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Andrew J. Bacevich (born 1947 in Normal, Illinois) is a professor of international relations at Boston University, former director of its Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), and author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002) and The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005). He has been "a persistent, vocal critic of the US occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure."^[1] In March of 2007, he described George W. Bush's endorsement of such "preventive wars" as "immoral, illicit, and imprudent."^[1][2] His son died fighting in the Iraq war in May of 2007.^[1]

Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971. Afterwards he held posts in Germany, the United States, and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank of Colonel in the early 1990s. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.

On May 13, 2007, Bacevich's son, also named Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq, when he was killed by a suicide bomber south of Samarra in Salah Ad Din Province. The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant.^[3] He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.

Bacevich also has three daughters.^[3]

He has described himself as a "Catholic conservative" and initially published writings in a number of traditionally conservative American political magazines, his recent writings have professed a dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of American foreign policy.

Both his recent books are critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially movies) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the population to produce in the American people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service is really like. Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of an American tradition going back to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century: Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams.

Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate about American foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one President (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, Bacevich sees both Republicans and Democrats as sharing responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation's best interest.

In March 2003, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bacevich wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "if, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history."^[1]

An editorial about the Bush Doctrine was published by the Boston Globe in March of 2007.^[2]

• The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II (Columbia University Press, USA, 2007) ISBN 0231131585
• The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford University Press Inc, USA, 2005) ISBN 0-19-517338-4
• American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-674-01375-1

1. ^ ^{a b c d} MacQuarrie, Brian (2007-05-15). Son of professor opposed to war is killed in Iraq. Boston Globe.
2. ^ ^{a b} Bacevich, Andrew J. (2007-03-01). Rescinding the Bush Doctrine. The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
3. ^ ^{a b} "Soldier from Fort Hood killed in Iraq", The Associated Press, published May 14, 2007, accessed May 15, 2007.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Andrew Bacevich

• I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose, Washington Post, May 27, 2007
• Andrew Bacevich webpage at Boston University
• Interview with Andrew Bacevich in Bostonia, alumni magazine of Boston University, Seduced by War
• Extensive excerpts from The New American Militarism
• Conversations with Andrew Bacevich
• Archive of Bacevich's writings for The Nation
• Andrew Bacevich bloggings at HuffPo
• Iraq panel's real agenda: damage control for The Christian Science Monitor
• Sycophant Savior General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington—if not in Baghdad.