The Specter of Munich

Fülszöveg

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/HISTORl^l
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE SPECTER OF MUNICH
"The Specter of Munich offers a brilliant and persuasive reinterpretation , of the 1930s. Record's analysis demonstrates the high value for today's policy makers of the careful use of historical evidence. This is an out- ¦ standing study that deserves a wide readership."
—Prof Colin S. Gray, University of Reading, and author , oi Modern Strategy _ « —
"Jeffrey Record, one of America's leading military strategists, has written a classic study that should be required reading at not only war colleges but at all colleges. While it is a fascinating historical analysis of the Munich crisis and its subsequent uses in U.S. foreign policy, The Specter of Munich is at the same time an immediately relevant and ur gent critique of the current crisis. If policy makers, present and future, could learn to think as clearly as Record, that in itself would be the beginning of recovery"
—Sidney Blumenthal, former... Tovább

Fülszöveg

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/HISTORl^l
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE SPECTER OF MUNICH
"The Specter of Munich offers a brilliant and persuasive reinterpretation , of the 1930s. Record's analysis demonstrates the high value for today's policy makers of the careful use of historical evidence. This is an out- ¦ standing study that deserves a wide readership."
—Prof Colin S. Gray, University of Reading, and author , oi Modern Strategy _ « —
"Jeffrey Record, one of America's leading military strategists, has written a classic study that should be required reading at not only war colleges but at all colleges. While it is a fascinating historical analysis of the Munich crisis and its subsequent uses in U.S. foreign policy, The Specter of Munich is at the same time an immediately relevant and ur gent critique of the current crisis. If policy makers, present and future, could learn to think as clearly as Record, that in itself would be the beginning of recovery"
—Sidney Blumenthal, former assistant and senior adviser to President Clinton and senior fellow at the New "York _ ? i University Center on Law and Security
"Jeffrey Record has once again distilled some of the most salient lessons of history for illuminating perplexing contemporary national security challenges and crafting better strategy for assuring America's future. He is truly a leader among the very small group of national security specialists with sufficient strategic perspective to help us discern the unknown from the unfamiliar."
—Douglas Lovelace, Jr., senior national security strategist
$2495 Higher in Canada
No historical event has exerted more influence on America's postri945 use of military force than the failure of Anglo-French appeasement of Nazi Germany at the 1938 Munich Confer ence. Informed by the supposed grand lesson of Munich—namely, that capitulating to the demands of aggressive dictators always invites further aggression and makes inevitable a larger war on less favorable terms—American presidents from Harry Truman through George W Bush have relied on the Munich analogy not only to interpret perceived security threats but also to mobilize public opinion for military action and to condemn critics as appeasers or defeatists.
In The Specter of Munich, respected defense analyst Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at the disastrous diplomatic history of the 1930s. After identifying the complex considerations behind the Anglo-French appeasement of Hitler and the reasons for the policy's failure. Record disputes the stock thesis that unchecked aggression always invites fiirther aggression. He argues that appeasement failed primarily because Hitler was both unappeasable and unde-terrable—an extremely rare situation. Record proceeds to identify other lessons of the 1930s that are more relevant to meeting today's U.S. foreign policy and security challenges. Among those lessons are the severe penalties that for eign policy miscalculation can incur, the perils of strategic overextension, the constraints of public opinion in a democracy, and the virtue of consistency in threatening and using force.
The Specter of Munich concludes that the United States can learn a great deal from British and French failures of the 1930s, but the continued reliance on the specter of Adolf Hitler to interpret today's foreign security threats is a mistake. Making this analogy clouds the judgment of policymakers and the public, narrows policy options, and has and will continue to lead the country into unnecessary wars. Vissza