Customer Reviews

War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals

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I had a professor who defined journalism as "history written in a hurry." In his sequel to The Best And The Brightest author David Halberstam uses the journalist's tools - personal interviews and background research - to explore how the shadow of Vietnam and the Cold War shaped the United States' foreign policy during the 1990s.

What emerges, is a thoughtful, portrait of the United States from the perspective of its foreign policy decisions. It is a book written for thoughtful citizens; a book that, clearly, was not written in a hurry; a book that unearths the struggles, egos and the political maneuvering among the key figures in The White House, the State Department and the military. Halberstam shows how the decisions of Vietnam War Veterans, like Colin Powell and Anthony Lake, and those who were not, like President William Clinton, influenced American politics and policy.

Lesser-known players who contributed to the picture were not overlooked. Halberstam notes that the irony of the Gulf War was the wrong branch of the service and the wrong military leaders were celebrated at its conclusion. Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell received ovations for their humiliation of an allegedly mighty, but now bedraggled Iraqi Army.

If one man was responsible, he notes, it was an innovative air force strategist, Colonel John Warden. At the time of the Gulf War, Warden was the head of a top-secret air force group working within The Pentagon and represented a group of younger military officers who were eager to adapt military thinking and planning to the uses of the new technological advanced weaponry.

The major opposition to his thinking came not from the army or even civilians, but rather senior officers in his service branch, especially three and four star generals attached to the Tactical Air Command. They believed the airpower was there to support the army on the ground. They despised Warden and his ideas. As luck would have it, when General Schwarzkopf requested an air plan for Desert Storm, Warden's senior officer was on leave and the request found its way to his desk.

Roy Gutman, an American reporter who happened to be in Yugoslavia in 1991 and was starting to write what would be a series of prophetic dispatches for Newsday, the Long Island, New York daily, is another unknown player. Stationed in Belgrade from 1973 to 1975 as a Reuter's correspondent, he had embraced what he termed as "the golden age of Tito", a Serbo-centrism that tempered the vision of many western diplomats and journalists.

On his return in 1991 he saw signs that Yugoslavia was becoming a different country. An interview with Vojislav Seselj, an ultra nationalist Serb who had once been jailed by Tito for his ethnic views and was known for his personal cruelty, convinced the journalist that something sinister was about to happen with its likely epicenter as Banja Luka, a city in Northern Bosnia, which time which prove to be the home of the Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Halberstam's search for the real story behind the headlines gives the reader clear insights into why events in the Balkans, Haiti and Somalia reflect American foreign policy and politics. He discusses the wariness of the U. S. military to ever be caught again in a ground war lacing clear objectives, the frustrations of political leaders who never served in the military and their effects on American commanders in Kosovo.

On the last page of the book, the author allows himself a glimpse into our future, which in light of the events of September 11, 2001 proves tragically prescient. Writing in May, 2001, Halberstam, allows himself to speculate about the need for a missile shield, what he terms "a high-tech Maginot Line, the wrong idea at the wrong time." He notes that intelligence analysts believe "the threat to an open society like America c[o]mes from terrorists, rather than the military power of rogue states" which themselves present an exceptional target.

The author has carved a unique niche for himself. His books are the product of four to five years of research, a luxury few, if any other journalists are indulged. The emerging portrait of the United States is vivid and full of human detail.

This was a tough read because of the authors too frequent clauses within nearly every sentence. Also, there are many names to remember, and the publisher could have provided a map of the region in question. Otherwise, I would have given this book a full 5 star rating.

That aside, this was an exceptionally good book on the recent Balkan war that was fought by NATO. The Balkan war is notable in military history for being the first war waged and won strictly through the use of air power. It is also considered Pres. Clintons greatest foreign policy success.

As military history, the book is a worthwhile read. The author, however, ventures beyond the military aspects to tie in the political, historical, sociological, and psychological countenance of the individuals involved with the campaign. I found it of particular interest to read about the pettiness of the military structure as it related to the president, and its own field commander.

