’s well-being. — location: 1263 ^ref-16311

Since 9/11, national security officials have been complicit in other disinformation campaigns of far greater relevance to policy. These include trumpeting the dangers of nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; trivializing the anarchy in Baghdad following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (“Stuff happens!”) and the scope of the insurgency (“pockets of dead-enders”); tagging a handful of low-ranking U.S. enlisted troops with responsibility for the systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib; and consistently underreporting the civilian casualties — location: 1276 ^ref-32357

Those not already educated in the ways of Washington quickly learn that institutions nominally subordinate to executive authority pursue their own agendas and will privilege their own purposes over those of whoever happens to occupy the White House. — location: 1300 ^ref-35824

The military services actively sought to undermine Eisenhower’s policies or to distort them in pursuit of parochial interests.21 The CIA functioned as a sovereign state within a state. — location: 1307 ^ref-1226

It soon became apparent that the Chiefs had supported the mission less because they expected it to succeed than because they were counting on a CIA failure to pave the way for a conventional invasion, their preferred option for eliminating Castro. — location: 1319 ^ref-7356

First, to prevent the CIA and the Chiefs from doing further damage, Kennedy moved decisively to change the leadership of each institution. — location: 1338 ^ref-6900

ever since Kennedy, presidents themselves and their chief lieutenants have viewed the apparatus as irredeemably broken. Former secretary of defense James Schlesinger’s assessment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff applies to the national security bureaucracy as a whole: Its advice “is generally irrelevant, normally unread, and almost always disregarded.” — location: 1376 ^ref-20076

When considering the national security state as it has evolved and grown over the past six decades, what exactly has been the value added? And if the answer is none—if, indeed, the return on investment has been essentially negative—then perhaps the time has come to consider dismantling an apparatus that demonstrably serves no useful purpose. — location: 1466 ^ref-31160

when offering public explanations of policy, “qualification must give way to simplicity, nicety and nuance to bluntness, almost brutality, to carry the point home.” The idea is not to describe truth in all of its messy complexity, but to convey a point of view that is “clearer than truth.” — location: 1498 ^ref-63667

(“Keep elevating the threat,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld urged his subordinates after 9/11. “Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists.”) — location: 1626 ^ref-29581

Nitze demonstrated the inestimable value of sowing panic as a means of driving the policy-making — location: 1636 ^ref-36095

When it came to removing obstacles and loosening purse strings, the Nitze Doctrine worked wonders. — location: 1636 ^ref-19448

purportedly rigorous analysis actually served to disguise an exercise in group-think, yielding preconceived conclusions that reflected the prejudices, policy agendas, and career interests of the principals involved. — location: 1652 ^ref-42222

the “false security to which all men are tempted is the security of power.” — location: 1717 ^ref-11230

the principal appeal of Iraq as a target was not that it was strong and fearsome; Gulf War I and a decade of sanctions had left Saddam Hussein with a decrepit army and essentially no air force. Iraq was inviting because it appeared so weak. — location: 1727 ^ref-63482

Our fixation on all that has since gone wrong in Iraq itself should not lead us to overlook the fact that eliminating Saddam was never the endgame. The invasion of Iraq formed only one element of a breathtakingly extravagant design. The Wise Men to whom President Bush turned for advice after 9/11 expected an easy win against a weak opponent to set the stage for far greater victories. — location: 1732 ^ref-63844

the underlying intent of the Bush Doctrine: It provided a self-validating authorization for the administration to pursue whatever next steps it chose to take. — location: 1739 ^ref-55197

Iraq stands as the ultimate expression of what our habit of deference to Wise Men imbued with the ideology of national security has produced. The first application of the Bush Doctrine produced a shipwreck. — location: 1746 ^ref-47276

When American power was ascendant, the United States could pretend to interpret history’s purpose or God’s will. Today, it can no longer afford to indulge in such conceits. — location: 1755 ^ref-49435

