Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft
by Angelo Codevilla
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"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 show more 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. show lessTags
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Garbage. If you believe this book, everything that has been done in foreign policy for the last 50 years has been wrong.
Garbage. If you believe this book, everything that has been done in foreign policy for the last 50 years has been wrong.
Garbage. If you believe this book, everything that has been done in foreign policy for the last 50 years has been wrong.
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17+ Works 432 Members
Angelo M. Codevilla is a professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, a member of the Hoover Institution's working group on military history, and a fellow of the Claremont Institute. His essays and opeds, written in several languages, have appeared in major domestic and foreign magazines and newspapers. Formerly a senior show more research fellow at the Hoover Institution, he is the author of thirteen books, including War: Ends and Means, Informing Statecraft, The Ruling Class, The Character of Nations, Advice to War Presidents, and A Student's Guide to International Relations. show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction, History, Philosophy
- DDC/MDS
- 327.73 — Society, government, & culture Political science International Relations: Spies North America United States
- LCC
- JZ1480 .C64 — Political Science International relations International relations Scope of international relations. Political theory. Scope of international relations with regard to
- BISAC
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- 27
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- Reviews
- 3
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- (2.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 2
