Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University and author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, discusses the negative net returns of U.S. expansionism from the 1960s onward, the establishment of a permanent national security apparatus that made non-interventionism impossible, the Carter Doctrine’s faulty premises and continued influence in Middle East policies and the current Pentagon reassessment of U.S. military limitations that may inhibit a troop surge in Afghanistan and force a more realistic political solution.

MP3 here. (42:03)

Andrew Bacevich is a Professor of International Relations at Boston University, Vietnam War veteran and author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, and The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II.