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Squandered Victory

Squandered Victory
Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429900261

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America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq-a sobering and critical assessment of America's effort to implant democracy In the fall of 2003, Stanford professor Larry Diamond received a call from Condoleezza Rice, asking if he would spend several months in Baghdad as an adviser to the American occupation authorities. Diamond had not been a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he felt that the task of building a viable democracy was a worthy goal now that Saddam Hussein's regime had been overthrown. He also thought he could do some good by putting his academic expertise to work in the real world. So in January 2004 he went to Iraq, and the next three months proved to be more of an education than he bargained for. Diamond found himself part of one of the most audacious undertakings of our time. In Squandered Victory he shows how the American effort to establish democracy in Iraq was hampered not only by insurgents and terrorists but also by a long chain of miscalculations, missed opportunities, and acts of ideological blindness that helped assure that the transition to independence would be neither peaceful nor entirely democratic. He brings us inside the Green Zone, into a world where ideals were often trumped by power politics and where U.S. officials routinely issued edicts that later had to be squared (at great cost) with Iraqi realities. His provocative and vivid account makes clear that Iraq-and by extension, the United States-will spend many years climbing its way out of the hole that was dug during the fourteen months of the American occupation.


The Age of Illusions

The Age of Illusions
Author: Andrew Bacevich
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250175097

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A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable. In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom. In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.


Losing Iraq

Losing Iraq
Author: David L. Phillips
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009-04-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786736208

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According to conventional wisdom, Iraq has suffered because the Bush administration had no plan for reconstruction. That's not the case; the State Department's Future of Iraq group planned out the situation carefully and extensively, and Middle East expert David Phillips was part of this group. White House ideologues and imprudent Pentagon officials decided simply to ignore those plans. The administration only listened to what it wanted to hear. Losing Iraq doesn't't just criticize the policies of unilateralism, preemption, and possible deception that launched the war; it documents the process of returning sovereignty to an occupied Iraq. Unique, as well, are Phillips's personal accounts of dissension within the administration. The problems encountered in Iraq are troubling not only in themselves but also because they bode ill for other nation-building efforts in which the U.S. may become mired through this administration's doctrine of unilateral, preemptive war. Losing Iraq looks into the future of America's foreign policy with a clear-eyed critique of the problems that loom ahead.


Squandered Opportunity

Squandered Opportunity
Author: Thomas Juneau
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-05-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804795088

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The Islamic Republic of Iran faced a favorable strategic environment following the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Its leadership attempted to exploit this window of opportunity by assertively seeking to expand Iran's interests throughout the Middle East. It fell far short, however, of fulfilling its long-standing ambition of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and a leading regional power in the broader Middle East. In Squandered Opportunity, Thomas Juneau develops a variant of neoclassical realism, a theory of foreign policy mistakes, to explore the causes and consequences of Iran's sub-optimal performance. He argues that while rising power drove Iranian assertiveness—as most variants of realism would predict—the peculiar nature of Iran's power and the intervention of specific domestic factors caused Iran's foreign policy to deviate, sometimes significantly, from what would be considered the potential optimal outcomes. Juneau explains that this sub-optimal foreign policy led to important and negative consequences for the country. Despite some gains, Iran failed to maximize its power, its security and its influence in three crucial areas: the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iraq; and the nuclear program. Juneau also predicts that, as the window of opportunity steadily closes for Iran, its power, security, and influence will likely continue to decline in coming years.


Squandered Victory

Squandered Victory
Author: James H. Hallas
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1995-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN:

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This is the first book ever devoted entirely to the St. Mihiel operation and its ramifications. It details Pershing's struggle to form an independent American army in France and the importance of the St. Mihiel operation from both political and military perspectives. It links historical events and details in a way that has never been done on this subject, pulling from a variety of sources to depict motivations, events, and political and military thought. It supports the conclusion—debated by historians and military men for over 75 years—that Pershing might have been able to end the war in September 1918, if not held back by the machinations of the Allies.


Tarnished Victory

Tarnished Victory
Author: William Marvel
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0547428065

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A critical look at the the fourth year of Lincoln's administration and the conclusion of the author's four-volume re-examination of the Civil War.


