Mission Failure

A well-told, lucid, thoughtful survey of world affairs...any student of the last quarter century would be well served to read this volume. - Wall Street Journal Mission Failure explains how nation-building came to be the chief focus of US foreign policy in the past generation, and unblinkingly underlines how large a failure that has been. Michael Mandelbaum is one of the country's most acute analysts of US foreign policy, and his book should be required reading for policymakers today. - Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University, and author of The End of History and the Last Man A superbly written, masterful, and deeply provocative work by Michael Mandelbaum. He makes a compelling argument in opposition to what he terms a values-based rather than interest and security-based foreign policy and to the waste of America's foreign policy capital, resources and credibility in fruitless efforts to transform foreign societies. - Robert J. Lieber, Georgetown University, author of Retreat and Its Consequences: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order This book, from one of the major analysts of American foreign policy, is well-written, wide in scope, and insightful and penetrating in its vivid dissection of what might call the Twenty Years Disaster. It is a provocative must-read that will be of interest not only to specialists, but to the general public in whose name the cascading foreign policy failure has been carried out. - John Mueller, author of Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism Mission Failure is a startlingly original, creative new book-essentially an epitaph for America's foreign policy in the quarter-century since the end of the Cold War. This is a trenchant critique of the faltering efforts by both Republican and Democratic presidents to refashion governments and societies around the world, from Somalia and Bosnia to China, Iraq and Libya. - James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans and The Obamians Mission Failure is a commanding, synoptic review of US foreign policy choices and their outcomes (often unintended and unhappy) from 1993 to 2014. It is beautifully written and has that rarity in modern, policy-relevant books: deep knowledge of history, combined with the granular understanding of US policymaking-qualities that longtime readers of Mandelbaum's work have come to expect and appreciate. - Charles Lipson, University of Chicago, and author of Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace Specialists and general readers alike will appreciate his sure historical grasp, evenhanded assignment of fault, careful assessment of shifting domestic political considerations, and understanding of the foreign cultural barriers that so frustrated American intentions. A skilled, persuasive appraisal of a unique moment in our foreign policy history. - Kirkus Reviews (starred) [Mission Failure is] going to be one of the most talked about foreign policy books of the year...a must-read. - Thomas Friedman, The New York Times