Rating: 
Summary: Recommended
Review: Mann has a theory: those shaping US foreign policy are influenced by their past experiences, be it in combat, government, academia or business. By tracing those careers, Mann provides a great back story to the current administration.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Insight into the Machinations of Bush War Crew
Review: Mann presents a thouroughly engrossing portrait of Bush's brilliant war cabinet members. After witnessing the astonishing performance of Ms. Rice at the recent congressional hearings on "How did 9/11 Happen", the world has been wondering where this amazing woman came from. Her meandering, pointless and completely non-sensical responses to the questions asked of her, made Clinton's "..it depends on what your definintion of "is" is.", look like the most profound statement ever uttered by a politician. And we certainly look forward to the "joint" appearance of Cheney and Bush in front of the committee soon. And Mann details Colin Powell's incredible case of WMD presented to the U.N., during which he uttered some nonsense about a fleet of Red Ryder wagons belonging to Sadam's grandkids being used as nuclear weapon factories, and displayed some photos of Sadam's backyard and pointed to some weeds as evidence of chemical WMD. Americans everywhere should feel comforted in the knowledge that the greatest minds in the history of civilization are at the controls.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written account of Cabinet
Review: Mann, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, has done a wonderful job of compiling information and putting together a strong picture of what makes those around President Bush tick. His profiles of Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Armitage and Wolfowitz are extremely well-researched. Mann uses numerous secondary resources, interviews with friends of the subjects, as well as interviews with the subjects themselves in order to create a well-rounded, balanced picture of Bush's advisors. There is little doubt from this picture that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are the driving force behind our foreign policy, with Bush essentially acting as a figurehead for the neo-cons, and Powell being little more than a distraction to the overall plan (albeit a necessary appeasement to the moderate Republican faction). This is an important read for anyone who simply shakes his or her head in amazement at what is going on in the current administration. By understanding the thought processes of this dysfunctional group -- whether one agrees with them or not -- we can at least have a modicum of understanding of their policies and actions.
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Summary: The Weinberger-Powell Doctrine and General Macarthur
Review: One topic covered in Mr. Mann's book is the so-called "Weinberger-Powell Doctrine." Consider, for example, the following passages (pp. 119 and 44):
"Weinberger unveiled his new guidelines in a speech at the National Press Club titled 'The Uses of Military Power.' America should not send its combat forces on overseas missions unless doing so was vital to U.S. national interests, Weinberger said, and it should do so only in cases in which the United States had the clear intent of winning. Moreover, the United States should have "clearly defined political and military objectives" for a combat mission and regularly reassess the situation to make sure it still met these objectives."
"'War should be the politics of last resort,' Powell decided after his second Vietnam tour. 'And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support; we should mobilize the country's resources to fulfill that mission and then go in to win.'"
It is interesting to note that many of the principles of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine were first enunciated by General Douglas Macarthur during the Korean War. Consider the following passage from William Manchester's biography of Macarthur "American Caesar" (p. 667):
"[General Macarthur] said that the theory of finite war introduced 'a new concept into military operations.' His own concept was 'that when you go into war, you have exhausted all other potentialities of bringing the disagreements to an end.' If he understood the State Department's position, it proposed 'a continued and indefinite campaign in Korea, with no definite purpose of stopping it until the enemy gets tired or you yield to his terms,' and that 'introduced into the military sphere a political control such as I have not known in my life or ever studied.' But he didn't really believe the administration's design was coherent. At one point his voice rose as he protested: 'The inertia that exists! There is no policy -- there is nothing, I tell you -- no plan, or anything. He asked whether the United States could continue to 'fight in this accordion fashion -- up and down -- which means that your cumulative losses are going to be staggering. It isn't just dust that is settling in Korea, Senator, he said, giving Acheson the back of his hand; 'It is American blood."
Can any finer description of the Vietnam War have been given than "an accordion war" where the goal was not to achieve victory, but to maximize the body count up and down South Vietnam? Macarthur memorably summed up his attitude in his farewell speech at West Point: "Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory." How might history have been different if Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had heeded the advice of the General, when he urged them not to wage finite war in Vietnam. Again from "American Caesar" (pp. 696-7):
"[General Macarthur] warned [President Kennedy] against the commitment of American solders on the Asian mainland ... Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., writes: 'Macarthur expressed his old view that anyone wanting to commit American ground forces on the Asian mainland should have his head examined.' ... Truman was urging an escalating U.S. commitment in Vietnam. The General disagreed. He said that he felt America should 'hold firm at the periphery' but avoid commitments on the mainland."
