Provides some suggestions for revamping the American intelligence network, which has evolved erratically since the Vietnam War and is now desperately outdated in its methods

Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century

Codevilla, Angelo

Business & Money

Free Press

War presidents” are hardly exceptional in modern American history. To a greater or lesser extent, every president since Wilson has been a War President. Each has committed our country to the pursuit of peace, yet involved us in a seemingly endless series of warsconflicts that the American foreign policy establishment has generally made worse. The chief reason, argues Angelo Codevilla in Advice to War Presidents, is that America's leaders have habitually imagined the world as they wished it to be rather than as it is: They acted under the assumptions that war is not a normal tool of statecraft but a curable disease, and that all the world's peoples wish to live as Americans do. As a result, our leaders have committed America to the grandest of ends while constantly subverting their own goals.
Employing many negative examples from the Bush II administration but also ranging widely over the last century, Advice to War Presidents offers a primer on the unchanging principles of foreign policy. Codevilla explains the essentialsfocusing on realities such as diplomacy, alliances, war, economic statecraft, intelligence, and prestige, rather than on meaningless phrases like international community,” peacekeeping” and collective security.” Not a realist, neoconservative, or a liberal internationalist, Codevilla follows an older tradition: that of historians like Thucydides, Herodotus, and Winston Churchillwriters who analyzed international affairs without imposing false categories.
Advice to War Presidents is an effort to talk our future presidents down from their rhetorical highs and get them to practice statecraft rather than wishful thinking, lest they give us further violence.

Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft

History

Basic Books

In this cross-cultural study, Angelo M. Codevilla illustrates that as people shape their governments, they shape themselves. Drawing broadly from the depths of history, from the Roman republic to de Tocqueville's America, as well as from personal and scholarly observations of the world in the twentieth century, The Character of Nations reveals remarkable truths about the effects of government on a society's economic arrangements, moral order, sense of family life, and ability to defend itself.
Codevilla argues that in present-day America, government has had a profound negative effect on societal norms. It has taught people to seek prosperity through connections with political power; it has fostered the atrophy of civic responsibility; it has waged a Kulturkampf against family and religion; and it has dug a dangerous chasm between those who serve in the military and those who send it in harm's way. Informative and provocative, The Character of Nations shows how the political decisions we make have higher stakes than simply who wins elections.

The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

In the aftermath of the Cold war, people around the globe are reexamining and reinventing their political systems, conscious that political choices imply different ways of life. In this new cross-cultural study, Angelo M. Codevilla illustrates that as people shape their governments, they shape themselves. Drawing broadly from the sweep of history, from the Roman republic to de Tocqueville's America, as well as from personal and scholarly observations of the world in the twentieth century, The Character of Nations reveals remarkable truths about the effects of government on a society's economic arrangenments, moral order, sense of family life, and ability to defend itself.Codevilla argues that in present-day America government has had a profound negative effect on societal norms. It has taught people to seek prosperity through connections with political power; it has fostered the atrophy of civic responsibility; it has waged a Kulturkampf against family and religion; and it has dug a dangerous schasm between those who serve in the military and those who send it in harm's way. Informative and provocative, The Character of Nations shows how the political decisions we make have higher stakes than simply who wins elections.

The Character Of Nations: How Politics Makes And Breaks Prosperity, Family, And Civility

Anthropology

Explores the different aspects of war: its causes, methods, endings, and justifications - and along the way demolishes many current myths about war and peace.

Seabury, Paul

Military

Informing Statecraft

Polemic on the arms control issue confronting America and Russia in large and other players as identified.

The Arms Control Delusion

Wallop, Malcolm

Ics Pr

This book explores the causes, operations, endings, and justifications of war. In the process, it demolishes many currently fashionable illusions, such as that peace is always preferable to war, that wars occur because of accidents or misunderstandings, and that technology changes the nature of war. Abundant historical and contemporary examples show, the authors contend, that all wars are deliberate political choices, that military operations follow timeless principles, and that, as Aristotle taught, the natural aim of war is victory. This new edition of the book that Eugene Rostow called “a gem,” Michael Howard called “shrewd and trenchant,” and Library Journal called “persuasive” devotes substantial attention to the wars of the post–Cold War period, including “the war on terrorism.”

War: Ends and Means, Second Edition

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Books by Codevilla, Angelo