Advice to War Presidents A Remedial Course in Statecraft

by Codevilla, Angelo

• ISBN13: 9780465004836
• ISBN10: 0465004830
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-24
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

"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 warsconflicts that the American foreign policy establishment has generally made worse. The chief reason, argues Angelo Codevilla inAdvice 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 Presidentsoffers a primer on the unchanging principles of foreign policy. Codevilla explains the essentialsfocusing 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 Churchillwriters who analyzed international affairs without imposing false categories.Advice to War Presidentsis 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.

Author Biography

Angelo M. Codevilla is professor of international relations at Boston University. He is also the author of War: Ends and Means and While Others Build.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
	p. 1
Use the Dictionary	p. 5
Watch Your Axioms	p. 27
Ideas Have Consequences	p. 45
Diplomacy: Medium, Not Message	p. 75
Power Makes Money	p. 111
Wars Are for Winning	p. 145
Use Intelligence, Not Intelligence	p. 191
Security for Our Side	p. 229
Keep It Simple	p. 263
Notes	p. 281
Index	p. 301
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