Confront and Conceal

by Sanger, David E.

• ISBN13: 9780307718020
• ISBN10: 0307718026
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-05
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

FROM INSIDE OBAMA'S SITUATION ROOM . . . THE CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE COVERT WAR AGAINST IRAN, THE STRUGGLES TO DEAL WITH A RECALCITRANT PAKISTAN AND ITS FAST-GROWING NUCLEAR ARSENAL, THE TENSIONS WITH THE AMERICAN MILITARY OVER AFGANISTAN AND WITH ALLIES SWEPT UP IN THE CHAOS OF THE ARAB SPRING Three and a half years ago, David Sanger's book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Powerdescribed how a new American president came to office with the world on fire. Now, just as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Sanger follows up with an eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with those challenges, relying on innovative weapons and reconfigured tools of American power to try to manage a series of new threats. Sanger describes how Obama's early idealism about fighting "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan quickly turned to fatigue and frustration, how the early hopes that the Arab Spring would bring about a democratic awakening slipped away, and how an effort to re-establish American power in the Pacific set the stage for a new era of tensions with the world's great rising power, China. As the world seeks to understand the contours of the Obama Doctrine, Confront and Concealis a fascinating, unflinching account of these complex years, in which the president and his administration have found themselves struggling to stay ahead in a world where power is diffuse and America's ability to exert control grows ever more elusive.

Table of Contents

Prologue	p. ix
Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Curse of Unfinished Business
Blowing Smoke	p. 3
"Afghan Good Enough"	p. 15
The Bomb Scare	p. 58
Getting bin Laden, Losing Pakistan	p. 68
The Long Game: Getting Out, Without Really Leaving	p. 114
Iran: The Zone of Immunity
The Secret War	p. 141
"Cut Off the Head of the Snake"	p. 152
Olympic Games	p. 188
"The Land of Lousy Options"	p. 226
Drones and Cyber: The Remote-Control War
The Dark Side of the Light Footprint	p. 243
Arab Spring: The Revolts, and the Rise of the Brotherhood
"You Sold Out the Revolution"	p. 273
Searching for the "Right Side of History"	p. 277
The Riddle of the Brotherhood	p. 304
What Works Once Doesn't Always Work Twice	p. 335
China and North Korea: The Rebalancing
Restraining the Tiger, Containing the Kims	p. 369
Epilogue	p. 417
Acknowledgments	p. 429
A Note on Sources	p. 435
Endnotes	p. 437
Index	p. 464
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