Rating: 
Summary: Riveting! A Must read!
Review: Riveting account of the last decade or so of US foreign policy. The straight ahead account of the events is interesting, but the behind the scenes profiles on the players is what made this book great for me. The personalities, politics, hidden agenda and faults of the players are brought to life and really illustrate how foreign policy decision, even in the best if circumstances, are multi faceted beasts. Amazing the we ever get anything right and this books shows how many times we have gotten it wrong.
Definately a must read for any history or foreign policy buffs.
Rating: 
Summary: he still sets the standard for in-depth journalism
Review: This book is Halberstam's study of leadership failure: in the Post-Cold War world older, he argues, Bush and then Clinton did not want to pay attention to the disintegration of Yugoslavia until it reached murderous proportions; instead they let the overly confident Europeans of the early 1990s dawdle. According to Halberstam, not only were there new (untested, i.e. risky) technologies available ' precision bombs and the B-2 stealth aircraft that could quickly take out the infrastructure with virtually no collateral civilian damage ' but there was a new crop of remarkable young leaders who were willing, indeed who felt personally compelled, to take the task on and were not allowed to do so. Furthermore, the author claims, there was a crusty layer of (often mediocre) leadership below Bush and Clinton, who were wary of entering a new Vietnam (or Somalia), throwing up political barriers and misleading them as to America's strengths.
I was astonished at Halberstam's descriptions of the technological advances that had taken place and how Pentagon doctrine had tended to lag far behind: we can, he says, now deliver powerful explosive devices within a few feet (!) of their targets, a gain in accuracy over earlier bombs that surpasses several orders of magnitude. After many doubts and false claims, apparently we are entering the era of 'smart bombs' and Halberstam dissects the debates they engender at the top levels of the military. This is very powerful stuff and will change our lives.According to Halberstam, the younger leaders, in particular the diplomat Richard Holbrooke and the army commander Wes Clark, had unusual skills and phenomenal brainpower. They were interesting and very difficult characters ' Holbrooke an arrogant, pushy type with too many enemies and Clarke your prototypical Rhodes Scholar super-preppie ' who in the end were able to accomplish a great deal, though only after the political fallout of the disaster had become so great that Clinton finally recognized the necessity of action. As they pursued their policies, both of them set fundamentally important precedents: Holbrooke helped to expand the role of the US beyond the Weinberger doctrine, according to which only vital threats to the US alone called for serious diplomatico-military commitments; he also negotiated the Dayton accords and helped to bring Milosevic down after the Kosovo bombing destroyed his political base in Serbia. Under extremely challenging political pressures, Halberstam writes, Clarke's operation was a turning point in the history of warfare, that is, a victory with airpower alone, which ranks with the introduction of tank warfare as a revolution in military strategy. Clarke and Holbrooke changed forever the way the US could wage war as well as demonstrated what types of diplomacy were possible. As Halberstam points out a bit pedantically, lessons would include: lack of clear leadership can hinder talented teams from coming together. Not only are goals undefined, but people cannot gain the mandate and clout to oppose the hidebound bureaucrats who failed to recognize radically changed conditions in the Post Cold War era. However, Halberstam relates, once Clinton paid attention and accepted the risks involved as unavoidable, Holbrooke, Clarke and others were allowed to do their thing with extraordinary results. After it was all over, the author notes, bitter Pentagon bureaucrats took their revenge on Clark, getting him fired by subterfuge and ending a remarkable career prematurely. Halberstam goes into fascinating detail on the politics and clashing cultures of the US military and civilian leaders, both of whom regard eachother warily for many legitimate reasons. Halberstam also goes into great detail about the situations in Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Haiti. While I had seen the breakup of Yugoslavia as inevitable and full of such deep hatreds that none of the actors came out clean, Halberstam argues that the Serbians were indeed the worst aggressors and needed to be stopped before perpetrating the worst genocide in Europe since WWII. Here, the reader is treated to the depth of his moral qualms as well as his penetrating questions about what America should do with its preeminent power. This is not a simple repeat of his Vietnam questions on the inevitability of local revolution, but a far more mature look at a different world, in which the US is the undisputed superpower yet reluctant to use its might. It leaves readers with many questions to resolve on their own, which is one of the most fruitful things that a great political book can accomplish. One of the marvels of Halberstam's reporting talent is that the reader sees policymakers and warriors as real people who are making decisions as best they can and within the limits of their education and outlook. It is too easy for us to ignore that there are many possible courses of action and many ways that things can turn out. As a close reader of the political scene, Halberstam's view is consistently trustworthy in my opinion. He seems to me to have a perfect pitch regarding politics, at least in the many areas I followed closely: I found myself agreeing with his slant on things and hence believing him when he reported on the things I knew less about. It is an ideal book to start a debate rather than the simplistic ideological diatribes that we have come to expect from the so-called pundits. While this book does not develop the narrative momentum and eloquence that Best and the Brightest does, the author still sets the highest standard for political reporting, an example to which all writers should aspire. He is, simply, one of the best. A must-read for anyone interested in foreign policy.