The author is not shy in offering his analysis of each major character, but he remained even-handed. He, for example, described the power of Gen. Powells personality, but who also used his position to prematurely close discussion on important international issues. He similarly discusses other major characters (especially Clinton, Gore, Gen. Clark and Bush I).

The author does not attempt to present the most encompassing story of the war, and he is generous in citing authors of very recent publications including the recent memoirs of NATO commander Clark. The serious student will be able to find greater detail of the Balkans, the diplomacy, and the Serbian genocide from these other authors.

What the author does provide, is incorporating his forty years of experience as a student, and commentator of domestic and international policies. He also ends the book ( I believe published prior to September 11th) with a comment about the governments pre-occupation with the missile defense system instead of understanding that terrorism is the more likely threat.

For anyone who believes that foreign policy, is as simplistic as a Tom Clancy novel would have you believe, then this is a much needed read. But be aware, that no one comes out looking too good in this very thoughtful story with long term implications for world peace and security.

For those of us who marveled at former journalist David Halberstam's masterful account of the ways in which the personal biographies and contemporary history fatefully intersected to produce the disastrous American incursion into Vietnam in 1970's "The Best And The Brightest", his recent (2001) tome "War In A Time Of Peace" is the long-awaited sequel and companion piece on the ways in which the ghost of our involvement in southeast Asia yet haunts America's role in foreign affairs in the late 20th century. As in the previous work, Halberstam's trademark insights into the ways in which personal ambitions and private agendas fuel and contort the political processes of which American foreign policy is a part make this book memorable and worthwhile. For example, his observation's on former Secretary of State Madeline Albright's arrogant attempt to nation-build in Somalia makes it easier to understand lapses in our policy there that led to the now-famous firefight chronicled so brilliantly in "Blackhawk Down", resulting in several dozen American causalities and hundreds if not thousands of dead and wounded Somalis.

His brilliance is in showing how these individual personalities interact, often clashing based on the existential circumstances they find themselves embroiled in. Thus does Army General Wes Clark find himself embroiled in a very difficult conundrum in the Balkans, facing both an intransigent enemy and an uncertain and indecisive command structure by way of both President Clinton and the Joint Chiefs. One marvels at the ways in which Halberstam entwines the details of the personal biographies of a play card of figures ranging from Clark to Colin Powell to Madeline Albright to Richard Holbrooke to Anthony Lake to James Baker to Dick Cheney with the cross-cutting issues and circumstances that eventually come to comprise contemporary history.

In so doing he brings history to life, making its study both more interesting and more relevant, showing how particular individuals and their own personal political, philosophical, and social baggage and predispositions animate the interactions at the government's highest levels. Sadly, it also chronicles how petty, venial, and subjective such decision-making can be, as in Albright's arrogantly misguided decision to try to force a motley collection of feudal Somali warlords into experimenting with democracy. What makes all of this even more interesting and more intriguing is how he then overlays the ways in which many of the chief players and architects of the American foreign policy decisions in the Balkans were affected by their roles in the war in Vietnam, whether it be as a calculating conscientious objector like Bill Clinton, a government official like Anthony Lake, or a then young Captain and Lt. Colonel by the name of Colin Powell.

In this fashion we come to see the lingering impact the war in Vietnam had in shaping and propelling the course of events in the 1990s. Indeed, the shattering affect the war had on both the Defense Department and the State Department and the kinds of men and women that came to administer and manage them can be seen in the quixotic unfolding of American foreign policy as it meandered aimlessly from position to position over the intervening decades without any seeming central focus or evident grand strategy. Thus, over the smoldering coals of the memories of the American defeat in Vietnam, the foreign policy of the American government circled cautiously around the perimeters of meaningful involvement, desperate to avoid any commitment that might draw it into another inconclusive and unpopular ground war, even when confronted with the sensational and melodramatic facts of another holocaust being systematically conducted by the Bosnian Serbs on the ground in the Balkans. This is a wonderful book, a book superbly researched, documented, and written, and it is certainly one I can highly recommend for students of contemporary history. Enjoy!

