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Irrational Security

The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama

Daniel Wirls

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Winner of the Selection for Professional Reading List of the U.S. Marine Corps

The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring a "peace dividend" and the opportunity to redirect military policy in the United States. Instead, according to Daniel Wirls, American politics following the Cold War produced dysfunctional defense policies that were exacerbated by the war on terror. Wirls’s critical historical narrative of the politics of defense in the United States during this "decade of neglect" and the military buildup in Afghanistan and Iraq explains how and why the U.S. military has become bloated...

Winner of the Selection for Professional Reading List of the U.S. Marine Corps

The end of the Cold War was supposed to bring a "peace dividend" and the opportunity to redirect military policy in the United States. Instead, according to Daniel Wirls, American politics following the Cold War produced dysfunctional defense policies that were exacerbated by the war on terror. Wirls’s critical historical narrative of the politics of defense in the United States during this "decade of neglect" and the military buildup in Afghanistan and Iraq explains how and why the U.S. military has become bloated and aimless and what this means for long-term security.

Examining the recent history of U.S. military spending and policy under presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, Wirls finds that although spending decreased from the close of the first Bush presidency through the early years of Clinton’s, both administrations preferred to tinker at the edges of defense policy rather than redefine it. Years of political infighting escalated the problem, leading to a military policy stalemate as neither party managed to craft a coherent, winning vision of national security. Wirls argues that the United States has undermined its own long-term security through profligate and often counterproductive defense policies while critical national problems have gone unmitigated and unsolved.

This unified history of the politics of U.S. military policy from the end of the Cold War through the beginning of the Obama presidency provides a clear picture of why the United States is militarily powerful but "otherwise insecure."

Reviews

Reviews

A provocative thesis, with impressive statistics, charts, and numbers in support and a narrative accessible to the intelligent, informed lay reader.

This volume is an important contribution to a growing literature on the dysfunctional nature of national-security politics in the United States.

This volume will be a valuable resource.

Meticulously researched, highly detailed, and persuasively argued.

In this compact, meaty, and devastating critique, Daniel Wirls exposes both the continuities and the contradictions informing post–Cold War U.S. national security policies. What becomes abundantly and depressingly clear is how little those policies have had to do with keeping Americans safe and how much they derived from efforts to satisfy various domestic interests.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
256
ISBN
9780801894398
Illustration Description
17 line drawings
Table of Contents

List of Figures
Preface
1. Irrational Security
2. After the Cold War: From Buildup to Bottom-Up
3. What Comes Down Must Go Up: Clinton and the Politics of Military Spending
4. From Ambition to Empire: Bush

List of Figures
Preface
1. Irrational Security
2. After the Cold War: From Buildup to Bottom-Up
3. What Comes Down Must Go Up: Clinton and the Politics of Military Spending
4. From Ambition to Empire: Bush and Military Policy before and after 9/11
5. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Bush Military Buildup
6. Paying the Price: From Bush to Obama
Notes
Index

Author Bio
Featured Contributor

Daniel Wirls

Daniel Wirls is a professor and chair of the Department of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the coauthor of The Invention of the United States Senate, also published by Johns Hopkins, and the author of Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era.