Andrew Bacevich on Presidential Campaigns in Wartime

Hosted by Boston University College of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Sciences Alumni Association

In the inaugural lecture of the Arts and Sciences Discoveries series, military expert Andrew Bacevich, a BU professor of international relations, discusses U.S. presidential campaigns during wartime, drawing political parallels between the Korean War and the Iraq war. In the 1950s, halting the spread of communism was the grand strategy. Today, the global war on terror is ostensibly the overarching focus of our military incursions.

Bacevich argues that the Bush agenda to democratize the Middle East has collapsed. Like Korea, Iraq was intended to be the expression of a larger strategy; instead, he says, it has turned out to be a “strategic cul-de-sac.” The next president, he says, will inherit two costly and active wars, an elusive Osama bin Laden, a resurgent Taliban, and an unstable nuclear Pakistan, not to mention a war-weary public. And what about global climate change and the proliferation of nuclear weapons? What exactly should the country’s new grand strategy look like?

February 21, 2008, 7 p.m.
Metcalf Trustees Ballroom

Video length is 01:11:20.

About the speaker:
Andrew Bacevich, a BU College of Arts and Sciences professor of international relations, was the director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University from 1998 to the 2005. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he earned a Ph.D. in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins University.

Bacevich is the editor of The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy Since World War II. His books include American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy, The Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire, and The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and general interest publications, including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The American Conservative, and The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, among other newspapers.

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