"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.

Taiwan's recent moves to democratize its political system have undermined the "one China" policy and demanded the redefinition of relations between Taiwan and China. Across the Taiwan Strait provides a new and timely look at the pivotal role of democracy in the fifty-year-old conflict. Drawn from the proceedings of a conference organized by the Claremont Institute, the work discusses the varying perceptions of democracy in China and Taiwan and the different democracy movements developing on either side of the Taiwan Strait. It highlights the importance of Taiwan in establishing an Asian experience of democracy, the role of the United States in mediating this discussion of democracy, and the need to ensure that democratic development enhances, rather than destabilizes, the cross-strait relationship.

These essays on strategy, war, and statecraft have been written during the current reassessment of United States' national strategy. But they also take strategic thinking back to certain principals and interests which have guided America before, during, and after the Cold War. Co-published with The Institute for Public Policy.

This book explores the causes, operations, endings, and justifications of war. In the process, it demolishes many currently fashionable illusions, such as that peace is always preferable to war, that wars occur because of accidents or misunderstandings, and that technology changes the nature of war. Abundant historical and contemporary examples show, the authors contend, that all wars are deliberate political choices, that military operations follow timeless principles, and that, as Aristotle taught, the natural aim of war is victory. This new edition of the book that Eugene Rostow called "a gem," Michael Howard called "shrewd and trenchant," and Library Journal called "persuasive" devotes substantial attention to the wars of the post-Cold War period, including "the war on terrorism."

Analyzing the American intelligence network, senior research fellow at Hoover Institution Angelo Codevilla concludes that American intelligence efforts are desperately outdated in this "masterful exploration of the field" (Publishers Weekly). Based on years of research and experience working within the American intelligence network, Angelo Codevilla argues that the intelligence efforts of the nation's government are outgrown and inconclusive. Suggesting that the evolution of American intelligence since the Vietnam War and World War II has been erratic and unplanned, Codevilla presents new efforts to be made within the intelligence network that would lead to strategized and effective methods of information gathering. Connecting the lines between a need for successful intelligence efforts and a strong government, Informing Statecraft warns of how intelligence failures of the past will eventually pale in comparison to the malaise that plagued American intelligence in the twentieth century.