About the Book
A vivid portrayal of what drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003--an outcome that was in no way predetermined. America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations.In Confronting Saddam
Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and
declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Rather than stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability
and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Bush was not eager for war, and the decision to invade Iraq was not
a fait accompli. Yet the president was convinced that only by practicing coercive diplomacy and threatening force could he alter Hussein's defiance, a view shared by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders around the world, including Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion. As
the book unfolds, Bush's centrality becomes more and more evident, as does the bureaucratic dysfunctionality that contributed to the disastrous occupation of Iraq. A compelling reassessment
of George W. Bush's intervention in Iraq, Confronting Saddam Hussein provides a provocative reinterpretation of the most important international event of the 21st century.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Saddam Hussein
2. George W. Bush
3. 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
4. Iraq
5. Coercive Diplomacy
6. A Special Relationship
7. Deciding
8. Resolve
9. Mission Awry
10. Conclusion: Fear, Power, Hubris
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on US relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the
three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S.
Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia.
Review :
The book...is instructive, and logical.
One of America's greatest historians takes on one of America's most controversial wars. With his customary professionalism, thoroughness, balanced perspective, and vivid prose, Prof. Leffler brings the reader inside the Bush administration's decision-making process as no other writer has yet done. Finally, a serious book about Iraq.
A measured, balanced, and brilliant explanation of how the United States went to war to remove Saddam Hussein. Stressing a fatal combination of fear, power, and hubris in the White House, Leffler shows, with great empathy, how President Bush was at the center of a policymaking process gone awry.
Melvyn Leffler, the nation's leading historian of American foreign relations, has written the most balanced and dispassionate account of the Bush Administration's policies toward Iraq. Henceforth all serious studies of the Iraq War will start here. This book should be read by scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in understanding the decision making untainted by partisan bias.
Agree or disagree with his conclusions, Mel Leffler has unearthed fascinating new information about the decisions that led to America's invasion of Iraq. Anyone interested in understanding that seminal event needs to grapple with this book.
In this deeply researched, luminously written book, Mel Leffler explores why the United States invaded Iraq. His sympathetic, nuanced, but by no means uncritical, account may not convince opponents of that war, but even they will not see it quite the same way again. This is an exceptional book by an outstanding scholar.
Such is the force of Melvyn P. Leffler's insightful analysis that it broke through my long held convictions about the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, one of America's most respected historians assembles stunning new evidence from personal interviews and archival documents. This brilliant account will remain an indispensable source for many years.
The Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq in 2003 tops any list of strategic failures in the long history of American foreign relations. Conversely, Mel Leffler tops any list of the nation's finest scholars of American strategic decision-making. The two come together in this gripping, illuminating, fair-minded, and undoubtedly landmark exploration of how American leaders, at the height of their power and influence yet simultaneously driven by fear, got it all so very, very wrong.
The war in Iraq was a disaster that diminished American power and divided the American people. Leffler explains how a fearful, well-intentioned, but poorly-informed president led our country down this damaging road. This book is essential reading for any leader who hopes to avoid disaster, and any citizen who wants to elect better leaders.
Confronting Saddam Hussein offers a welcome antidote to flip assessments of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Mel Leffler's provocative new account shows that the invasion was not a result of cartoonish bumbling or single-minded warmongering, but rather careful debate poisoned by a disastrous mix of fear and hubris.
In the vast literature on the Iraq tragedy, this incisive, readable book stands above all others...Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Confronting Saddam Hussein...is necessary in both correcting the historical record and offering a map of the mistakes that we should never repeat.
Confronting Saddam Hussein is an important work. It should inspire more scholarship and less rhetoric on America's Second Persian Gulf War.
Leffler's history of the invasion of Iraq is an important and carefully crafted book, one that will hopefully open a serious scholarly conversation about one of the defining international events of the 21st century.
