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Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era
Unbeknownst to just about all observers of international affairs, America's decision in 1991 to provide air defense to oppressed Kurds in Iraq after the Gulf War had ended ushered in an entirely new era in American foreign policy. Until that moment, the United States used military power to defend against threats (real and perceived) that its leaders thought would either weaken America's position in the world order or--in the worst case--threaten the homeland. For the first time ever, the United States militarily was now actively involved in states that represented no threat, and with missions that were largely humanitarian and socio-political. After establishing the Kurdish no-fly zone, the US in quick succession intervened in Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo. Even after 9/11, it decided that it had a duty to not just invade Iraq, but reconstruct Iraqi society along Western lines.
In Mission Failure, the eminent international relations scholar Michael Mandelbaum provides a sweeping interpretive history of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era to show why this new approach was doomed to failure. America had always adhered to a mission-based foreign policy, but in the post-Cold War era it swung away from security concerns to a near-exclusive emphasis on implanting Western institutions wherever it could. Many good things happened in this era, including a broad expansion of democracy and strong growth in the global economy. But the U.S. never had either the capacity or the will to change societies that were dramatically different from our own. Over two decades later, we can see the wreckage: a broken Iraq a teetering Afghanistan, a China that laughs at our demands that they adopt a human rights regime, and a still-impoverished Haiti. Mandelbaum does not deny that American foreign policy has always had a strong ideological component. Instead, he argues that emphasizing that particular feature generally leads to mission failure. We are able to defend ourselves well and effectively project power, but we have very little capacity to change other societies. If nothing else, that is what the last quarter century has taught us.
In Mission Failure, the eminent international relations scholar Michael Mandelbaum provides a sweeping interpretive history of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era to show why this new approach was doomed to failure. America had always adhered to a mission-based foreign policy, but in the post-Cold War era it swung away from security concerns to a near-exclusive emphasis on implanting Western institutions wherever it could. Many good things happened in this era, including a broad expansion of democracy and strong growth in the global economy. But the U.S. never had either the capacity or the will to change societies that were dramatically different from our own. Over two decades later, we can see the wreckage: a broken Iraq a teetering Afghanistan, a China that laughs at our demands that they adopt a human rights regime, and a still-impoverished Haiti. Mandelbaum does not deny that American foreign policy has always had a strong ideological component. Instead, he argues that emphasizing that particular feature generally leads to mission failure. We are able to defend ourselves well and effectively project power, but we have very little capacity to change other societies. If nothing else, that is what the last quarter century has taught us.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2016
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July 21, 2016
While this book is an interesting survey of America's many and diverse foreign interventions since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has far too many shortcomings to be taken seriously as anything beyond an expanded Wikipedia article.
Mandelbaum has a thesis, and in order to make his thesis works he aggressively omits historical facts, and distorts many more. To make matters worse, his underpinning assumptions: that global free trade is always a net good without exceptions, that the IMF has always been a force for good, that Islam as a religion makes it incompatible to democracy, and that British colonialism was also a net good for all of the countries it oppressed for generations -- are frightening.
He also feels the need to wedge the Israel-Palestine issue into his thesis, despite the fact that the United States has never intervened militarily in either country. That section serves to further discredit the book, as it includes dozens of falsehoods and false equivalences, and leaves the reader with a feeling of breathtaking racism.
Mandelbaum has a thesis, and in order to make his thesis works he aggressively omits historical facts, and distorts many more. To make matters worse, his underpinning assumptions: that global free trade is always a net good without exceptions, that the IMF has always been a force for good, that Islam as a religion makes it incompatible to democracy, and that British colonialism was also a net good for all of the countries it oppressed for generations -- are frightening.
He also feels the need to wedge the Israel-Palestine issue into his thesis, despite the fact that the United States has never intervened militarily in either country. That section serves to further discredit the book, as it includes dozens of falsehoods and false equivalences, and leaves the reader with a feeling of breathtaking racism.
July 27, 2018
Michael Mandelbaum attempts to argue that the United States has failed in every post-Cold War mission in which it has engaged by asserting that the U.S. mission in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq was humanitarian in nature and one of societal transformation. However, in nearly all cases the U.S. mission was *not* about creating "Denmarks" (model democracies/economies), but instead had specific goals related back to U.S. national interests that in fact *were* accomplished.
