This book explores the causes, operations, endings, and justifications of war. In the process, it demolishes many currently fashionable illusions, such as that peace is always preferable to war, that wars occur because of accidents or misunderstandings, and that technology changes the nature of war. Abundant historical and contemporary examples show, the authors contend, that all wars are deliberate political choices, that military operations follow timeless principles, and that, as Aristotle taught, the natural aim of war is victory. This new edition of the book that Eugene Rostow called -a...

"War presidents" are hardly exceptional in modern American history. To a greater or lesser extent, every president since Wilson has been a War President. Each has committed our country to the pursuit of peace, yet involved us in a seemingly endless series of wars--conflicts that the American foreign policy establishment has generally made worse. The chief reason, argues Angelo Codevilla in Advice to War Presidents, is that America's leaders have habitually imagined the world as they wished it to be rather than as it is: They acted under the assumptions that war is not a normal tool of...