Why America Loses Wars

Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present

by Donald Stoker

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Pub Date Aug 31 2019 | Archive Date Aug 27 2019

History | Nonfiction (Adult)

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Description

How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political objectives and a vision of what victory means?

In this provocative challenge to US policy and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly limited wars. He reveals how ideas on limited war and war in general evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

These ideas, he shows, were flawed and have undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace afterwards. America's leaders have too often taken the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory, leading to the "forever wars" of today.

Why America Loses Wars dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow.

How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political objectives and a vision of what victory means?

In this provocative challenge to US policy and strategy, Donald...

Advance Praise

In Why America Loses Wars, Donald Stoker offers an impassioned, deeply informed, and all-too-convincing critique of certain US strategic practices since the 1950s. A bracing, powerful, even urgent argument against confused concepts of limited warfare. Highly recommended.-Colin Dueck, author of The Obama Doctrine

Donald Stoker's insistence that since Korea, America has been able neither to define limited war, nor to evolve a viable strategy to fight them is sure to ignite a lively debate.-Douglas Porch, author of Counterinsurgency: The Origins, Development and Myths of the New Way of War

Donald Stoker provides an insightful, sobering, and provocative study on what makes for victory in war and for the winning of peace. America's frustrating and costly experience in recent wars underscores the timeliness and importance of Stoker's analysis of today's policy and strategy debates about the use of force by the United States on the world stage.-John H. Maurer, author of The Outbreak of the First World War

A withering critique of US political and military decision-making from Korea to Iraq and an audacious attempt to construct a useable theory of limited war for confronting contemporary conflict within a Clausewitzian paradigm - a thoughtful and provocative contribution.-Edward B. Westermann, Retired Colonel and formerly of the US Air Force Academy

Why America Loses Wars insightfully examines the strategic level of war. Written in an engaging style that carefully blends theory and practice, this thought-provoking book will be of real value to all concerned with studying and making war.-Peter Layton, author of Grand Strategy