While America Sleeps

by Donald Kagan, Frederick W. Kagan

In While England Slept Winston Churchill revealed in 1938 how the inadequacy of Britain's military forces to cope with worldwide responsibilities in a peaceful but tense era crippled its ability to deter or even adequately prepare for World War II.

In While America Sleeps , historians Donald and Frederick W. Kagan retrace Britain's international and defense policies during the years after World War I leading up to World War II, showing how self-delusion and an unwillingness to face the inescapable responsibilities on which their security and the peace of the world depended cost the British dearly. The Kagans then turn their attention to America and argue that our nation finds itself in a position similar to that of Britain in the 1920s. For all its emergency interventions the U.S. has not yet accepted its unique responsibility to take the lead in preserving the peace. Years of military cutbacks―the "peace dividend" following the buildup and triumph over Communism of the Reagan years―have weakened our armed forces and left us with too few armed forces to cover too many possible threats. This has caused us to bank everything on high tech "smart" weapons―some of which have not yet been invented and others that we are not acquiring or deploying―as opposed to the long-term commitment of money, fighting men and women, and planning that the deterrence of a major war would require. This failure to shape a policy and to commit the resources needed to maintain peace has cost valuable time in shaping a peaceful world and has placed America's long-term security in danger.

The policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations have left us in a position where we cannot avoid war and keep the peace in areas vital to our security. Neither have the post-Cold War policies sent clear signals to would-be aggressors that the U.S. can and will resist them. Tensions in the Middle East, instability in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, the development of nuclear weapons and missile by North Korea, and the menacing threats and actions of China, with its immense population, resentful sense of grievance and years of military buildup, all hint that the current peaceful era will not last forever. Can we make it last as long as possible? Are we prepared to face its collapse?

While America Sleeps is a sobering work of history that poses a thoughtful challenge to policy-makers.

Genres: Politics, American, History

483 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Donald Kagan (May 1, 1932 – August 6, 2021) was a Lithuanian-born American historian and classicist at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. Kagan was considered among the foremost American scholars of Greek history and is notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War.

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoughtful and well-researched but ultimately overcooked comparison of the U.S. geopolitical position in the 1990's to that of Britain in the 1920's. In a nice conceptual twist that shapes the whole book, Kagan argues that the United States in the 90's is much more like Britain in the 1920's. The big geopolitical threat hasn't manifested itself, but the United States has a lot of work to do to maintain and enhance the international order and keep up its own power . He condemns Britain for not doing this in the 1920's: for failing to keep up their own military power and challenge the challengers of the newborn League of Nations and its founding principles. Britain found itself overstretched and unwilling to confront Mussolini at Corfu and elsewhere, Ataturk in his fighting with the Greeks, and German violations of the Treaty of Versailles. Rearming in the 1930's was way too late as the League had become a shell and the biggest threats were already emerging. The lesson Kagan draws for the US is to keep defense spending high and squash challengers to the international order in the bud, deterring other baddies while saving lives. I learned a lot in this section, and I think the comparison of the 20's to the 90's is very interesting.

This book might have actually worked better as a Foreign Affairs article. Kagan narrates the major crises and challenges of the 1990's in great detail, but this is probably unnecessary given his likely audience. I can see why this book didn't take off: well-versed FP readers saw the main point pretty quickly and didn't want to read 500 more pages, while less-versed FP readers were put off the book's intimidating size in the first place and thus missed the big idea. Ok that's a pretty redundant point, but I would had the same reaction to this book had I read it as a 25 pager. Moreover, the book suffers from many of the weaknesses of neoconservative thinking. The one that always strikes me is that there really is no country or problem too small to go to war for, and go to war in a big way. That's his answer to every foreign policy challenge he studies, because in the panicked neoconservative mind the next Hitler or 9/11 is always around the corner. Kagan also denigrates diplomacy at every turn and treats every compromise, even for total faits accompli, as a sellout that will merely egg the aggressor on. He's generally right, however, that someone needs to maintain the rules and norms of the international system and that GB largely failed to do this in the critical decade before the German threat had metastasized into Hitler. However, I think Clinton and Bush Sr. largely did this, and they did it multilaterally and without getting the US stuck . Bush II, however, was a different story.