From the Publisher
"Planning to Fail breaks new ground in the study of US grand strategy and military performance. Instead of asking why the United States chose to fight in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Lebovic focuses on how different administrations waged each war and how haphazard strategic planning made it impossible to achieve their aims. His accounts of these long and unsuccessful campaigns are rich, detailed, and convincing, and the book contains many important lessons for leaders hoping to avoid their predecessors' mistakes." —Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
"In this path-breaking study, Lebovic explains how the policy milieu in Washington produced similar patterns in the course and conduct of US intervention in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials responded to proximate goals in each of these conflicts, never devising a grand strategy that could capitalize on success or reduce the possibility of failure. Planning to Fail offers critical insight into the limits of the policy process when it comes to avoiding the perils of intervention." —James J. Wirtz, Dean of School of International Graduate Studies and Professor, Naval Postgraduate School"It has always been a great puzzle of American politics why US policymakers, who are normally skeptical of nation-building and other ambitious schemes of social engineering at home, regularly are overly optimistic about it abroad, especially when they can do it using the US military. Lebovic offers a troubling but compelling explanation for the political myopia that has plagued recent US decisions to go to war from Vietnam through Iraq. We can only hope that after reading his book, future policymakers will take the long, long look before they leap into complex military operations." —Michael C. Desch, Packey J. Dee Professor of International Affairs and Founding Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center