Below are the missions that Mandelbaum claims resulted in U.S. failure along with my counter arguments:
1. Somalia -- the original mission of aiding in humanitarian food shipment to the populace that was experiencing famine was for the most part accomplished prior to the mission creep that resulted in a failed attempt to restore order and wrest power from warlords, namely Mohammad Farah Aidid.
2. Haiti -- the original mission of restoring the democratically-elected government of Jean Betrand Aristide after a military coup was accomplished -- in fact it was accomplished prior to the actual deployment. The ensuing peacekeeping mission helped ensure stability and the restoration to power of Aristide. The fact that Haiti did not end up as the Switzerland of the Caribbean should be no real surprise to anyone with knowledge of the extremely poor state of the economy in that country.
3. Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo) -- again, while maybe a hoped for goal, it was not the "mission" to create perfect representative democracies and prosperous economies in Bosnia and Kosovo. However, what the peacekeeping missions there did accomplish was a level of stability and security that ended the significant bloodshed and allowed for some degree of normalcy in both places.
4. Afghanistan -- while acknowledging this as the "good war," Mandelbaum nonetheless insinuates the mission has been a failure. However, the fact that no terrorist attacks against the United States have originated from Afghanistan since 9/11, would argue that indeed the original mission was accomplished. The U.S. has remained in Afghanistan to prevent a return to Taliban rule, and still remains successful in that mission, albeit at the expense of large amounts of U.S. blood and treasure. Still "failure" is not an adequate description of the mission--at least not yet.
5. Iraq -- while the tide of public opinion has clearly turned against the 2003 Iraq War, that has clearly been with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Like the missions above though, a complete democratic transformation of Iraq was not the original mission, but a broader foreign policy *goal* that accompanied the intervention. The U.S. was successful in removing from power a brutal dictator who supported terrorism around the Middle East (although in hindsight--not the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11). While the U.S. occupation was extremely bloody and costly, it's difficult to argue that Iraq or the region would have been better off with Saddam remaining in power. In 2002 and 2003 the U.S. was extremely paranoid about the possibility of another major terrorist attack. The threat of a Sunni dictator who cozied up to terrorists and who according to the best intelligence (shared by all major powers at the time) had weapons of mass destruction made it a very plausible scenario that WMD could be passed off to the very terrorists who wanted to cause as much death and destruction as possible in the U.S. That threat was too much for any rational polity to bear. As such the U.S. answered that threat by deposing that dictator. In that mission, it was successful. The lack of any major terrorist attack in the U.S. post-9/11 may have justified the expenditure. Speculating otherwise is just that--speculation.
Mandelbaum is most convincing in his arguments about the failed efforts of the U.S. to bring about peace in Israel/Palestine and establishing democracies in the broader Middle East as part of the Bush administration's "Democracy Agenda." Nonetheless, the goals and intentions in these cases were sound and even noble. Just because they failed does not necessarily mean they should have not been undertaken.
Other than a faulty central thesis, the book offers an excellent review of the major national security challenges and policies of the United States in the post-Cold War world. In addition, he offers rational explanations why the wider goals of democracy building often resulted in failure and are worthy of review by those interested in national security decision making.
Below are the missions that Mandelbaum claims resulted in U.S. failure along with my counter arguments:
1. Somalia -- the original mission of aiding in humanitarian food shipment to the populace that was experiencing famine was for the most part accomplished prior to the mission creep that resulted in a failed attempt to restore order and wrest power from warlords, namely Mohammad Farah Aidid.
2. Haiti -- the original mission of restoring the democratically-elected government of Jean Betrand Aristide after a military coup was accomplished -- in fact it was accomplished prior to the actual deployment. The ensuing peacekeeping mission helped ensure stability and the restoration to power of Aristide. The fact that Haiti did not end up as the Switzerland of the Caribbean should be no real surprise to anyone with knowledge of the extremely poor state of the economy in that country.
3. Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo) -- again, while maybe a hoped for goal, it was not the "mission" to create perfect representative democracies and prosperous economies in Bosnia and Kosovo. However, what the peacekeeping missions there did accomplish was a level of stability and security that ended the significant bloodshed and allowed for some degree of normalcy in both places.
4. Afghanistan -- while acknowledging this as the "good war," Mandelbaum nonetheless insinuates the mission has been a failure. However, the fact that no terrorist attacks against the United States have originated from Afghanistan since 9/11, would argue that indeed the original mission was accomplished. The U.S. has remained in Afghanistan to prevent a return to Taliban rule, and still remains successful in that mission, albeit at the expense of large amounts of U.S. blood and treasure. Still "failure" is not an adequate description of the mission--at least not yet.
5. Iraq -- while the tide of public opinion has clearly turned against the 2003 Iraq War, that has clearly been with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Like the missions above though, a complete democratic transformation of Iraq was not the original mission, but a broader foreign policy *goal* that accompanied the intervention. The U.S. was successful in removing from power a brutal dictator who supported terrorism around the Middle East (although in hindsight--not the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11). While the U.S. occupation was extremely bloody and costly, it's difficult to argue that Iraq or the region would have been better off with Saddam remaining in power. In 2002 and 2003 the U.S. was extremely paranoid about the possibility of another major terrorist attack. The threat of a Sunni dictator who cozied up to terrorists and who according to the best intelligence (shared by all major powers at the time) had weapons of mass destruction made it a very plausible scenario that WMD could be passed off to the very terrorists who wanted to cause as much death and destruction as possible in the U.S. That threat was too much for any rational polity to bear. As such the U.S. answered that threat by deposing that dictator. In that mission, it was successful. The lack of any major terrorist attack in the U.S. post-9/11 may have justified the expenditure. Speculating otherwise is just that--speculation.
Mandelbaum is most convincing in his arguments about the failed efforts of the U.S. to bring about peace in Israel/Palestine and establishing democracies in the broader Middle East as part of the Bush administration's "Democracy Agenda." Nonetheless, the goals and intentions in these cases were sound and even noble. Just because they failed does not necessarily mean they should have not been undertaken.
Other than a faulty central thesis, the book offers an excellent review of the major national security challenges and policies of the United States in the post-Cold War world. In addition, he offers rational explanations why the wider goals of democracy building often resulted in failure and are worthy of review by those interested in national security decision making.
April 9, 2016
Excellent! For another review, see The Opinion Pages, OP-ED COLUMNIST, "Impossible Missions," by Thomas L. Friedman APRIL 6, 2016, at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opi...
p. 381. In that case, the expansion of NATO would have a claim to being, in historical perspective, the most consequential American foreign policy of the post-Cold War years: its malign effects would be felt long after the failed missions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and even Afghanistan and Iraq had faded from memory.
This is a very good read on our complete failure to succeed at "state building" beginning with the Clinton administration on.
Throughout, and particularly in Chapter 5, The Middle East, it is not hard to see why President Obama has considerable disdain for our foreign policy elites.
p. 377. Three American foreign policies, on the other hand - the Iraq war, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the expansion of NATO - did contribute to the erosion of the international conditions that defined the post-Cold War era and were extraordinarily advantageous for the United States. Each of the three counted, moreover, not only as a failure, but also a mistake, a measure the United States should have known better than to carry out.
There is no interlocutor for Israel in peace talks. See p. 378 - 379.
The twenty-second book I have finished this year.
p. 2. Its costliest feature,the military budget, fell from more than seven percent of national output iN 1988 TO LESS THAN FOUR PERCENT BY 2000.
p. 18. Minorities rather than majorities rule here in the sense that the vast majority of the public is disengaged and a well-organized, highly motivated, and often well-financed minority can get its preferences adopted by the executive branch, or enacted into law by Congress, or both.
p. 43. Had the American president opposed NAFTA, or even simply declined to press for its Congressional ratification, he would have signaled that his country was abandoning this 50 - year commitment.
p. 51. The American - inspired changes that the IMF imposed on Indonesia touched off a series of events that led to the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, free elections, and the establishment of a shaky but genuine democracy.
p.61. In fact, Russia did not undergo shock therapy:
p. 67. The Clinton administration inherited this extremely favorable situation from its predecessor and proceeded to undermine it.
p. 75. The Clinton administration invested even more time and political capital, however, in places that had no significance for global peace and American well-being.
p. 84. Often known as "neoconservatives," they approved of the promotion of American values abroad, something they believed President Reagan had undertaken with great success.
p. 96. None had had to fear the domination of either of the other two because all were dominated by an outside power - Ottoman, Habsburg, and then communist.