Rating:
Summary: The Best
Review: The book excels at everything it attempts. Halberstam guides the reader through complex changes in the American mood that created vastly different political identities. I was generally familiar with the material, but his approach to explaining the background--of both the decision makers and the larger American or Serbian environment in which they worked--of each major conflict was superb. Horray for Halberstam!
Rating:
Summary: Halberstam Doesn't Disappoint
Review: Great book - accessible and interesting; a modern-day "Best and Brightest"
Rating:
Summary: Catch up on post-Cold War politics
Review: Great, well written and interesting book. It's fairly easy to read, because Halberstam interjects the discussions on hard politics with lighter stories, anecdotes, and personality descriptions of the key players. I found it a great way to catch up on what I did not know about our politics and foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Halberstam should have covered some things (e.g. Gulf War) a bit more thouroughly, but overall I was very satisfied.
Rating:
Summary: sometimes harrowing history of recent times
Review: I have often wondered what it was like to see the rise of Hitler. I see many similar themes in the rise of Milosevic. His use of ethnic hatred, the concentration camps and eventually the killings on a mass scale. Yet despite the mounting evidence, you can see from Halberstam's book, the extraordinary lengths that Europe and the United States went to in order not to do anything. Beginning with the toothless UN involvement through to the limited bombing of the Kosovo campaign. You get the impression that Milosevic was brought down by good luck rather than good management. The sections on the invasions of Croatia and Bosnia and the stop start inaction of the allies was a harrowing read as the number of casualties rose. Hallberstam is always interesting and throught provoking. To my mind, he clearly shows that the United States can never be insular again. It must engage in and be engaged in world events. Also interesting is the strong link between domestic and international politics in the United States. Halberstam is able to show how every international relations issue has domestic impacts. A very interesting book - both balanced and fair.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, but flawed
Review: Highly informative, especially on the inner workings of the Clinton White House, yet at times shows a peculiar ingenuousness. For example, Halberstam's near apostatic treatment of Col. John Warden's theories is disquieting. The inadequacy of Warden's air plan for the Gulf War is elided -- Warden's plan would have had the Iraqis capitulating in an unrealistically short time without ground action. The work of people like David Deptula in making a workable plan is ignored. Citation of the general dislike for Warden in the Air Force does little to disguise Halberstam's bent. This is a relfection perhaps of his relying heavily on interviews -- the bibliography shows a troubling lack of the vital works tounderstand airpower strategy, including, for example, Warden's own "the Air Campaign". The results of the idiosyncratic rather than systematic choice of written sources can be seen in the focus on the F-117 in the Gulf and the appearance of "Bandits Over Bagdad" an interesting collection of personal stories by F-117 pilots in the Gulf, but hardly a strategy evaluation. For Kosovo an insightful assesment is Nato's Air War for Kosovo : A Strategic and Operational Assessment by Benjamin S. Lambeth -- not mentiioned in the bibliography.
Rating:
Summary: Really good history of Bush(1) and Clinton in Bosnia, etc.
Review: From the end of the cold war until 9/11, the U.S. was in a different kind of military world. Suddenly none of the actions where troops might be sent actually affected the U.S. (Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia) with the minor exception of Haiti.
At the same time, only the U.S. could provide the leadership to stop the genocide occuring in each of these places. And as the world's sole superpower, the U.S. could act in each place if it wished to.
