Magic and Mayhem<\/strong>, his broad themes constitute a healthy challenge to a dolorous status quo in Washington.<\/p>\nIn Leebaert’s view, American foreign policy suffers from being crafted under two related evils: a culture of “magical thinking” and a cadre of professional alarmists, the “Emergency Men” who constitute a kind of self-appointed, adrenalin-addicted, national security ecclesia who exploit the magical thinking of the public and labor under its delusions themselves. It is this dual embrace of ends without a priori<\/em> examination of means or ways and a\u00a0lust for action that leads\u00a0our foreign policy elite to embrace all manner of costumed charlatans with polished English language skills\u00a0who are allegedly willing and able to be America’s “partner” in dangerous neignorhoods. From South Korean autocrats to African kleptocrats to figures of a more recent vintage. Leebaert writes:<\/p>\nAfghan president Hamid Karzai, with his Western-style technocrats and talk of democracy, was immensely appealing to Washington after the Taliban was ousted.\u00a0 For more than seven years, reports the Times<\/em> Dexter Filkins, Karzai was a “White House favorite – a celebrity in a flowing cape and dark grey fez” a dramatic outfit that he had designed himself but that had no origin in Afghani dress…..<\/strong><\/p>\n….”We thought we had found a miracle man” moaned one diplomat. On closer inspection, the sorcerer proved unconvincing as the opium trade and corruption flourished.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI have always wondered where the hell that cape came from.<\/p>\n
Leebaert takes aim at a wide variety of targets. I definitely do not<\/em><\/strong> agree with his assessments of everything and everyone who has caught his ire,\u00a0but it is a list that is breathtaking in expanse; a\u00a0parade of names and terms\u00a0that includes, but is not limited to:<\/p>\nGeorge Kennan
\nDouglas MacArthur
\nPaul Nitze
\nDetente
\nRobert McNamara
\nMcGeorge Bundy
\nPeter Rodman
\nBrinkmanship
\nDonald Rumsfeld
\nCOIN
\nRichard Holbrooke
\nHenry Kissinger
\nThe CIA
\nNSC-68
\nJohn McCain
\nArms Control
\nJohn F. Kennedy<\/strong>
\nRichard Nixon
\nCurtis LeMay
\nDefense intellectuals
\nLyndon Johnson
\nMaxwell Taylor
\nDick Cheney
\nCyrus Vance
\nGeorge W. Bush
\nNeocons
\nOliver North
\nRevolution in military affairs
\nRichard Perle
\nCrisis management
\nMAD theory
\nStrategic\/Security Studies
\nWalt Rostow
\nWiliam Westmoreland
\nRobert Kennedy
\nBernard Lewis
\nThomas P.M. Barnett
\nLawrence Summers
\nGeorge Tenet
\nRobert Kaplan
\nSamuel Huntington
\nJohn Abizaid
\nStan McChrystal
\nBarack Obama
\nDavid Ignatius
\nThomas Friedman
\nDavid Brooks
\nUS Public Diplomacy
\nJimmy Carter
\nMichael O’Hanlon<\/strong><\/p>\nThat, by the way, was not comprehensive.<\/p>\n
It would be\u00a0a much shorter list\u00a0to cite those\u00a0statesmen\u00a0of whom Leebaert approved – men like Henry Stimson<\/strong>, Dean Acheson<\/strong>, Matthew Ridgway, Omar Bradley,\u00a0George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, George Schultz<\/strong> and Ronald Reagan<\/strong>. The book is not flawless. There are minor factual errors. Not every person or doctrine in Magic and Mayhem<\/strong>\u00a0is considered in depth. \u00a0At times, Leebaert comes across as glib or superficial in his criticism, but predominantly, as with the cases of Kissinger or Rumsfeld,\u00a0his bitter jeremiads are\u00a0skewering their targets.<\/p>\nLeebaert argues for a considered\u00a0retreat from policy alarmism and the cult of emergency,\u00a0and for a\u00a0reduction of ambitious American policy grandiosity that would flow from recognizing and respecting\u00a0the agency of other nation’s leaders and peoples. Implicitly, a call not so much for isolationism, as for\u00a0restraint and a sense of proportion, coupled with\u00a0a dimunition of status and power\u00a0for national security “celebrities” and the cottage industry of think tank consultancy for which they stand.<\/p>\n
Magic and Mayhem<\/strong> is a book that was\u00a0written to demystify shibboleths and smash idols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan\u00a0by Derek Leebaert As I mentioned previously, I enjoyed Derek Leebaert’s earlier Cold War history,\u00a0The Fifty Year Wound, so I was pleased to be sent a courtesy review copy of his latest work, Magic and Mayhem:The Delusions of American Foreign Policy from Korea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,361,46,107,420,133,146,586,147,525,84,87,425,165,78,336,270,90,562,187,436,131,558,381,127,31,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-america","category-analytic","category-arms-control","category-authors","category-book","category-cold-war","category-dime","category-diplomatic-history","category-epistemology","category-fisking","category-foreign-policy","category-government","category-historians","category-ideas","category-intellectuals","category-national-security","category-nuclear","category-perception","category-politics","category-psychology","category-security","category-social-science","category-society","category-strategy","category-synthesis","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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