. . . .
. . . and, by implication, that sovereign states are most appropriately composed of a single, or at least a dominant, national group.
p. 115. In the end, therefore, the United States and NATO conducted their humanitarian intervention without a UN mandate.
p. 126. American participation in the Balkan wars and its dispatch of troops to Haiti did not have Congressional authorization.
p.135. The responsibility for the deterioration of Russia's relations with the United States and the West, however, rests with Clinton.
p. 136. Both behaved in a reckless fashion.
p. 155. Americans tend to be sensitive about their own liberties but not necessarily about those of non-Americans suspected of plotting to blow up their buildings and kill them.
p. 166. One reason that the United States failed to build an Afghan state strong enough to prevent the Taliban from returning is that it did not try very hard to do so. . . .
. . . .
. . . Within the American government, aid to Afghanistan never had a high priority.
p. 186. The failure to establish a sense of national identity in the three Ottoman provinces the British welded together had a greater impact on the outcome of the American mission in Iraq than anything the United States did or did not do during the more than eight years of its intense engagement with that country.
p. 194. . . . . Tony Blair . . . shared the Bush administration's conviction that Saddam Hussein presented a serious threat to global well-being.
p. 196. Moreover, they were certain he possessed weapons of mass destruction. . . .
. . . .
In fact he did not lie.
p. 206. By one estimate, the postwar looting caused more economic damage than the American bombing campaign.
p. 212. It became evident soon after the capture of Baghdad that the United States did not have enough troops in Iraq.
p. 214. the United States did not have any more troops to send.
p. 214. the Iraqi army would remain more of less intact, and could be put to postwar use. . . . Bremer . . . contradicted what President Bush had decided only a few weeks earlier.
p. 215. . . . barred members of the top four echelons of the Baath Party . . . deprived the United States of trained personnel who might, in theory, have made valuable contributions to post-Saddam Iraq, in this case by operating the government bureaucracies.
p. 218. The Sunni insurgency accounted for most of the more than 32,000 injuries and the more than 4,400 deaths the United States suffered in Iraq. . . . The sectarian conflict proved to be the most destructive of the three, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing millions more. The United States tried, with limited success, to mitigate it.
p. 238. The new administration made an effort to negotiate an extension but was unable to conclude a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government giving American troops immunity from Iraqi law.
See the notes also. "an effort?" Not trying harder was the catastrophe that made Iraq the mess it is today. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden said very optimistic things, about the situation they had inherited, early in their first term. If we had still been there we could have pressured Maliki to step down when he lost the 2010 election.
See also - The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST - Dogs, Cats and Leadership - David Brooks MARCH 11, 2016 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/opi...
p. 244. America's failure stemmed ultimately not from what Americans did or did not do in Iraq but from who and what the Iraqis were.
p. 246. Indeed, for the purposes of adapting to the pressures and opportunities of the modern era - the region's persistent unmet challenges - the Arabs of the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Persian gulf, and the Arabian peninsula might have been better served by a longer and more intrusive European presence.
p. 252. The Arabs experienced the establishment of Israel as a particular humiliation, because it was the work not of the Western Christian world, which had surpassed them i power and wealth for the better part o two centuries, but rather of a people whom the had always knows as a weak and despised minority.
p. 260. In any event, the Israelis almost always did offer the concession that the United States believed were necessary to achieve peace; the Arab side invariably deemed them insufficient. . . . . Unlike the other countries of the Middle East, and to a greater extent than most countries around the world, Israelis shared American values.
p. 265. Arafat led the Palestinian cause, which he came to embody in the eyes of the world, from one disaster to another.
p. 268. The new Israeli government had even urged them to stay; Arab leaders had told them to leave, promising that they would return after the anticipated destruction of the new state.
