OUTMANEUVERED

Revealing the naïveté and tragedy of American attempts at nation building.

A searing indictment of overweening arrogance, strategic ineptitude, and criminally wishful thinking, Warren’s latest book is a persuasive account, equal parts maddening and heartbreaking, of misguided actions across 60 years of U.S. administrations in the theater of irregular war, the repercussions of which will be felt for years to come. A historian and foreign policy analyst, Warren is a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University. From Vietnam to Afghanistan and beyond, he argues that Washington’s foreign policy, intelligence, and military decision-makers have too often misunderstood the nature of the wars the nation was fighting, the cultures in which the conflicts were taking place, and the resolve of our adversaries. He also details how these leaders have dismissed far more astute voices within government and the military advising against precipitate action. In the process, Warren says, they have ignored the reality that irregular wars, as opposed to conventional warfare, are chiefly political struggles with a military component, not the reverse, and that poorly conceived involvement often serves to have the opposite effect intended, as in the deeply flawed crusade of the War on Terror. Warren is quick to note that his book is a history, not a battery of policy recommendations, and that the contents are largely a work of synthesis, drawing on the work of many scholars, historians, journalists, and military officers. But his contribution is considerable.

A long-overdue call for American restraint and humility in international affairs.