Americans can no longer afford to underwrite a government that does not work. A condition of quasi-permanent crisis stretching across generations has distorted our Constitution with near-disastrous results. To imagine at this juncture that installing some fresh face in the White House, transferring the control of Congress from one party to the other, or embarking upon yet another effort to fix the national security apparatus will make much of a difference is to ignore decades of experience. — location: 1760 ^ref-22129

“No U.S. president can justify a policy that fails to achieve its intended results by pointing to the purity and rectitude of his intentions.” — location: 1777 ^ref-40443

The distinction between regime and nation was a crucial one. By employing these new military techniques, the United States could eliminate an obstreperous foreign leader and his cronies, while sparing the population over which that leader ruled. — location: 1828 ^ref-46506

in times of duress, Americans could be counted on to “support the troops.” Never again would the nation abandon its soldiers. — location: 1861 ^ref-53631

To judge by the record of the past twenty years, U.S. forces win decisively only when the enemy obligingly fights on American terms—and Saddam Hussein’s demise has drastically reduced the likelihood of finding such accommodating adversaries in the future. — location: 1869 ^ref-36692

An odd alliance that combined left-leaning do-gooders with jingoistic politicians and pundits succeeded in chipping away at constraints on the use of force. — location: 1875 ^ref-33318

Rather than transforming the armed forces of the United States into an imperial constabulary, the imperative of the moment is to examine the possibility of devising a nonimperial foreign policy. — location: 2058 ^ref-46309

When it comes to reaping political advantage from our supposed military superiority, Americans have been getting a lousy return on their investment. — location: 2113 ^ref-21034

As the United States has come to rely ever more heavily on armed force to prop up its position of global preeminence, the quality of senior American military leadership has been consistently disappointing. — location: 2118 ^ref-3259

“At the summit,” Winston Churchill once observed, “true politics and strategy are one.” — location: 2177 ^ref-29169

War remains today what it has always been—elusive, untamed, costly, difficult to control, fraught with surprise, and sure to give rise to unexpected consequences. Only the truly demented will imagine otherwise. — location: 2291 ^ref-47917

If a primary function of government is to provide services, the government of Iraq could hardly be said to exist. By comparison, Nicaragua under the Somozas or the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos qualified as models of good governance. — location: 2325 ^ref-9610

events in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated definitively that further reliance on coercive methods will not enable the United States to achieve its objectives. — location: 2334 ^ref-2542

“Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.” — location: 2338 ^ref-36672

“The idea of a preventive war,” he wrote, tempts those eager “to pick the most propitious moment for the start of what they regard as inevitable hostilities.” Yet he went on to say that “the rest of us must resist such ideas with every moral resource.” — location: 2357 ^ref-11390

“Nothing in history is inevitable,” he observed, “including the probable. So long as war has not broken out, we still have the possibility of avoiding it. — location: 2360 ^ref-6720

The political elite that ought to bear the chief responsibility for crafting grand strategy instead nurses fantasies of either achieving permanent global hegemony or remaking the world in America’s image. — location: 2397 ^ref-39533

the military elite that could puncture those fantasies and help restore a modicum of realism to U.S. policy fixates on campaigns and battles, with generalship largely a business of organizing and coordinating matériel. — location: 2398 ^ref-16766

war is also, and always, inherently political. Indeed, if war is to have any conceivable justification or utility, it must remain subordinated to politics. Effecting that subordination lies at the very heart of strategy. — location: 2413 ^ref-46994

Events have exposed as illusory American pretensions to having mastered war. — location: 2419 ^ref-62220

Simply trying harder—investing ever larger sums in even more advanced technology, devising novel techniques, or even improving the quality of American generalship—will not enable the United States to evade that reality. — location: 2420 ^ref-9763

the presumption of U.S. military supremacy that achieved such broad currency during the years following the Cold War is completely spurious. The exercise of military power will not enable the United States to evade the predicament to which the crisis of profligacy has given rise. To persist in following that path is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy, and ruin. — location: 2422 ^ref-28477