p. 275. Arafat claimed to be powerless to stop this violence but evidence came to light that he himself had planned and instigated it. He certainly did nothing to discourage it, . . . .
p. 279. . . . . to what was, after all, the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Palestinian political culture.
p. 287. Democracy, the president came to believe, provided the surest antidote to terrorism.
p. 305. At first, the conflict pitted poor Syrians living in rural areas or forced off the land and into cities - both groups harmed by a serious drought - against a government indifferent to their plight.
p. 312 - 313. . . . . the French Revolution of 1789. Before then monarch had come and gone in Europe but the institution of monarchy had remained. The Revolution transformed France's form of government: it overthrew not only the king, Louis XVI, the the centuries old system of kingship
This is one of the major indications that the Middle Ages ended gradually between 1750 and 1850. The suggestion that the Middle Ages ended around 1500 is a Renaissance maggot that does not bear critical examination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opi...
p. 381. In that case, the expansion of NATO would have a claim to being, in historical perspective, the most consequential American foreign policy of the post-Cold War years: its malign effects would be felt long after the failed missions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and even Afghanistan and Iraq had faded from memory.
This is a very good read on our complete failure to succeed at "state building" beginning with the Clinton administration on.
Throughout, and particularly in Chapter 5, The Middle East, it is not hard to see why President Obama has considerable disdain for our foreign policy elites.
p. 377. Three American foreign policies, on the other hand - the Iraq war, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the expansion of NATO - did contribute to the erosion of the international conditions that defined the post-Cold War era and were extraordinarily advantageous for the United States. Each of the three counted, moreover, not only as a failure, but also a mistake, a measure the United States should have known better than to carry out.
There is no interlocutor for Israel in peace talks. See p. 378 - 379.
The twenty-second book I have finished this year.
p. 2. Its costliest feature,the military budget, fell from more than seven percent of national output iN 1988 TO LESS THAN FOUR PERCENT BY 2000.
p. 18. Minorities rather than majorities rule here in the sense that the vast majority of the public is disengaged and a well-organized, highly motivated, and often well-financed minority can get its preferences adopted by the executive branch, or enacted into law by Congress, or both.
p. 43. Had the American president opposed NAFTA, or even simply declined to press for its Congressional ratification, he would have signaled that his country was abandoning this 50 - year commitment.
p. 51. The American - inspired changes that the IMF imposed on Indonesia touched off a series of events that led to the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, free elections, and the establishment of a shaky but genuine democracy.
p.61. In fact, Russia did not undergo shock therapy:
p. 67. The Clinton administration inherited this extremely favorable situation from its predecessor and proceeded to undermine it.
p. 75. The Clinton administration invested even more time and political capital, however, in places that had no significance for global peace and American well-being.
p. 84. Often known as "neoconservatives," they approved of the promotion of American values abroad, something they believed President Reagan had undertaken with great success.
p. 96. None had had to fear the domination of either of the other two because all were dominated by an outside power - Ottoman, Habsburg, and then communist.
. . . .
. . . and, by implication, that sovereign states are most appropriately composed of a single, or at least a dominant, national group.
p. 115. In the end, therefore, the United States and NATO conducted their humanitarian intervention without a UN mandate.
p. 126. American participation in the Balkan wars and its dispatch of troops to Haiti did not have Congressional authorization.
p.135. The responsibility for the deterioration of Russia's relations with the United States and the West, however, rests with Clinton.
p. 136. Both behaved in a reckless fashion.
p. 155. Americans tend to be sensitive about their own liberties but not necessarily about those of non-Americans suspected of plotting to blow up their buildings and kill them.
p. 166. One reason that the United States failed to build an Afghan state strong enough to prevent the Taliban from returning is that it did not try very hard to do so. . . .
. . . .
. . . Within the American government, aid to Afghanistan never had a high priority.
p. 186. The failure to establish a sense of national identity in the three Ottoman provinces the British welded together had a greater impact on the outcome of the American mission in Iraq than anything the United States did or did not do during the more than eight years of its intense engagement with that country.
p. 194. . . . . Tony Blair . . . shared the Bush administration's conviction that Saddam Hussein presented a serious threat to global well-being.
p. 196. Moreover, they were certain he possessed weapons of mass destruction. . . .