This book covers that period and shows the major players involved, what they tried to do, what they did do, and how the U.S. and other countries tried to learn how to best handle these issues.
It's a very good book. It suffers from the fact that the author clearly did not get to talk to the prime principal's much - Bush, Clinton, or the leaders in the various countries at war.
The world has changed again since 9/11 and it makes this book a bit dated. But still very interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Choose Your History Wisely
Review: With hindsight being 20/20, it's easy for writers and documentarians to "comment" on the military and political events of the 90's. Thus far, only Halberstam has truly chronicled them. This is one of the rare books where reading the end notes is an intellectual treat in and of itself.
Halberstam writes with a steady hand and a clear vision in this book -- no bias, no favoritism. This book seeks to educate and inform rather than reinforce a preconceived set of political beliefs.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting topic, but craftsmanship is lacking
Review: Although not his best effort by a long shot and a far cry from his classic "The Best and the Brightest", David Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace" is overall a useful book dealing primarily with NATO's response to Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal campaign against ethnic minorities in the Balkans. Readers who enjoyed the movie Black Hawk Down will find the film to be essentially validated by Halberstam's section on the ill-fated humanitarian mission in Mogodishu, Somalia. Other sections deal with U. S. military incursions in Haiti and Rwanda. One of the most striking revelations of the book is the appalling lack of interest and depth in foreign policy on the part of the Clinton administration, which was preoccupied with domestic programs while attempting to conduct foreign affairs on an ad hoc basis. Also noteworthy was the book's convincing account of how modern, high-technology precision bombing has advanced the use of air power in modern warfare, even beyond what was demonstrated in the Gulf War. So potent is the modern U. S. air power that it challenges the conventional wisdom that air power alone cannot be the deciding factor in a military campaign. Halberstam employs his well-known technique of weaving a narrative around entertaining vignettes of the various key players in the events he describes - Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, the sociopathic Milosevic, General Wesley Clark, Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and others. One of the better anecdotes describes CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour confronting an unsuspecting Bill Clinton during a press conference where he was expecting softball questions on the Balkan campaign: 'Didn't he think, she added "that the constant flip-flops of your administration on the issue of Bosnia set a very dangerous precedent?" Bingo: she had nailed him, live and in color in front of the entire world. Clinton was not pleased . . . was obviously angry - his face grew hard and his voice icy. "There have been no constant flip-flops, madam," he said. But of course there had been . . .' As the book wore on, it became amusing how Halberstam insisted on referring to these individuals by their familiar names. Richard Holbrooke became "Dick," Lawrence Eagleburger was "Larry," Zbigniew Brzezinski was "Zbig", Nicholas Katzenbach was "Nick", and so on. All of which, of course, implies first-name familiarity between the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and his cast of luminaries. Halberstam carries this affectation to near ludicrous lengths, for example by calling the late Pennsylvania senator John Heinz "Jack". I can't say I knew the senator personally, but I've been a resident of Pennsylvania for over a decade and never saw an article or campaign literature referring to him as Jack. Halberstam's book also suffers from lamentable editing. Perhaps most conspicuously absent from this work of geopolitical history is a map of the Balkans. Halberstam (and his editors) apparently think that the everyday reader will have a clear image in the mind's eye of Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and the surrounding countries. The appalling oversight of not including a simple map detracts greatly from an understanding of Halberstam's narrative. After all, the definition of balkanization is to divide a country into a collection of small, quarrelsome, ineffectual states. Readers will also note that the chapters are untitled, detracting from one's ability to track the events being described. This editorial laziness and inattention to detail is also reflected in some of the book's incredible syntax, for example this 72-word verbal infarction: "During most of the time he served Kissinger, Lake worked on downsizing the American commitment in Vietnam, though under the unlikely Nixonian banner of peace with honor, as if the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which had already been defeated in 1964 by the Vietcong, would now, despite the withdrawal of half a million American troops and a major cutback in American airpower, be able to win the war." Huh? Other howlers include failure to properly capitalize the service branches as proper nouns (Colin Powell was in the "U. S. army"), and over-reliance on obscure acronyms that tend to leave the reader in the dark. Don't know what a NGO, CENTO, or SACEUR is? Better brush up on your current-affairs lexicon before tackling Dave's latest tome.
|