Rather than expanding or reforming that army, we need to treat it with the respect that it deserves. That means protecting it from further abuse of the sort that it has endured since 2001. — location: 2429 ^ref-46642

It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen’s obligation. — location: 2432 ^ref-65258

The quadrennial ritual of electing (or reelecting) a president is not an exercise in promoting change, regardless of what candidates may claim and ordinary voters believe. The real aim is to ensure continuity, to keep intact the institutions and arrangements that define present-day Washington. — location: 2444 ^ref-22902

the fundamental problem facing the country—a yawning disparity between what Americans expect and what they are willing or able to pay—will remain stubbornly in place. — location: 2452 ^ref-30911

the belief that all (or even much) will be well, if only the right person assumes the reins as president and commander in chief serves to underwrite the status quo. — location: 2455 ^ref-56784

Politics requires artful dissembling. — location: 2465 ^ref-24210

The Big Lies are the truths that remain unspoken: that freedom has an underside; that nations, like households, must ultimately live within their means; that history’s purpose, the subject of so many confident pronouncements, remains inscrutable. — location: 2468 ^ref-33734

Power is finite. Politicians pass over matters such as these in silence. As a consequence, the absence of self-awareness that forms such an enduring element of the American character persists. — location: 2470 ^ref-20998

The newly inaugurated president takes office, buoyed by expectations that history will soon be restored to its proper trajectory and the nation put back on track. There is something touching about these expectations, but also something pathetic, like the battered wife who expects that this time her husband will actually keep his oft-violated vow never again to raise his hand against her. — location: 2473 ^ref-22122

the national security state—actually benefit from this dependency: It provides the source of status, power, and prerogatives. Imagine the impact just on the Pentagon were this country actually to achieve anything approaching energy independence. U.S. Central Command would go out of business. Dozens of bases in and around the Middle East would close. The navy’s Fifth Fleet would stand down. Weapons contracts worth tens of billions would risk being canceled. — location: 2485 ^ref-44182

Rather than acknowledging that American power is not limitless, they pursue policies that actually accelerate the depletion of that power. — location: 2489 ^ref-14628

“It is not within the realm of moral possibilities to ask a nation to be ‘self-sacrificing.’ ”3 Yet he also understood that a nation satisfies its interests more easily when those interests are compatible with the interests of others. — location: 2502 ^ref-15691

Americans ought to give up the presumptuous notion that they are called upon to tutor Muslims in matters related to freedom and the proper relationship between politics and religion. The principle informing policy should be this: Let Islam be Islam. In the end, Muslims will have to discover for themselves the shortcomings of political Islam, much as Russians discovered the defects of Marxism-Leninism and Chinese came to appreciate the flaws of Maoism— — location: 2539 ^ref-40578

perhaps even as we ourselves will one day begin to recognize the snares embedded in American exceptionalism. — location: 2543 ^ref-51048

abolishing nuclear weapons ought to be an urgent national security priority. So too should preserving our planet. These are the meta-challenges of our time. — location: 2552 ^ref-47208

investing trillions in energy research might actually produce something useful. From the Manhattan Project to the space race to the development of the Internet, large-scale technological innovation has tended to be an American strong suit. By comparison, when it comes to large-scale efforts to engineer political, social, and cultural change abroad, the American track record has never been better than mixed. Since September 2001, it has been downright abysmal. — location: 2590 ^ref-28307

They will tolerate stupefying incompetence and dysfunction in the nation’s capital, counting on the next president to fix everything that the last one screwed up. In Niebuhr’s words, they will cling to “a culture which makes ‘living standards’ the final norm of the good life and which regards the perfection of techniques as the guarantor of every cultural as well as every social-moral value.” — location: 2605 ^ref-8627

“To the end of history,” our prophet once wrote, “social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible.”10 Clinging doggedly to the conviction that the rules to which other nations must submit don’t apply, Americans appear determined to affirm Niebuhr’s axiom of willful self-destruction. — location: 2617 ^ref-30404