Having recently discovered Angelo Codevilla’s books, I have
been reading my way through a number of them, including two recommended in
recent posts. Today I am recommending
his book Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft (2009). The
title might sound a bit condescending if we didn’t currently have a president who
looks like he badly needs a remedial course in statecraft.
Codevilla presents a detailed and pointed criticism of American
statecraft all across the spectrum, from the Liberal Internationalism launched
by Woodrow Wilson, through Realists to Neoconservatives. Each of these academic dogmas has its peculiar
beliefs and agendas, but Codeville argues that at root they all share the same naïve
and fundamental flaw – they all assume that other nations and peoples think
more or less like we do, aspire to more or less the same things as we do, value
more or less the same things we do, and therefore would respond to threats and
incentives more or less as we would. Clearly that is not the case, and he
details American foreign policy failures from Woodrow Wilson to the present day,
across both political parties, to make his case.
This is not as easy a book to read as the previous two. It takes some work to really understand the
complexities, but it is worth the effort.
I don’t agree with everything he writes, but I think on balance his arguments
are persuasive. He certainly won’t ever be the darling of the ruling elite in
this country, because he thinks most of them are naïve about the wider world, and
their dearest policies completely unrealistic. But then, I am coming to believe
that too.
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