The Mission: America's Military in the Twenty-First Century by Dana PriestReview by: Lawrence D. FreedmanForeign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2003), p. 152Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20033531 .

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Recent Books

militias and their largely civilian victims and the media in close attendance. Hedges' thoughts on why wars start are at best sketchy, but his explorations of what happens when they do make this book a compelling read and a valuable counter

weight to the more antiseptic discussions common among strategic analysts.

Bush at War. BY BOB WOODWARD.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002, 400 pp. $28.oo.

There was a time when it was necessary to wait for memoirs and the opening of archives before finding out how senior policymakers had handled the great issues of war and peace. We now expect an instant running commentary, and few are so well placed to provide one as Woodward. He had access to the key Washington players as they orchestrated the "war on terror" and also to notes of their meetings. The result is always informative and often riveting, as much for the early tussles over policy toward Iraq as for the conduct of the cam paign against al Qaeda. Woodward insists he provides only corroborated "facts," but he still distorts the overall picture by relying too much on cooperation with the key players and by paying too little attention to the actual course of events on the ground (especially from the battle of Tora Bora on) or failing to consider the wider context. As with Woodward's book on the Persian Gulf War, The Commanders, quick publication brings scoops but also a lack of perspective.

The Mission: America's Military in the Twenty-First Century. BY DANA PRIEST. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003, 404 pp. $26.95.

The proconsular role of the "CINCS," America's operational commanders in

chief who have the world divided among them, has figured prominently in con temporary U.S. foreign policy. In this substantial and important (if at times disjointed) book, Priest follows the CINCS as they go about their business, observing their close interaction with local political and military leaders, often in some of the more chaotic parts of the world. She notes how they can use arms sales, training missions, and special operations forces to promote American objectives.

The result is a fascinating and closely observed portrayal of life among the undergrowth of international affairs, in cluding some vivid descriptions of the special forces at work in Afghanistan and the problems of nation-building in Kosovo. By and large the CINCS get high marks, but Priest is right to observe a larger problem: the disproportionate resources available to the military, compared with civil agencies, intro duces an inevitable distortion into how the United States deals with difficult parts of the world.

Biological Warfare and Disarmament. New Problems/New Perspectives. EDITED BY SUSAN WRIGHT. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002, 464 pp. $85.oo

(paper, $29.95). This extremely usefuil and authoritative volume provides a coherent account of the history of biological weapons pro grams and the attempts to control them. It looks at the policies of the major pow ers as well as at key regional actors such as Israel and India. In terms of the current debates, of particular value is a history of the attempts to find out what Iraq has been up to and a discussion of the challenges to implementing the Biological Weapons

[152] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume82No.2

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