Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft

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 essentials—focusing 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 Churchill—writers 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.

• Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy
• Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George
• You Run the Show or the Show Runs You: Capturing Professor Harold W. Rood's Strategic Thought for a New Generation
• The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It
• A STUDENT'S GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Student Guides to the Major Disciplines)
• The Modern Prince: What Machiavelli Can Teach Us in the Age of Trump
• Hell of Good Intentions
• The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
• The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
• The Modern Prince: What Leaders Need to Know Now