Offers essential perspectives on the Cold War and post-9/11 eras and explores the troubling implications of the American tendency to fight wars without end.

Featuring lucid and penetrating essays by a stellar roster of scholars, the volume provides deep insights into one of the grand puzzles of the age: why the U.S. has so often failed to exit wars on its terms. Fredrik Logevall, Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: Taken together, these conflicts are the key to understanding more than a half century of American military history. In addition, they have shaped, in profound ways, the culture and politics of the United Statesas well as the nations in which theyhave been fought. This volume brings together international experts on American history and foreign affairs to assess the cumulative impact of the United States often halting and conflicted attempts to end wars.

From the introduction: The refusal to engage in historical thinking, that form of reflection deeply immersed in the US experience of war and intervention, means that this cultural amnesia is related to a strategic incoherence and, in these wars, the United States has failed in its strategic objectives because it did not define, precisely, what they were. If Vietnam was the tragedy, Iraq and Afghanistan were repeated failures. The objectives and the national interests were elusive beyond issues of credibility, identity, and revenge; the end point was undefined because it was not clear what the point was. What did the United States want from these wars? What did it want to leave behind?

David Fitzgerald is a Lecturer in the School of History, University College Cork, Ireland. His books includeLearning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine from Vietnam to Iraq (Stanford, 2013) andObama, US Foreign Policy and the Dilemmas of Intervention (with David Ryan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Acknowledgments

IntroductionDavid Ryan and David Fitzgerald

Part I: Vietnam

Chapter 1. The Importance of Being Popular: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Domestic Support for the Vietnam WarSarah Thelen

Chapter 2. The Things They Carry: Vietnam and the Legacies of the American WarEdwin A. Martini

Chapter 3. His Epitaph Is Also Ours: Robert McNamara, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and the Vietnam Wars Contested Usable PastDavid Kieran

Chapter 4. After the Fall of Saigon: Strategic Implications of Americas Involvement in VietnamRobert K. Brigham

Part II: Iraq and Afghanistan

Chapter 5. The Ironies of Overwhelming Victory: Exits and the Dislocation of the Gulf WarDavid Ryan

Chapter 6.Failing to End: Obama and IraqDavid Fitzgerald and David Ryan

Chapter 7. A Responsible End to the Afghan War: The Politics and Pitfalls of Crafting Success NarrativesJeffrey H. Michaels

Chapter 8. Flawed Afghanization: Underestimating and Misunderstanding the TalibanAntonio Giustozzi

Part III: The Cultural and Strategic Costs of War in the Early Twenty-First Century

Chapter 9. Changing the Subject: How the United States Responds to Strategic FailureAndrew J. Bacevich

Chapter 10. How Wars Do Not End: The Challenges for Twenty-First Century US Foreign Policy and InterventionScott Lucas

Chapter 11. Coming Home: Soldier Homecomings and the All-Volunteer Force in American Society and CultureDavid Fitzgerald

Chapter 12. How the United States Ends WarsMarilyn B. Young

Index