From a celebrated military historian, a “searing…persuasive” (Kirkus Reviews) exploration of why the mighty United States military has repeatedly failed in irregular wars and military campaigns from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Since the early 1960s, the United States has fought in four major wars and a cluster of complicated and bloody irregular warfare campaigns. The majority have ended in failure, or something close to it. Why has the US been so ineffective, despite the American armed forces being universally recognized as the best in the world?

Most scholars and analysts believe that the primary cause of our abysmal war record since Vietnam has been the US military’s overwhelmingly conventional approach to conflict, which favors highly mobile precision firepower and sophisticated systems of command and control. Here, James Warren argues that a much more formidable obstacle to success has been pervasive strategic ineptitude at the highest levels of decision-making, including the presidency, the National Security Council, and the foreign policy community in DC.

Time and time again, American presidents have committed military forces to operations in foreign countries whose politics and cultures they did not fully understand. Presidents of both political parties, including Johnson, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama have overestimated the capacity of US forces to alter the social and political landscape of foreign nations, and underestimated the ability of insurgents and terrorists to develop effective protracted war strategies that eventually, inevitably sap Washington’s will to carry on the fight.

Warren asserts that in the War on Terror that followed September 11, 2001, senior military officers have been complicit in extending bankrupt strategies by refusing to speak truthfully about them to their civilian bosses. So have the American people, who lost interest in the “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq and failed to press their presidents and Congress to bring an end to two futile conflicts. Warren advocates for a less hubristic foreign policy and a broader conception of warfare as a political and military enterprise.

“An admirable must-read for military…foreign policy history buffs” (Booklist), and anyone interested in geopolitical strategy, this book offers unparalleled insights into America’s prior—and potentially future—military conflicts.