"War presidents" are hardly exceptional in modern American history.
To a greater or lesser extent, every president since Wilson has
been a War President. Each has committed our country to the pursuit
of peace, yet involved us in a seemingly endless series of
wars--conflicts that the American foreign policy establishment has
generally made worse. The chief reason, argues Angelo Codevilla in
"Advice to War Presidents," is that America's leaders have
habitually imagined the world as they wished it to be rather than
as it is: They acted under the assumptions that war is not a normal
tool of statecraft but a curable disease, and that all the world's
peoples wish to live as Americans do. As a result, our leaders have
committed America to the grandest of ends while constantly
subverting their own goals.
Employing many negative examples from the Bush II administration
but also ranging widely over the last century, "Advice to War
Presidents" offers a primer on the unchanging principles of foreign
policy. Codevilla explains the essentials--focusing on realities
such as diplomacy, alliances, war, economic statecraft,
intelligence, and prestige, rather than on meaningless phrases like
"international community," "peacekeeping" and "collective
security." Not a realist, neoconservative, or a liberal
internationalist, Codevilla follows an older tradition: that of
historians like Thucydides, Herodotus, and Winston
Churchill--writers who analyzed international affairs without
imposing false categories.
"Advice to War Presidents" is an effort to talk our future
presidents down from their rhetorical highs and get them to
practice statecraft rather than wishful thinking, lest they give us
further violence.
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