On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, President of the Quincy Institute Andrew Bacevich joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his book “After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed” and the future of U.S. foreign policy.
“There’s a need for us to come to a broader understanding of what national security is all about. And that broader understanding needs to admit threats that we formally wouldn’t have categorized as threats because we thought that the things to worry about are nation-states far away from us and whatever mischief they were causing,” Bacevich said.
The previous ways of “endless wars and a succession of moral and material disasters,” Bacevich argues, need to end.
“There is an urgent need for the military to portray itself to young people as in step with the cultural changes that the country is experiencing … They need to communicate to the universe of 18-year-olds that the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, that these are places where ‘you young man, you young woman’ can have a life, can find satisfactory employment, where you can have a sense of belonging,” said of seemingly “woke” marketing materials.
“So pitching military life and military service the same way it was pitched when I joined in the 1960s ain’t gonna work. I think they’re probably struggling to find out what’s the right mix of messages and as they do that, they do some things that are probably stupid,” he said.
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