Unintended Consequences: The United States at War

by Kenneth J. Hagan, Ian J. Bickerton

“The United States does not do nation building,” claimed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld three years ago. Yet what are we to make of the American military bases in Korea? Why do American warships patrol the Somali coastline? And perhaps most significantly, why are fourteen “enduring bases” being built in Iraq? In every major foreign war fought by United States in the last century, the repercussions of the American presence have been felt long after the last Marine has left. Kenneth J. Hagan and Ian J. Bickerton argue here that, despite adamant protests from the military and government alike, nation building and occupation are indeed hallmarks—and unintended consequences—of American warmaking. In this timely, groundbreaking study, the authors examine ten major wars fought by the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the ongoing Iraq War, and analyze the conflicts’ unintended consequences. These unexpected outcomes, Unintended Consequences persuasively demonstrates, stemmed from ill-informed decisions made at critical junctures and the surprisingly similar crises that emerged at the end of formal fighting. As a result, war did not end with treaties or withdrawn troops. Instead, time after time, the United States became inextricably involved in the issues of the defeated country, committing itself to the chaotic aftermath that often completely subverted the intended purposes of war. Stunningly, Unintended Consequences contends that the vast majority of wars launched by the United States were unnecessary, avoidable, and catastrophically unpredictable. In a stark challenge to accepted scholarship, the authors show that the wars’ unintended consequences far outweighed the initial calculated goals, and thus forced cataclysmic shifts in American domestic and foreign policy. A must-read for anyone concerned with the past, present, or future of American defense, Unintended Consequences offers a provocative perspective on the current predicament in Iraq and the conflicts sure to loom ahead of us.

Genres: War, Politics, History

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 2007

About the author

Kenneth James Hagan is an American naval historian and retired faculty member of the United States Naval Academy and of the Naval War College's distance education faculty located at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Reviews

[Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The theme of this book, written by a pair of military historians, is that the wars fought by the US throughout its history have had consequences far different -- and much worse -- than those intended.

A few examples:
* The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 was intended as a land-grab from Mexico, but ended up upsetting the delicate balance of slave-holding and free states and triggered the Civil War a few years later.

* The entrance of the US into the First World War was intended to bring about victory in "the war to end all wars", but instead prevented a stalemate that might have led to a negotiated peace and led to the victory of the Western Allies. The dictated, lopsided peace that the Allies then imposed as part of the Treaty of Versailles (and related treaties signed in 1919) brought about the downfall of the Kaiser's Germany but set the stage for the rise of the Nazi government and the catastrophe of World War II.

* And the latest example is the War in Iraq, supposedly intended to disarm a rogue state armed with "Weapons of Mass Destruction", which turned out not to exist. Then, the objective became pursuing the "war on terror", which turned out to be a hard sell given the lack of any concrete links between Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents and given the rapid rise of terror tactics in a country which previously had been a ramshackle but tightly-run dictatorship. Rapidly coming up with yet another new rationale for the war (which had turned from a conventional war into an occupation of a hostile populace), the US Administration proclaimed that its purpose was to build democracy in the region. So far, not much luck with that objective either, as US occupation troops continue to be the real authority in the country, keeping Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis from one anothers throats.

I started this book with a strong pacifist bias but also a belief that at least SOME wars could be justified as the lesser of two evils. By the end of the book, I was left with a stronger sense that virtually no war can be justified. In the long history of the US and its 100 wars, more or less, it is perhaps only World War II that stands out as a war worth fighting. And even that war led to many evil unintended consequences, such as the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe for 45 years and the the endless 3rd World proxy wars of the Cold War superpowers.

And the moral of the tale is: if a US president says we must go to war to achieve such and such an objective, he or she is almost certainly wrong. Peaceful methods are (almost) always likely to lead to better and less bloody results.

[P · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short and effective telling of the history of American foreign adventures is a useful complement to Max Boot's "The Savage Wars of Peace."