Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country

A blistering critique of the gulf between America's soldiers and the society that sends them off to war, from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power and Washington Rules

The United States has been "at war" for more than a decade. Yet as war has become normalized, a yawning gap has opened between America's soldiers and the society in whose name they fight. For ordinary citizens, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates has acknowledged, armed conflict has become an "abstraction" and military service "something for other people to do." In Breach of Trust, bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich takes stock of the damage this disconnect has wrought.

National defense, he argues, should become the business of "we the people." Should Americans refuse to shoulder this responsibility, the prospect of endless war, waged by a "foreign legion" of professionals and contractor-mercenaries, beckons. So too does bankruptcy--moral as well as fiscal.

Author: Andrew Bacevich
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 09/09/2014
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781250055385

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 11/09/2014 pg. 56

About the Author
Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, served for twenty-three years as an officer in the U.S. Army. He is the author of Washington Rules, The Limits of Power, and The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

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