First, Dave Halberstam is a very talented storyteller. Even as non-fiction has a tendency to drone, Halberstam makes reading non-fiction fun, brings it to life. Previously, Halberstam was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for reporting the events as they transpired in Vietnam. He then went on to a national best-seller with "The Best and the Brightest," an expose of sorts on the men behind the Vietnam War along with an insightful analysis of their plans, schemes and decisions. "War in a Time of Peace" follows in the footsteps of these achievements.

In "War in a Time of Peace," Halberstam examines U.S. foreign policy in the post-cold war world. The book throws the reader into the Gulf War time frame and jumps into the incessant yet poignant problems facing the U.S. in a slew of third world countries. In only the way Halberstam can, he relates the story behind the media proclamations showing how events in the Balkans, Somalia, and Haiti reflect American politics and foreign policy.

An incredibly timely and piercing book, "War in a Time of Peace" features important and insightful thumbnail sketches of key political figures including Bill Clinton, George H. Bush, Dick Cheney and many others. Unlike other authors however, Halberstam leads us into the interaction between the powers, the brains behind the power and ostensibly, the true skinny behind the scenes.

A must read in my opinion.

In light of this past week this book is a must read. The author may be focussing on another time and area struggles, but I cannot help but feel that it all plays into what has just occurred. This book is a "page turner", well written and I come away believing that I have a much better understanding of the various elements that are influencing our life today.

David Halberstam has written another excellent book. Those who have read his earlier volumes such as "The Best and Brightest", "The Reckoning", and "The Fifties" will be at home with his extensive research and terrific insights. Those who don't like books that are extensively researched and exhaustively analyzed might prefer to read something else.

"War in a Time of Peace" is about the unpleasant subject of Bosnia and Kosovo. Halberstam reviews the personalities and the events. Two administrations dealt with these problems, that of George Bush Sr. and that of Bill Clinton. While both administrations had many capable people working for them, both made numerous mistakes in their handling of this problem.

Halberstam does a good job of educating those who don't know exactly what was going on in this part of the world and why. Many Americans still don't understand what really happened in the Balkans. This book is a great way for them to inform themselves.

Halberstam clearly believes that an initial show of force against Yugoslavian President Slobadan Milosevic could have stopped much of this tragedy. The failure to use force initially, despite widespread reports of genocide and killing, can best be explained as caution which resulted from the Vietnam experience. Often, military leaders were the most reluctant to support the use of force against Milosevic and the Serbs.

At times, Halberstam overestimates the importance of the Balkans to the United States. Its a tragedy when you look at what has happened to the people who live there. But, a grim reality is that the American people--living many thousands of miles away--could not be expected to have more than minimal interest in this feud which has gone for centuries. Part of our unwillingness to become involved stemmed from the Vietnam Experience. The other part of it stemmed from the relative lack of importance the Balkans has to our foreign policy or economy.

Be prepared for alot of background on the individual civilian and military leaders in place in both the Bush and Clinton Administrations. Its fascinating reading, but a little hard to keep one person straight from another at times.

This is a highly informative and well written book.

Halberstam, as ever, writes so well...I am jealous. However, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in this book. While it serves as a good overview of Clinton's foreign policy, it skimps on the first Bush Administration

First, the Persian Gulf War barely gets 20 pages, and it is almost all seen through the lens of the Air Force Colonel (John Warden) who planned the innovative air campaign. This is not really new or scandalous - Gordon and Traynor covered this in "The General's War" and you can find it in other sources. The only other mention you get is how tired Bush was from the Gulf War, and how it prevented him from tackling the Bosnia problem. Overall, Considering the subtitle is "Bush, Clinton and the Generals" Bush gets shorted.

Second, while the portraits of the personalities are vivid, there just isn't anything really new or insightful here. Indeed, there were many vignettes where I felt like I had read this somewhere before. Bob Woodward's "The Commanders" is still the definitive Gulf War decision-making work, Elizabeth Drew's "On the Edge" covers Clinton's decision making shortcomings, Ivo Daalder's "Getting to Dayton" covers Bosnia u1p to 1995; Daalder and O'Hanlon's "Winning Ugly" has everything about Kosovo.

