For almost half a century, Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895–1970) was the most highly regarded writer on strategy and military matters in the English-speaking world and even today, his ideas are still discussed and debated. Although he helped to formulate Great Britain's military doctrine after the First World War, it was his critique of British strategic policy before and during the early years of the Second World War that earned him a seemingly unassailable reputation as a brilliant strategist.
In this unflinching but balanced book, John J. Mearsheimer reexamines Liddell Hart's career and uncovers evidence that he manipulated the facts to create a false picture of his role in military policy debates in the 1930s. According to Liddell Hart's widely accepted account, his progressive ideas about armored warfare were rejected by the British army and adopted instead by the more far-sighted German generals. The Wehrmacht's application of his theory of blitzkrieg, he claimed, resulted in the defeat of France in 1940, a disaster he foresaw. Setting the historical record straight, Mearsheimer shatters once and for all the myth of Liddell Hart's prescience in the interwar period.
Liddell Hart had, in fact, "been quite wrong on the basic military questions of the 1930s," Mearsheimer finds, "and his writings helped lead the British government into serious error. Wide recognition of Liddell Hart's misjudgments badly damaged his reputation during the war, and Mearsheimer shows how he mounted a successful campaign to restore his image. Although some of Liddell Hart's military theories are still relevant, Mearsheimer warns that they should be applied with caution. This troubling book offers a striking illustration of how history can be used and abused―how a gifted individual can create their own self-serving version of the past.
Based on scrupulously documented evidence, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History is certain to be of great interest to those concerned with military policy and history.

Liddell Hart & the Weight of History

Engineering & Transportation

John J. Mearsheimer

Engineering

Cornell University Press

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

History

Middle East

Penguin

In Why Leaders Lie, John Mearsheimer provides the first systematic analysis of lying as a tool of statecraft, identifying its different forms, the reasons for it, and the potential costs and benefits. Drawing both on historical and present-day examples, he argues that leaders often lie for good strategic reasons - as Roosevelt and Churchill did in World War Two - which makes blanket condemnation unrealistic and unwise. And there is always an important difference between lying to another state and lying to one's own people, as in the invasion of Iraq. John Mearsheimer discovers that interstate lying has always been unusual; due to the distrust among great powers, outright deceit is difficult to pull off, and sometimes backfires. Leaders more frequently mislead their own publics and democratic leaders like our own do it more often than dictators. This book explains why. There has never been a full discussion of international lying. Now a leading expert fills the gap with this richly informed and powerfully argued book. Why Leaders Lie provides a template for understanding the real world of high-level decision making.

Why Leaders Lie. John Mearsheimer

Duckworth Publishing

A major theoretical statement by a distinguished political scholar explains why a policy of liberal hegemony is doomed to fail In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad. It is widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build institutions. This policy of remaking the world in America's image is supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not what has happened. Instead, the United States has ended up as a highly militarized state fighting wars that undermine peace, harm human rights, and threaten liberal values at home. Mearsheimer tells us why this has happened.

Great Delusion, The

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

Die Israel-Lobby

Stephen M. Walt

Campus Verlag GmbH

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Books by John J. Mearsheimer