. . . .
In fact he did not lie.
p. 206. By one estimate, the postwar looting caused more economic damage than the American bombing campaign.
p. 212. It became evident soon after the capture of Baghdad that the United States did not have enough troops in Iraq.
p. 214. the United States did not have any more troops to send.
p. 214. the Iraqi army would remain more of less intact, and could be put to postwar use. . . . Bremer . . . contradicted what President Bush had decided only a few weeks earlier.
p. 215. . . . barred members of the top four echelons of the Baath Party . . . deprived the United States of trained personnel who might, in theory, have made valuable contributions to post-Saddam Iraq, in this case by operating the government bureaucracies.
p. 218. The Sunni insurgency accounted for most of the more than 32,000 injuries and the more than 4,400 deaths the United States suffered in Iraq. . . . The sectarian conflict proved to be the most destructive of the three, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing millions more. The United States tried, with limited success, to mitigate it.
p. 238. The new administration made an effort to negotiate an extension but was unable to conclude a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government giving American troops immunity from Iraqi law.
See the notes also. "an effort?" Not trying harder was the catastrophe that made Iraq the mess it is today. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden said very optimistic things, about the situation they had inherited, early in their first term. If we had still been there we could have pressured Maliki to step down when he lost the 2010 election.
See also - The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST - Dogs, Cats and Leadership - David Brooks MARCH 11, 2016 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/opi...
p. 244. America's failure stemmed ultimately not from what Americans did or did not do in Iraq but from who and what the Iraqis were.
p. 246. Indeed, for the purposes of adapting to the pressures and opportunities of the modern era - the region's persistent unmet challenges - the Arabs of the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Persian gulf, and the Arabian peninsula might have been better served by a longer and more intrusive European presence.
p. 252. The Arabs experienced the establishment of Israel as a particular humiliation, because it was the work not of the Western Christian world, which had surpassed them i power and wealth for the better part o two centuries, but rather of a people whom the had always knows as a weak and despised minority.
p. 260. In any event, the Israelis almost always did offer the concession that the United States believed were necessary to achieve peace; the Arab side invariably deemed them insufficient. . . . . Unlike the other countries of the Middle East, and to a greater extent than most countries around the world, Israelis shared American values.
p. 265. Arafat led the Palestinian cause, which he came to embody in the eyes of the world, from one disaster to another.
p. 268. The new Israeli government had even urged them to stay; Arab leaders had told them to leave, promising that they would return after the anticipated destruction of the new state.
p. 275. Arafat claimed to be powerless to stop this violence but evidence came to light that he himself had planned and instigated it. He certainly did nothing to discourage it, . . . .
p. 279. . . . . to what was, after all, the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Palestinian political culture.
p. 287. Democracy, the president came to believe, provided the surest antidote to terrorism.
p. 305. At first, the conflict pitted poor Syrians living in rural areas or forced off the land and into cities - both groups harmed by a serious drought - against a government indifferent to their plight.
p. 312 - 313. . . . . the French Revolution of 1789. Before then monarch had come and gone in Europe but the institution of monarchy had remained. The Revolution transformed France's form of government: it overthrew not only the king, Louis XVI, the the centuries old system of kingship
This is one of the major indications that the Middle Ages ended gradually between 1750 and 1850. The suggestion that the Middle Ages ended around 1500 is a Renaissance maggot that does not bear critical examination.
April 23, 2019
It's rare for me to hand out a single star review, but Professor Mandelbaum, though an excellent historian in his own right, has compromised himself with this particular piece. Throughout the book he uses very one sided language, painting the U.S. and Israel as well meaning agents in a sea of violent degenerates all clawing for power. Of particular note is his treatment of the middle east. To his credit he rightfully calls into question the usefulness of the 'middle east' as a term, but then he proceeds to declare synonymous Wahhabi Saudi's and the KKK. In the same vein he paints an everyone vs. the Arab world, and declares more than once that Arabs are simply incapable of liberal democracy.
As for his handling of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he entirely avoids any details which would compromise the image of Israel as a peaceful nation victimized by the evil Arab.