As a student of international relations, my standards are a little higher. This book is useful to the extent it consolidates a lot of existing work, but it falls just a little short of being really deep or groundbreaking. Not even close to "Best and the Brightest."

When I picked this book up I was looking for an interesting, readable book to serve as a break from ploughing through heavy academic texts. It fit the bill nicely. It's a journalistic account of the people who made American foreign policy from Bush Senior to the rise of his son. The tag line; "Bush, Clinton and the Generals" may be a touch misleading. Bush bows out early in the book and then it's mostly Clinton. and THEN it's as much people like Dick Holbrooke as it is the generals. But don't necessarily be put off by that.

This is a journalistic account, largely sourced from interviews conducted by the author with the key players. One never quite knows how much stock to put in these books. Much depends on the objectivity of the author. I couldn't comment on Halberstam but it seemed pretty even to me.

I find it amusing to look through the other reviews and to see that some people seem to feel "It'd be better if Halberstam wasn't so biased against liberals" and that the next review down can say "It'd be better if Halberstam wasn't a Republican hating Clinton apologist!" Of course, neither of these characterisations is true and reading it from an outsider's perspective (which I suspect may be valuable here) Halberstam DOESN'T discriminate along party lines.

So who comes out of it well and who comes out badly? Bush Snr, Jim Baker, Laurence Eagleberger, indeed most of the father Bush's administration comes out of it pretty well. Colin Powell emerges from it as a shrewd operator, a safe pair of hands and a decent person - perhaps rather more Bush senior's man than his son's. Clinton emerges badly. Petulant, self centred and lacking in grip. The people who serve him come out of the book in a better light, often struggling against the tide to try to provide a coherent policy. But Halberstam is no Republican apologist - he is scathing (rightly in my opinion) about the gross hypocrisy and damaging opportunism of the Republican opposition (especially Newt Gingrich's people) who, with honourable exceptions (such as Bob Dole), emerge from the book as simply being profoundly unpleasant.

The book is readable. Titled chapters rather than title numbers would have been an aid in finding areas of interest. It began to drag towards the end and is prehaps overlong. But it is worth reading as an interesting insight into the personalities that are running American foreign policy and how they (if we are to believe Halberstam) think, act and work together.

Highly informative, especially on the inner workings of the Clinton White House, yet at times shows a peculiar ingenuousness. For example, Halberstam's near apostatic treatment of Col. John Warden's theories is disquieting. The inadequacy of Warden's air plan for the Gulf War is elided -- Warden's plan would have had the Iraqis capitulating in an unrealistically short time without ground action. The work of people like David Deptula in making a workable plan is ignored. Citation of the general dislike for Warden in the Air Force does little to disguise Halberstam's bent. This is a relfection perhaps of his relying heavily on interviews -- the bibliography shows a troubling lack of the vital works tounderstand airpower strategy, including, for example, Warden's own "the Air Campaign". The results of the idiosyncratic rather than systematic choice of written sources can be seen in the focus on the F-117 in the Gulf and the appearance of "Bandits Over Bagdad" an interesting collection of personal stories by F-117 pilots in the Gulf, but hardly a strategy evaluation. For Kosovo an insightful assesment is Nato's Air War for Kosovo : A Strategic and Operational Assessment by Benjamin S. Lambeth -- not mentiioned in the bibliography.

I know from reading other reviews that there are those who will complain over various failings of this book. Many of those complaints I agree with, at least to some extent. However, to carp about this book is to miss the purpose of the enterprise. This is an excellent overview of American foreign policy, and those who were responsible for it, in a period of time when foreign policy was the last thing on the minds of everyone, including the President of the United States.

Halberstam gives a very readable account of the events leading up to and during the Clinton presidency. He vividly captures the personalities involved, and compellingly shows how little attention was being paid, how many competing interests existed and how fitful was our concentration on the important issues of the post-Cold War world.

It is entertaining, perplexing and scary to think that events of the magnitude of world affairs over this period of time were being attended to in such an intermittent and cavalier fashion.

Well worth reading!