by Max Boot, Basic Books NY 2002.

Before beginning this review, it must be clearly understood that Mr. Boot is an editor with the “Wall Street Journal”. Why this is important will be explained in due course.

In 352 pages, the author attempts to cover everything from the Barbary Pirates through Somalia and Bosnia and editorialize a bit at the end. Inevitably the result is somewhat superficial although readers who have almost no knowledge of these conflicts will learn a lot. Still, this is a book with a mission and it shows.

The mission is to encourage Americans to think “We did it before and we can do it again! (If we do it right this time)”and to discredit the Powell Doctrine of only using overwhelming force in defense of only vital interests. As such it shows signs of being a bit rushed into print. Small errors creep in, e.g. Britain had no debtors’ prisons in 1900; The United States did not declare war on the Hapsburg Empire in 1917.

At other times the author repeats himself, e.g. Smedley Butler cheating death during the Boxer Rebellion. This is not to say the book is not well written, it is, only that it appears the author or his editor were in a hurry to get into print and ignored the details. More troubling is the author’s decision to ignore wars in which the US has motives that cannot be presented as pure and noble; all the Indian Wars, for example, and any involvement in Latin America after 1945, and to play down other unflattering incidents.

During the early 19th Century, for example, Navy captains sometimes acted on their own initiative to avenge imagined ‘slights’ to themselves, the flag, etc. People died. Boot’s discussion of these incidents, small affairs to be sure, is dismissive. More recently, Lt. Calley in “Nam or Major Waller in the Philippines made “a mistake” in deliberately killing civilians.

Obviously, war includes atrocity but if one is arguing in favor of war one would do well to face this fact squarely. This reviewer shares the author’s opinion that, on balance, American intervention in small wars has done more good that harm but Boot’s argument is muddled and confused.

It is beyond the scope of a review in this publication to detail Boot’s line of argument or his conclusions regarding later wars that this reviewer finds dubious. Suffice it to say there are a lot of wishful might have beens that Boot treats as certainties.

What does the book offer the colonial gamer? Well, an interesting and offbeat collection of scenario ideas, actually. The three-way tag team in Samoa during the 1880’s between Samoans, Germans and Anglo-Americans is this reviewer’s personal favorite (page 65) but others in the Caribbean the Philippines, Korea and China are also there for the finding. For that purpose, the book is certainly worth getting. Indeed, the descriptions of these actions are the best part of the book and thoroughly enjoyable to read. Whether the reader will want to plow through the rest is a matter of political taste.