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A review by gregbrown
Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State by Garry Wills
3.0
I expected the strong version of Wills' thesis going in—the nuclear bomb and project to build it begat most of the post-WW II world order and government organization—and got something a bit weaker: some of the tools they used to build and deploy the bomb were useful enough that subsequent administrations started deploying it for all sorts of uses. Honestly, Wills could just as easily have written the book about secrecy as a tool in the Cold War, and it probably would have made for a clearer structure to the book as well.
Hiroshima in America does a better job of cataloguing the psychic break caused by using the bomb on a populace, along with the window of time where Truman thought the US had unstoppable power that would never be matched by its enemies. Trying to recapture and enjoy that unipolar dominance describes a lot of the efforts made during the Cold War, and in a more comprehensive fashion than Wills' secrecy-centric narrative, especially one that tends to just focus on the exceptional outbreaks like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Watergate.
The Bomb and The Doomsday Machine do a much better job of describing the giant organizing apparatus built up to justify and deploy the bomb, while Wills just occasionally refers to the web of air bases for deploying bombers before returning to his preferred subject.
Probably the most interesting part of the book was as a trip back to the mindset of 2009, when there were hopes that Obama would rollback Bush's executive overreach and unaccountable conduct in the war on terror. Since then, Obama mainly worked to set the conduct of the war on firmer legal grounds while minimally changing the actual moral atrocities being committed, turning drones into a giant regimented system of death and destruction, still with minimal accountability but some sheen of procedural justice.
Wills' bigger problem is he thinks the answers to his problems lie in the US Constitution, or a firmer adherence to its principles, when it's clear over the last decade that nobody really cares about it? We have a Federalist Society appeals judges and a Supreme Court that clearly decides whatever's convenient; a legislative branch totally inert and incapable of dealing with standard business, much less actual looming crises like climate change, homelessness, aging, and health care; and an executive branch that's arguably the most representative at the moment but still disappointing and full of careerists past their expiration date. Really, more depressing than any of the shit Wills complains about here.
Hiroshima in America does a better job of cataloguing the psychic break caused by using the bomb on a populace, along with the window of time where Truman thought the US had unstoppable power that would never be matched by its enemies. Trying to recapture and enjoy that unipolar dominance describes a lot of the efforts made during the Cold War, and in a more comprehensive fashion than Wills' secrecy-centric narrative, especially one that tends to just focus on the exceptional outbreaks like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Watergate.
The Bomb and The Doomsday Machine do a much better job of describing the giant organizing apparatus built up to justify and deploy the bomb, while Wills just occasionally refers to the web of air bases for deploying bombers before returning to his preferred subject.
Probably the most interesting part of the book was as a trip back to the mindset of 2009, when there were hopes that Obama would rollback Bush's executive overreach and unaccountable conduct in the war on terror. Since then, Obama mainly worked to set the conduct of the war on firmer legal grounds while minimally changing the actual moral atrocities being committed, turning drones into a giant regimented system of death and destruction, still with minimal accountability but some sheen of procedural justice.
Wills' bigger problem is he thinks the answers to his problems lie in the US Constitution, or a firmer adherence to its principles, when it's clear over the last decade that nobody really cares about it? We have a Federalist Society appeals judges and a Supreme Court that clearly decides whatever's convenient; a legislative branch totally inert and incapable of dealing with standard business, much less actual looming crises like climate change, homelessness, aging, and health care; and an executive branch that's arguably the most representative at the moment but still disappointing and full of careerists past their expiration date. Really, more depressing than any of the shit Wills complains about here.