On his notion of the rogue state; he leads us to believe its any nation who defies international norms, in reality his vision is any state which does not comply with American wishes.
On his handling of the 2008 economic crisis; he again avoids any detail concerning the extent of the crisis, why certain nations came out on top etc. Somehow he argues that China's maintenance of a surplus w/ the U.S. was an aggressive action...
Anyhow, the book starts strong, but with so many seemingly intentionally omissions, it's hard to trust any arguments Mandelbaum is making in this book.
As for his handling of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he entirely avoids any details which would compromise the image of Israel as a peaceful nation victimized by the evil Arab.
On his notion of the rogue state; he leads us to believe its any nation who defies international norms, in reality his vision is any state which does not comply with American wishes.
On his handling of the 2008 economic crisis; he again avoids any detail concerning the extent of the crisis, why certain nations came out on top etc. Somehow he argues that China's maintenance of a surplus w/ the U.S. was an aggressive action...
Anyhow, the book starts strong, but with so many seemingly intentionally omissions, it's hard to trust any arguments Mandelbaum is making in this book.
July 24, 2025
randomly grabbed this from the law library bc i ran out of nonfic books to read. it starts strong... ish? i guess? some points i didn't agree w/ but reading different perspectives is always interesting. it COMPLETELY lost me, however, at its discussion of the israeli-palestinian conflict, which not only read as horribly racist/xenophobic in amassing the palestinian population into one homogenous entity to blame for the entire conflict, but also omitted any/all evidence of israeli fault. especially after reading From Beirut to Jerusalem, it is startling how anything with this glaring bias was published. also did NOT like his writing, i literally found myself rewriting sentences in my head for clarity and conciseness. i should have DNFed this but i felt like i was too deep in so admittedly skimmed the last like 70 pages but if you guys read this you would have, too. so.
January 17, 2019
To start, the only reason I didn't give this book a 5 star rating is the fact that it was pretty much my first foray into this field. What I can say though is that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The author drew out the past 30 years of US foreign policy in such an intricate manner that it sucked me right in and I couldn't lay it down. I think he accomplished this without any overt bias one way or another and it clearly came across as neutral statement of facts.
I think my favorite aspect is how he states that the US is in it's third foreign policy era since 2014, its very interesting to regard it in this way. And it builds my excitement to bare witness to what will unfold in the next 30 years.
Anyone who may read this review, I would love to have some recommendations on what I can read next on this subject.
I think my favorite aspect is how he states that the US is in it's third foreign policy era since 2014, its very interesting to regard it in this way. And it builds my excitement to bare witness to what will unfold in the next 30 years.
Anyone who may read this review, I would love to have some recommendations on what I can read next on this subject.
Read
July 10, 2022This was a fair and balanced look at American Foreign policy since the end of the cold war. The author analyzes the administrations and how they handled each crisis situation that arise. It was a very interesting read.
January 28, 2025
3.5 stars
February 8, 2017
A really interesting book. Quite long, but oddly captivating. Describes US foreign policy post Cold War, where interventions were not really to preserve the security of the US but because they could (Haiti, Kosovo etc). Bad decisions like expanding NATO and gratuitous Middle East interventions (Iraq) led to a raft of problems and antagonists. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and the consequences of actions can last for generations. Fascinating, and many events that I paid only partial attention to on the news over recent decades finally make sense.
December 29, 2016
Mandelbaum presents an interesting argument here, and an informative overview of the history of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the Clinton administration and ending with that of Barack Obama. Ultimately, his argument fails to persuade, however, as Washington was no stranger to foreign interventions prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Still, worth reading and a valuable contribution to the debate over American foreign policy in the 90's and 2000's.
May 25, 2016
A fair reading of the facts of US foreign policy going back to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. No administration from Clinton to Obama is without failure in the author's view, so it is a very fair evaluation. The insights demonstrate the importance of experts running US foreign policy!
January 17, 2017
I'll be honest, I tend to give one star to anything I cannot finish. This was a tad too dry even for my standards and seemed be trying to hard to be something more. I get the sense this could have been a much shorter book with a more stable thesis and he got carried away.
May 5, 2016
A must read!
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