Winning the Right War
The Path to Security for America and the World
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A new strategy for American foreign policy that looks beyond Iraq and changes the way we think about the war on terror.
Six years into the "war on terror," are the United States and its allies better off than we were before it started? Sadly, we are not, and the reason is that we have been fighting – and losing – the wrong war.
In this paradigm-shifting book, Philip H. Gordon presents a new way of thinking about the war on terror and a new strategy for winning it. He draws a provocative parallel between the world today and the world of the Cold War, showing how defense, development, diplomacy, and the determination to maintain our own values can again be deployed alongside military might to defeat a violent and insidious ideology. Drawing on the latest scholarly research, his own experience in the White House, and visits to more than forty countries, he provides fresh insights into the nature of the terrorist challenge and offers concrete and realistic proposals for confronting it.
Gordon also asks the question "What would victory look like?" – a topic sorely missing from the debate today. He offers a positive vision of the world after the war on terror, which will end not when we kill or capture all potential terrorists but when their hateful ideology collapses around them, when extremists become isolated in their own communities, and when Americans and their allies will again feel safe. His vision for promoting these goals is achievable and realistic, but only if the United States changes course before it is too late. As we look beyond the presidency of George W. Bush, we must seize the opportunity to chart a new course to security for America, the West, and the world at large. The stakes could not be higher.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Foreign policy scholar Gordon offers an eminently reasonable new strategy for fighting the war on terror that can be added to the growing pile of substantially similar denunciations of President Bush's strategy. Precise and persuasive yet oddly unimpassioned, he calls for more attention to global jihadist networks and less on Iraq, aggressively pursuing a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and constructively engaging with Iran while attempting to contain its ambitions as a regional hegemon. This is the stuff of countless op-eds over the previous few years; one gets little sense that Gordon has brought much of his substantial experience and expertise to bear on this slim volume. By drawing parallels between the current struggle, the war in Vietnam and the Cold War, he highlights the need for creatively rethinking policy in the face of setbacks. Yet the lessons he draws from history are mostly platitudes: "The United States cannot extricate itself from the Iraq quagmire without damage or risk.... Whatever the damage may be to U.S. credibility and in the war on terror, the reality is that staying in Iraq is already damaging America's prospects, and to a greater degree and at a higher cost. The same was true in Vietnam."
