The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris Book

Throughout history the exercise of power has been the driver of events. While it is possible for power to be used in a benign, protective way, it is far more usual and predictable for it to create dreams of dominance in the minds of those that hold it resulting in a breakout where one nation strives to force an area, now as large as the whole planet, into accord with its will.

At present, the United States holds the title of sole superpower. As a democracy, the views held by the American public are an important factor in pushing forward or restraining the exercise of power by those at the top of government. Unlike in the days of royalty, a nation cannot be driven through years of warfare against its will since a change of government is never more than a few years away. This makes it imperative for leaders to influence the public. FDR wished to do so to get America into WW2. LBJ did it with Vietnam. George W. Bush went into a frenzy to get us into Iraq. It is interesting that almost always we the people do not want wars and must be finessed (though that word cannot be applied to the Bush farce) into it.

Peter Beinart is out to show how from the early 20th century to today, the use of power by the United States has gone through 3 phases. Each phase is characterized by caution and ambivalence followed by success (whether expected or not) that brings heightened expectation and inflated self regard leading to hubris with all things thought possible. Hubris brings overreach ending in humiliation. From humiliation come the return of caution and ambivalence to complete a cycle.

Beinart sees the first phase beginning with WW1 as based on reason, centered on the policies of the Wilson administration. People are seen as fundamentally good and capable of coming together for betterment if only the domination of evil governments can be overcome. The symbol of this period is the League of Nations, Wilson's pet project, and international arms control conferences that it was thought could put limits on armaments and war. This was the hubris of reason. The rise of Hitler showing the enthusiastic embrace of totalitarianism by the German people brought this phase to a close.

The second phase, coming with the end of WW2, replaces reason with toughness. No longer are all men basically good, but evil stalks the world and into that role the USSR is placed. George F. Kennan's idea of containment is enthusiastically embraced in Washington. After a momentary setback in Korea, the U.S. goes from strength to strength as the Iron Curtain is faced down in Berlin and Ike's reliance on nuclear weapons keeps the huge Red Army from moving on western Europe. JFK appears to face down the USSR over missiles in Cuba. We can stop communism everywhere, regardless of the actual importance of some remote locale to national security. This hubris produces the intervention in Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of American lives are lost, the country falls into strife, the presidency of LBJ is humiliated and phase two ends.

Phase three brings Ronald Reagan staging a feel good military campaign that cannot fail in Grenada as memories of Vietnam tragedy are replaced by "morning in America". Clinton's intervention through the use of NATO in the Balkans bring prestige to air power and "precision" weapons along with no U.S. casualties. Neocon ideas that all the peoples of the world yearn for democracy gets reinforcement as one after another Latin American dictatorships fall. If only the U.S. has the will, then it certainly has the might, after the fall of the USSR, to change the world for the better! Comes 9/11 and it's the opportunity to make our move at last. I need not tell the reader of how this phase is humiliated with Iraq and now Syria. Does anyone outside of Israel really have an appetite for the U.S. to take on Iran? That was to be the next government to rout.

This book is a delightful read because Beinart has a wonderful droll sense of humor that he doesn't hesitate to use. He introduces all the intellectuals from John Dewey and Reinhold Niebuhr through Irving and Bill Kristol, Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz, who were fueling the views that drove the three phases. There are dozens of brief bios and wonderful, detailed examples characterizing the personalities in the war of ideas. I love this snippet about Reagan: "commentators often noted that he (Reagan) saw America as a giant Hallmark card, obscured by an overgrown and dastardly federal government."

This is the best overview of American foreign policy since 1900 that I've read. It is deadly serious but at the same time lighthearted in the way it portrays the foibles of individuals and fixed mindsets that seldom, if ever, are swayed by reality while in power. People can be extremely smart and educated yet still be fools. The character traits of presidents are critical. Reagan was surrounded by hawks, yet his sunny view of people held them off despite a surge in U.S. armament.

There are more than a few serious thinkers in this book who become disillusioned to the point of despair. It's quite clearly shown how events are framed within their times and, most important, how people see what they want to see and the public is fickle. The Korean War, for example, was felt, just after it ended, to have been a failure by 70% of the American public. But let the years go by and it gradually is transformed into a success as indicated by polls. This, in itself, is a weakness of modern democracy: no long term collective memory in a society besieged with the immediate sensation at the expense of the reflective thought.

Reading about different outlooks on the world, nations and causes, I couldn't avoid considering my own. Is what I believe warranted by what has happened in the last 100 years? Where will our current hubris, that has our military deployed in hundreds of countries while our State Department is moribund, land us?

What defines hubris is that nothing is impossible; we only lack the will to do anything we want. This is an unfortunate theme of presidents and has long characterized the American outlook. The Icarus Syndrome is a tutorial on how hubris comes to be and is, inevitably, defeated by reality. I am reminded of the little line I learned in grade school - think before you do.