Hill of Squandered Valour

Hill of Squandered Valour
Author: Ron Lock
Publisher: Casemate
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 161200007X

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The Battle of Spion Kop was fought during the campaign to relieve Ladysmith, South Africa, after the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State had gotten a jump on the British Empire and besieged a British army in the town. It was the single bloodiest episode in the campaign, as well as a harbinger of the bitter and desperate fighting still to come in the Second Boer War. Spion Kop, just northeast of Ladysmith, was the largest hill in the region, being over 1,400 feet high, and it lay almost exactly at the center of the Boer line. If the British could capture this position and bring artillery to the hill they would then command the flanks of the surrounding Boer positions. On the night of 23 January 1900, a large British force under Major General Edward Woodgate was dispatched to secure the height, with Lt. Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft selected to lead the initial assault. However, the Boers refused to give up the position and a bitter two days of fighting ensued. In the initial darkness the British mistakenly entrenched at the center of the hill instead of the crest, and suffered horribly from Boer marksmen clinging to the periphery. Suffering badly themselves, the Boers were finally inclined to admit defeat when they discovered that the British had retreated, leaving behind their many dead. Yet, in light of the devastation wrought on both sides, the British were finally able to rally and relieve Ladysmith four weeks later. Ron Lock, esteemed author of many Zulu warfare histories, brings to life this bitter and previously overlooked campaign in vivid and complete detail, with supporting sources including then-journalist Winston ChurchillÕs battle report, as well as many previously unpublished illustrations and 6 newly commissioned maps. His account will be valuable to both historians and strategists wanting to better understand this difficult and devastating conflict.


Political Victory

Political Victory
Author: Brian Crozier
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 254
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781412831277

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Success in war has always been difficult to measure. What is judged successful by military leaders may not be judged so by political leadership, nor by the wider public, at least in a Western-style democracy. The public is generally inclined to applaud military victory, but it instinctively reserves the right to ask afterwards: Was it really worth it? In Political Victory, Brian Crozier looks at modern wars involving democracies to evaluate victory and defeat by the success or failure of political outcomes. Crozier begins with the two world wars, where in both cases the German aggressor was defeated by three key democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. In World War I military victory was squandered by treaty terms that led to the advent of Hitler and Nazism. By contrast, the total defeat of Nazism in 1945 left the Western Allies in charge of some two-thirds of Germany's population, thus enabling the victors to convert the vanquished to democracy. Crozier also deals with the break up of empires following World War II, comparing how Britain avoided full-scale war in contrast with France's violent confrontations in Southeast Asia and Algeria. America's involvement in Vietnam is analyzed in the wider context of the Cold War and the mounting challenge of international communism to Western democracies. His assessment stresses the lack of popularity in America for the idea of democratizing a region to which the U.S. has no historical or sentimental attachment. Among the smaller conflicts considered in this volume are the Suez crisis of 1956, the Falkland Island war between Britain and Argentina, and the fateful Soviet involvement in Afghanistan that helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet system. Crozier concludes with analyses of the 1991 Gulf War and the Western intervention in the former Yugoslavia. Crozier's final chapters focus on looming threats around the world with particular emphasis on international terrorism and the challenge of radical Islam. Both historical and timely, Political Victory will be of interest to military historians, political scientists, and foreign affairs specialists. Brian Crozier is a journalist and historian. He is the author of more than twenty books including The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, The Gorbachev Phenomenon, Socialism: Dream and Reality, DeGaulle, and Franco.


Lost Victory

Lost Victory
Author: William Egan Colby
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary
Total Pages: 470
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN:

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"For sixteen years, from the time he was assigned Chief of Station for the CIA in Saigon to his appointment as CIA Director, William Colby was deeply involved in America's role in Vietnam. During five presidential administrations -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford -- Colby moved from meetings in the Oval Office to the sweltering jungles of Vietnam as the war escalated from Vietcong guerilla terrorism to a massive U.S. military engagement. Lost Victory is his personal account of those years, an insider's view of America's first major military defeat told from a vantage point matched by few other officials."--Book cover, p. [4].


Ill Winds

Ill Winds
Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0525560645

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*Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award* From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."