Lloyd C. Gardner & Marilyn B. Young, eds., Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past (New York & London: The New Press, 2007) (From the bookjacket: "By closely examining how our policy makers have failed to understand the history of our wars, relations with allies and antagonists, military strategies and capabilities, and thus the nature and limitations of presidential and American power, leading historians . . . demonstrate that Rumsfeld had it right when he noted that 'the biggest problem we've got in the country is people who don't study history anymore.' Rumsfeld was wrong about who those people are" (italic added).).
Michael H. Hunt, The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina Press, 2007) (From the bookjacket: "A simple question lurks amid the considerable controversy created by recent U.S. policy: what road did Americans travel to reach global preeminence? Taking the long historical view, Michael Hunt demonstrates that wealth, confidence, and leadership were the key elements in America's ascent. In an analytical narrative that illuminates the past rather than indulging in political triumphalism, he provides crucial insights into the country's problematic place in the world today." "Hunt charts America's rise to global power from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to a culminating multilayered dominance achieved in the mid-twentieth century that has led to unanticipated constraints and perplexities over the last several decades. Themes that figure prominently in his account include the rise of the American state and a nationalists ideology and the domestic effects and international spread of consumer society. He examines how the United States remade great power relations, fashioned limits for the third world, and shaped our current international economic and cultural order." "America's eventual dominance on the global stage was not inevitable, Hunt points out. Seen from a historical perspective, the process depended on multiple pieces coming together in a complex mosaic. As the heir to the great nineteenth-century European powers, the United States constructed a strong central government with a powerful military and expansive international ambitions. It learned to promote and mange globalization and to sponsor an economic and social modernity that left a deep imprint on peoples everywhere." "Hunt concludes by addressing current issues, such as how durable American power really is and what options remain for America's future. His provocative exploration will engage anyone concerned about the fate of this republic." In reading this book, one cannot help wonder how those American politicians who advocate both a smaller Federal government and a strong military power with global reach will be able to square the circle and reconcile the two.).
