Product Description

Most people think that wars end when hostilities cease and armistices and treaties are signed, but this is not the case. Wars the United States has fought may have ended formally, but in reality us military, political, and economic involvement in the 'defeated' country continued long afterwards, producing profound and unexpected consequences for both parties. Despite this repeated historical phenomenon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed at the beginning of the current Iraq War, 'The United States does not do nation building'. The authors of this book claim that, on the contrary, after most of the wars it has fought, occupation and nation building are precisely what the United States has done. In "Unintended Consequences: The United States at War", Ian J. Bickerton and Kenneth J. Hagan describe and analyse the unintended consequences of ten major wars fought by the United States, pointing out critical turning points in the conflicts and the remarkable similarity of dilemmas following the conclusion of hostilities. The effect is to demonstrate that the unintended consequences of the wars not only outweighed the intended consequences in shaping subsequent events, they produced sharp and significant shifts in United States foreign, military and domestic policy. Most wars embarked upon by the United States when measured against this criterion were not only catastrophic and destructive they were avoidable, unnecessary and unpredictable in outcome. Once they understand this reality, Americans concerned with contemporary foreign and military policy can approach Iraq, and any prospective conflict, with greater sophistication. More importantly, policymakers thinking of undertaking wars in the future may be made more cautious and circumspect in their planning than were those who launched the war in Iraq. It will also prove to be an invaluable corrective to the traditional views of American wars to which we are routinely exposed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #524843 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"This is an imaginative, wonderfully written but sober satire on the conceits of an age whose leaders still suppose that war is the way to power over others. Unintended Consequences identifies with the tradition of great scholarship that stretches from Adam Ferguson to Hannah Arendt, in order to show how and why the greatest military power in human history does not know why it does what it does. Bickerton and Hagan brilliantly show that American military actions have typically had effects quite different from what their leaders have said, or imagined. And so Unintended Consequences cleverly helps us grasp why the present Bush administration is sleepwalking its way through problems of its own making-and why, disturbingly, it seems to want nothing more than to bequeath a global crisis to the next administration."-John Keane, professor of politics and director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London

Robert J. McMahon, Ralph D. Mershon Professor of History, Ohio State University
'This provocative, intelligent, gem of a book could not be more
timely . . . Highly recommended.'

About the Author
Kenneth J. Hagan is Adjunct Professor of Strategy at the United States Naval War College, and Professor of History Emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. He is the author of This People's Navy (1991) and co-author of American Foreign Relations: A History (2005).

Ian J. Bickerton is Visiting Research Fellow and former Associate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and author / co-author of numerous books, including A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2007).