Advice to war presidents: a remedial course in statecraft.

• Author: Handley, John M.
• Position: Book review

Angelo M. Codevilla, Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft, New York: Basic Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-465-00483-6, 280 pages plus endnotes and index, hardback, $27.50.

Angelo M. Codevilla, a former naval officer and Foreign Service officer, served as a senior staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence between 1977 and 1985. He has worked as a senior research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute and taught international relations at Princeton and Georgetown Universities prior to accepting his current position as a professor of international relations at Boston University.

His published works include The Character of Nations; Informing Statecraft; War: Ends and Means, as well as a new translation of The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli.

At the outset, Dr. Codevilla tells his reader that this book "outlines the essentials of international affairs--diplomacy, alliances, war, economic statecraft, intelligence, and prestige ..." by contrasting them "with the two convenient constructs current in American discourse" (xi).

The two constructs include first the foreign relations as practiced by the founding fathers up to the 1890s and the Spanish-American War, and second everything since then, with particular emphasis on the period from the Wilson presidency through the second Bush presidency. Generally, the author concludes that clear terminology, as practiced prior to the 1890s, well served diplomacy and statecraft; while the muddled, often feel-good terminology of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries created more problems for diplomacy than could have been for seen. His call is to return to basics in all things diplomatic--including the use of language. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

One interesting and frustrating aspect of this book, certain to both irritate and motivate every potential reader of any particular political viewpoint, is the fact that the author views the current practice of U.S. statecraft from three differing schools: Liberal Internationalists, Neo-Conservatives, and Realists. He is not happy with any of them and basically considers all three approaches more similar than different.

The Liberals want to use U.S. power and prestige to support international organizations, the Neo-Cons hope to convert the nations of the world into democracies, and the Realists somehow believe that enlightened self-interest will drive the nations of the world toward moderation. Thus all three want to better...