listen up

I havent read the book (though I want to), nor even heard the entire interview (I will though, following the given link), but with just the short bit I heard while driving, I'm going to recommend Fresh Air's interview with Andrew J. Bacevich about his book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Professor Bacevich, a retired army colonel, "argues that pragmatic realism has always been the core of American foreign policy, and current politicians would do well to remember that."
He also declares that America is built on the concept of "more", and that while that has been a source of great strength, propelling our young nation to the top of the global food chain, it is also a source of danger:

The ethic of self- gratification threatens the well- being of the United States. It does so not because Americans have lost touch with some mythical Puritan habits of hard work and self-abnegation, but because it saddles us with costly commitments abroad that we are increasingly ill-equipped to sustain while confronting us with dangers to which we have no ready response. As the prerequisites of the American way of life have grown, they have outstripped the means available to satisfy them. Americans of an earlier generation worried about bomber and missile gaps, both of which turned out to be fictitious. The present-day gap between requirements and the means available to satisfy those requirements is neither contrived nor imaginary. It is real and growing. This gap defines the crisis of American profligacy.

The idea that the American need to have it all will be our downfall is not a new one; I think everyone knows that, subconciously at least. Hell, I've been describing Americans (especially Republicans) as spoiled teenagers who refuse to do their chores for years. But Bacevich says it much, much better than I do, and then goes on to say a whole lot more (read the Amazon blurb for an scale of the ideas that the book covers). His description of Ronald Reagan and how he appealed to the public after Jimmy Carter was worth the price of admission all by itself (and is rather chilling when one considers the possibility of an economic collapse in our future).