Mission Failure: America And The World In The Post-Cold War Era, Mandelbaum - B +

                                               The end of the Cold War coincided with America's victory in the first Iraqi War. Thereafter, America chose to stay involved internationally and the form of our involvement, projecting our military strength around the world, remained the same. The problem is that the content of our foreign policy changed dramatically. "The main focus of American foreign policy shifted from war to governance.." America went from containment to transformation and failed on every front.
                                               The author takes to task the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. He faults Clinton for introducing human rights considerations into our China policy and for expanding NATO into eastern Europe, thus assuring the ongoing enmity of both China and Russia to the US. It should also be noted that he quotes George Kennan in the lead into the chapter, "..expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era." One of the lessons of the two world wars was that conciliatory policies toward the vanquished succeeded, whereas animosity did not. NATO expansion totally turned Russia away from the west, lost the advantage of winning the Cold War, and was one of  "the greatest blunders in the history of American foreign policy." Next, Clinton intervened in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, "places that had no significance for global peace and American well-being." Projecting American values was now a policy. In each instance,  our mission of transforming these places for the better failed.
                                                The Bush administration's response to Sept 11 was the declaration of war on terror, an attack on  Islamic extremism.  The first response in Afghanistan was successful, as Al-Qaeda was crushed in weeks and with very little effort. The Taliban were vanquished and the country returned to peace, and almost, prosperity.  However, the government we established in Afghanistan was not competent, and in 2005, a Taliban insurrection began. Assisted by Pakistan, the Taliban were quite effective against the corrupt Karzai regime.  Obama campaigned on the basis of Afghanistan being the 'good war' and doubled the number of American troops. Soon thereafter, while approving of a counter-intelligence plan, he also put an end-date on the operation. In essence, his policy was a head feint. He said one thing and did another. He didn't believe in nation-building in Afghanistan and was comfortable walking away.  Our longest military engagement accomplished virtually nothing after its initial success in scattering Al-Qaeda.
                                                 The Bush invasion of Iraq, however misbegotten, was successful in removing the Hussein regime. Anarchy quickly followed and a America, without an occupation plan, watched helplessly. An eight-year attempt at nation-building totally failed. America, under a timetable set up by the Bush administration, departed in 2010 only to return in Obama's second term when ISIS almost overran the country.  Thirteen years after the senseless invasion, neither Iraq nor America are better off for the effort.
                                                 The quarter-century of post- Cold War major power tranquility ended in 2014, when both Russia and China returned to their traditional roles in the world. And that is where we now stand. A key take-away here is the obvious, i.e., no matter how well intentioned, the US cannot do the impossible. It can't build nations out of tribal Rubik's cubes of hate and religious intolerance. It cannot make peace in the Middle East by making the Arabs accept Israel.  It cannot make Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, China, Iran, Russia or North Korea into Denmark. They are not enlightened, educated, tolerant societies with a foundation ready to adopt what we perceive to be good ideas. He suggests that the best we can do is to try and cultivate, not impose, western values. All in all, railing against our messianic over-reaching foreign policies is music to my ears. His most assertive statement though, is that the expansion of NATO was and will be the most significant mistake we have made in a very, very long time.  That is something I need to absorb and consider and am not sure I agree. Not expanding NATO  would have been based on the hope that the Russians would be less intransigent than they historically have been, that they would have been cooperative team players in the global world. Would a petro-state with a centuries long tradition of aggression and autocracy made that adjustment? I tend to think not.