Customer Reviews

Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Another eye opening book from Angelo Codevilla. His views on foreign policy are likely to be so different from what you normally hear on the Sunday morning shows that reading this book is a breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately, I can only give this book 4 stars because Professor Codevilla fails in his discussion of the "Surge" in Iraq. He essentially characterizes it as a continuation of the unrealistic occupation he has criticized since 2003. However, the Surge is actually a great example of exactly the sort of realism Codevilla advocates (as opposed to the sterile Scowcroftian variety). Al Qaeda in Iraq represented the Islamist movement in the Arab world, a force Codevilla has elsewhere recognized as a real response by the Islamic world to their corrupt secular regimes. As the mosque represents the only surviving element of civil society, and the Islamic world takes its religion seriously, the Islamist movement is readily comprehensible as a political force.

In Iraq, rather than wishing things were other than they were, we allied ourselves with the enemies of our enemies, who were more than willing to work with us to kill them. Unlike Codevilla's pretended epistemological uncertainty, in the real world, the ex-Baatthist and tribal levies in the Sons of Iraq (while perhaps not who we would want serving on our local school board) were clearly the enemies of our enemies, and more than willing to kill them. Our enemy, Al Qaeda in Iraq, by word and deed had made clear that they would fight to the death and commit any outrage to gain control of Iraq. Their atrocities had the effect of causing many in the Islamist movement to reconsider their approach. About this, everyone on the ground, Iraqi and American, was in agreement. At a certain point, you can't continue to discount the eyewitnesses.

Leaving aside the question of to what extent Saddam's regime had encouraged the Islamists to make war against America, by the time of the Surge, Saddam was long dead, and the Sons of Iraq were no more willing to fight for his cause than the Germans were for Hitler in 1948. The Islamists were our real enemies because, by the time of the Surge, they and only they had committed themselves by word and deed to the destruction of the West in general and America in particular. Who can argue with this? It is one thing to say the Islamist movement was infected and directed by the Arab and Pakistani intelligence services - it is another to suggest that the movement is without independent existence.

Similarly, his discussion of the Sadrists and Mahdi Army is inadequate, because these forces are clearly Iranian proxies. The Islamic Republic is the child of the Islamist movement, although Shia rather than Sunni, and successfully in control of the Iranian nation state. While the unwillingness to accept that we were at war with Iran can and should be criticized, what is the point of criticizing an alliance with those in Iraq who wanted to fight them? Similarly, Codevilla would agree that, if we are afraid Iraqi Shiites will fall under the control of Iran, this suggests that Iran is our real enemy and that we make war against them as well (which he advocates elsewhere in his book). Similarly, Al Qaeda in Iraq were also quite clearly funded by, and proxies for, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates, who were using them to achieve their own objective of advancing Wahabist Islam in an effort to stabilize their own regimes and to keep jihadists from attacking Saudi princes. Like Laurent Murawiec, we can call on America to be realistic about friends and enemies in Saudi Arabia.

This realism about friends and enemies is precisely what Codevilla has called for in numerous other places in his work. That he discounts it in actual practice in Iraq unfortunately appears to be the Washington game of "not invented here": since Codevilla did not call for a significant change of counterinsurgency tactics, believing any such change futile and counterproductive, when it worked, he was unable to admit his own error. I think part of this has to do with his unfortunate tendency to read mainstream media sources like the NY Time uncritically, as if this were still a time when journalists could be trusted to report the news in the news sections of the paper, regardless of what was opined in the op-ed pages. Actually speaking to U.S. soldiers on the ground revealed a very different story.

I will not even pretend to be a military or diplomatic professional; after all, the book was not really only for [future] war presidents, or Professor Codevilla would have only sold a few to some egocentric wannabes. I am in the well-read amateur/highly interested citizen category, to which i think the book is pitched.

Usually, I think the best way to write a book review is to find the author's premise, and then assess whether s/he accomplished what s/he set out to do. On p. xii we read "Losing wars while winning battles is hard and rare. Yet American presidents and their advisers have managed to do just that for nearly a century. This requires explanation. This book is about dissecting ruinous counsel about war and peace. In the course of clearing rubbish, I hope to uncover sound principles and distill them into advice for future war presidents." On that scale, I would assert that the author completely succeeded in "dissecting" and "clearing," and uncovers and distills principles only slightly less successfully, probably because the future is so, well, unpredictable.

Note that Codevilla generally wrote about US foreign policy sorrows and joys for about the past century. Woodrow Wilson is one of his main bogeymen, and for good reason, getting us into all sorts of trouble for his quixotic quests, which were really being led by his wife and advisers at the end of his regime. But I wish Codevilla had more firmly pinned the tail on the elephant, William McKinley, for it was during his regime that the United States made a sharp U-turn from the wise, prudent 'no entanglements' uber-policy of Washington and successors. McKinley rushed us into the too-easy Spanish American War, largely because the Catholics in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines needed to be Christianized/Protestantized, and we have been building ships, bases and a quasi-empire ever since.

I thoroughly agree with him that a truly realistic, as opposed to a materialist/realist foreign policy, would have a much more profound, sympathetic appreciation for the place of religion in international dynamics. Exactly because western Europe and the two coasts of the US have become largely secularized, means that we have a huge blind spot, a tin ear, in that regard, and have to study extra hard to comprehend the 3/4 of the world that is religious.

