Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

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Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power Pub. Date: 12/22/2008 Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
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Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power Pub. Date: 2/4/2008 Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
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Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (MP3 - Unabridged) Pub. Date: 2/4/2008 Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

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Overview

America's power is in decline, its foreign policy adrift, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past eight years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. In Daydream Believers, celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan combines in-depth reporting and razor-sharp analysis to explain just how George W. Bush and his aides got so far off track—and why much of the nation followed. Kaplan demonstrates that their disasters stemmed not from mere incompetence but from two grave misconceptions. First, they believed that the world changed after 9/11, when it didn't. The nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations remained the same, no matter how deeply they wanted to break free from the real world's constraints. Second, they thought that America emerged from its Cold War victory stronger than before, when in fact it was weaker. The disappearance of the Soviet Union brought freedom to much of the globe. But by the same token, the shattering of their common enemy gave many of America's allies leave to go their own way and pursue their own interests, without regard for what Washington desired.

For eight years, Kaplan reminds us, the White House—and many of the nation's podiums and opinion pages—rang out with appealing but deluded claims: that we live in a time like no other and that, therefore, the lessons of history no longer apply; that new technology has transformed warfare; that the world's peoples will be set free, if only America topples their dictators; and that those who dispute such promises do so for partisan reasons. They thought they were visionaries, but they only had visions. And they believed in their daydreams.

Kaplan traces the genesis and evolution of these ideas—from the era of Nixon through Reagan to the present day—and reveals how they have been either twisted through the years or rebutted as illusions at every step.

Packed with stunning anecdotes, hidden history, and a level of insight only Fred Kaplan can bring to issues of national security, Daydream Believers tells a story whose understanding is central to getting America back on track and to finding leaders who can improve the world, and America's position in it, by seeing the world as it really is.

Editorial Reviews

Anne-Marie Slaughter

A lively and entertaining—if occasionally horrifying—read, it offers a cautionary tale for any administration and for the men and women who hope to serve in one…Even when the facts are familiar, Kaplan weaves these stories together in a way that highlights the often hidden connections between them. The result is an account of the pathologies not only of individuals and departments in the Bush administration, but also of Washington itself.
—The Washington Post

Michiko Kakutani

What sets Mr. Kaplan's Daydream Believers apart is his emphasis on the Bush administration's failure to come to terms with a post-cold-war paradigm, which, he argues, left America's power diminished, rather than enhanced, as former allies, liberated from the specter of the Soviet Union, felt increasingly free to depart from Washington's directives. Also illuminating is his close analysis of the impact that the White House's idees fixes had, not just on the Iraq war but also on other foreign policy problems like North Korea, and his detailed examination of the formative role that the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky played in shaping President Bush's determination to try to export democracy around the world.
—The New York Times

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Publishers Weekly

America's leaders have gone from hubris to waking fantasy, according to this caustic critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Kaplan (The Wizards of Armageddon) argues that the Cold War's end and 9/11 persuaded President Bush and his advisers to unilaterally impose America's political will on the world, while remaining blind to the military and diplomatic fiascoes that followed. Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs," a doctrine touting supposedly omnipotent mobile forces and high-tech smart weapons, convinced Pentagon officials that Iraq could be pacified without a large force or a reconstruction plan. Bush abandoned Clinton's diplomatic rapprochement with North Korea, then stood by as Kim Jong-Il built nuclear weapons. And imbued with a "mix of neo-conservatism and evangelism" that was peddled most flamboyantly by Israeli ideologue Natan Sharansky, Bush backed clumsy pro democracy initiatives that backfired by bringing anti-American and sectarian groups to power in the Middle East. Eschewing Kaplan's favored approach of fostering international security through alliances and consensus building, Bush assumed that "by virtue of American power, saying something was tantamount to making it so." The particulars of Kaplan's indictment aren't new, but his detailed, illuminating (if occasionally disjointed) accounts of the evolution of the Bush administration's strategic doctrines add up to a cogent brief for soft realism over truculent idealism. (Feb.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780470121184
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Publication date: 2/4/2008
Edition number: 1
Pages: 258
Product dimensions: 6.14 (w) x 9.21 (h) x 0.63 (d)

Meet the Author

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column in Slate. The author of the classic book The Wizards of Armageddon, he has also written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and other publications. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT, worked as a foreign policy aide on Capitol Hill, and spent decades as a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter in Washington and Moscow. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, NPR journalist Brooke Gladstone.

Introduction 1

1 The Mirage of Instant Victory 7

2 The Fog of Moral Clarity 53

3 Chasing Silver Bullets 77

4 Breaking the World Anew 113

5 The Dreams Dissolve into Nightmares 149

6 Waking Up to Reality 189

Acknowledgments 201

Notes 203

Bibliography 221

Index 231

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Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

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Anne-Marie Slaughter

Michiko Kakutani

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