Exercise of Power
American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 bestselling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.
Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must also encompass diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, and ideology. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, insightful firsthand knowledge, and compelling insider stories, Gates’s candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations argues that U.S. national security in the future will require abiding by the lessons of the past, reimagining our approach, and revitalizing nonmilitary instruments of power essential to success and security.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The former defense secretary to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama explores foreign-policy missteps including overreliance on defense secretaries in this incisive treatise. Gates (Duty) deplores the overmilitarization of American foreign policy and the atrophy of the "non-military instruments" of diplomacy, propaganda, and aid. He argues that the State department, rather than the U.S. military, should have led reconstruction efforts in Iraq but lacked the resources and expertise to do so; that social media campaigns should be beefed up to stoke public discontent in Iran; and that America needs to better coordinate the sticks and carrots of economic sanctions, development assistance, and trade. He applies these themes in case studies of a few triumphs, such as Bush's initiative to combat AIDS in Africa, and many quagmires, including failed interventions in Libya and Syria and the conundrum of North Korea's nuclear weapons. Gates participated in many of the White House situation room episodes he describes, and he's both a sharp critic of Washington, D.C.'s policy-making bureaucracies "multiple people trying to play the same cello at the same time" and a shrewd analyst of the dilemmas they wrestle with. The result is a judicious yet bracingly contrarian take on military and foreign policy from the ultimate insider.