Underlying the Professor's 'advice' is a Machiavellian and Hobbsian philosophical foundation, unpleasant in interpersonal relations, but world politics ain't beanbag.

I enjoyed Codevilla's terse and sometimes pungent prose, and highly recommend this book.

If they would read it, I'd be delighted to buy copies of this book for President Obama, Secretary Clinton and all the GOP Contenders. It's a must read for officials and everyone interested in foreign policy. Dr. Codevilla eviscerates everyone: Bush and the "Neo-cons," the CIA, Kissinger and the "Realists," and every progressive from Wilson on. There is something here to offend every viewpoint. There were things that made me uncomfortable and that I disagree with, but I'm willing to concede that the author has both more experience and has thought more deeply that I have about the subject. This is a book that will challenge your viewpoints and make you defend them. It may, and should, change your views of both war and statecraft. I highly recommend this book.

Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
(All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans)

I was first introduced to Angelo Codevilla through his American Spectator article, America's Ruling Class. I wanted to know more about the man, so I checked with my library and found a copy of his book, Advice to War Presidents. In this fascinating book, the author points out that since the Wilson administration just about every U.S. President has had to lead the country during a time of war. According to Mr. Codevilla, the U.S. diplomats were partially responsible for the war, and they inevitably botched it - losing the peace that the military leaders had won. In this book, the author examines the history of America statecraft in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and then he goes on to show what correct statecraft should look like.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book. It's more than a little bit frightening to learn just how out of touch with reality our diplomats and other leaders are, and how their failures have made our position in the world worse and worse over the years. This is a very interesting book, and I hope that American leaders present and future read it...for all our sakes!

Professor Codevilla delivers a tour de force. Citing from Thucydides, Machiavelli, Washington, John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt and others, he makes compelling case after case of the ineptitude of American Foreign engagements since the wayward fantasies of Woodrow Wilson began to corrupt this country's entanglements. Codevilla presents a deeply reasoned portrait of the exceptional nature of The United States of America, what makes it unique in contrast to other nations both present and historical, and why that should form the foundation of policy, both peaceful and otherwise.

Put simply, Wars are for winning, and serve to secure your land's and its peoples' peace. A brief mention of Sherman's March to the Sea during the latter stages of the American Civil War serves as a strong example of its purpose of hurrying the end of that awful conflict, and that the campaign's efforts and aims were exactly envisioned by its general. Sherman sought to end the slaughter by convincing every Southerner of its price. The result was a sure peace that united this country in the 145 years since.

The peace with Japan over the last six and a half decades? Ensured by the convincing defeat of its military regime. Half measures in Iraq, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, etc. serve to propel uncertain footings and even more devastatingly, "contempt." Contempt is earned by the powerful through misuse of its arsenals and unrealized, empty threats. Lastly, Americans need to abandon the notion of its unlimited power to change national, ethnic, tribal, religious, etc. jealousies. The world's peoples come to America to escape these jealousies' inevitably harsh effect on life, Americans cannot deliver its unique freedom to the world. Sad but true.

In essence, America should be much more reluctant to get into any entanglement, and if in so doing, do it seriously with the unflinching aim of winning, and without the notion of Colin Powell's "If you break it you own it." As that is surefire Wilsonian folly. Wars mean that you expect and will remove one regime and another will replace it. Your peace (a priori) needs to focus on what the successor regime will guarantee as their rise to power surely depends on your defeat of their predecessor. Understand the world through its history, know that few if any ever willingly lessen their position or thwart their own self-interest. Wilson was misguided by his own highly selfish and fantastical desires. American statesmen should stop following his precedence.

An incredible read from a brilliant mind and author.

It is sad to say that in the past century, the majority of the time America has been at war with something. "Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft" is a discussion of the presidency and war, and how the majority of the modern presidents have presided over a war of some sort. Using Woodrow Wilson and World War I as starting points, author Angelo M. Codevilla goes through history drawing the lines and discussing the success and follies of the country. "Advice to War Presidents" is educational, interesting, and highly recommended.

This book is a so-so book. While some of the advice given is useful some in fact seems incapable of being implemented(you go to war with the country you have, just as you go to war with the tools you have). At least one piece of advice was contradictory: why would overthrowing Saddam be more advisable in 1991 then in 2003? We would still have had to decide what to do with the country once Saddam was driven out either way. More to the point the author is of the annoying type of author that has so much value of his own opinions and so little respect for those of others that by his account one should wonder why we don't skip electing him President and just make him Emperor. While this is irritating, more to the point is that the author has an exaggerated opinion of the ability of foreigners as opposed to ourselves. Even though, from what I have read of history, foreign statesmen can often be as phenomenally stupid as our own. In any case the authors style is more of a danger then it seems as it can convince the reader to agree without justification.
An opinion of my own I will interject is that one disadvantage America does have is that the selection process for Chief Executive tends to make sure that the Chief Executive is usually a non-professional. Having the chief be from outside the system has advantages, notably he won't come pre-immersed in the organizational memes that always haunt any government. However he equally will not be able to tell good advice from bad if he has not had experience beforehand. There is no clear way to solve that problem for it would require changes in the Constitution that may not be worth it and would anyway be impossible to achieve. You go to war with the country you have.
This book may have some contributions. But there is chaff with the wheat.