After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed

"Few critics [of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars] have been more penetrating than Andrew Bacevich . . . One can only hope that Bacevich is read and understood by a generation young enough to see through and reject those dismal elites."
—The New York Times Book Review (Editors'' Choice)

The purpose of U.S. foreign policy is, at least theoretically, to keep Americans safe. Yet as we confront a radically changed world, it has become clear that the terms of that policy have failed. Washington’s insistence on a market economy, its faith in the idea of the “West” and its “special relationships,” its conviction that military primacy is the key to a stable and sustainable world order—these have brought endless wars and a succession of moral and material disasters.

In a bold reconception of America’s place in the world, informed by thinking from across the political spectrum, historian Andrew Bacevich lays down a new approach based on moral pragmatism, mutual coexistence, and war only as a last resort in After the Apocalypse. Confronting the threats of the future—climate change, a shift in the international balance of power, and the rise of information technology as a weapon of war—his vision calls for a profound overhaul of our understanding of national security, setting out new principles to guide the once-but-no-longer sole superpower as it navigates a transformed world.