An interesting picture emerges: one in which the Democrats, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson, commit American troops to finite, stalemated warfare in Korea and Vietnam with no clear commitment to victory, wasting tens of thousands of American lives through political controls that create sanctuaries for the enemy in Manchuria, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, while the Republicans, the old General, his staff officer Caspar Weinberger, and Colin Powell, argue in favor of employing the American military only when the goal is well-defined, overwhelming force is to be applied, and there is an absolute commitment to fighting through to victory.
Thus, it would have been nice if Mr. Mann had gone into greater detail on the history of the Weinberger-Powell doctrine and the theory of finite warfare and containment. I, for one, would very much appreciate his analysis and insight on these issues. He has given us a very good book as it is. Would that the relationship between Macarthur and his staff officer Weinberger had fallen within his scope.
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Summary: Iraq....Why?
Review: Politics, regardless of its location, can be a murky state of affairs. Jim Mann's "Rise of the Vulcans" tries to shine a light on some of the murkier elements of contemporary US politics. His work is an admirable success.
It is very clear that the so-called Vulcans ie Rice, Armitage, Wolfowitz, et al have a near messianic zeal. They will brook no challenge to their collective world view. And that is a world view that sees a predominant America flexing its muscle whilst pursuing its interests.
Mann outlines the backgrounds of the players in some detail. His does this dispassionately and does not have an obvious axe to grind. However, the reader is left in no doubt as to competitive nature of the players. They each have very firmly held beliefs that allow for no shades of grey.
As an observer, I am in two minds as to the legitimacy for invading Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator whose rule was evil personified. I can shed no tears for his demise. Yet the world is also home to similar tyrants who indisputably hold a threat to the wider world. North Korea immediately springs to mind. Should the US invade? Well, it doesn't seem to be on the agenda. Also, why did the US and the wider world turn a blind eye to the Rwandan genocide?
Regardless of the conundrums above and the contradictions they provide for US foreign policy, Mann's work is good reading for all interested students of modern US history.
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Summary: Superb insight into the shaping of American policy
Review: The Vulcans is the name the 6 key figures of the Bush Administration foreign policy have chosen for themselves: an allusion to Vulcan, the crippled armaments maker of the Gods, who defended heaven. This is a really excellent work of contemporary history. Journalism, I think someone said, is history's first pass. Well as a first pass, this book is meticulously researched and fairly argued. It is also very well written and tells a gripping story. It makes the seemingly incomprehensible and incoherent aspects of the Bush foreign policy (at least to a European) entirely credible and logical. Nor is it unsympathetic to the shapers of that policy: Powell/Armitage at the State Department, Rumsfeld/ Wolfowitz at Defence, Rice and Cheney in the White House. It links their personal biographies and life experiences to the policy choices they have made: their desire to see America in the post Vietnam era strong and unencumbered again. Armitage in particular comes across as quite a compelling guy. The dedicated Navy man and hard-living covert warrior from Vietnam, who dedicates his family life to adopting and helping Vietnamese refugees, his career is nearly destroyed by Ross Perot and Iran/Contra and he rises again through his friendship with Powell. A man who believes more than anything that America should not abandon its allies. I haven't enjoyed a book about contemporary American policy as much since Fred Kaplan's The Wizards of Armageddon about Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn and the dawn of the atomic age. Skip all the other political potboilers this season and spend the time with this book. The student of American politics, American history and the curious observer of American foreign policy will find much here to digest and ponder. Whoever wins the presidency the future of American foreign policy will be shaped by these men (and 1 woman) and their actions and understanding how they got us to where we are will be vitally important.
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Summary: The Character of the Bush Foreign Policy Team
Review: This book vividly describes the careers of the six major players on the Bush foreign policy team, showing how each of their experiences helped to define their current views on America's role in the world, and how these views have affected U.S. foreign policy. James Mann approach is unusual in that he purposely neglects President Bush's contribution to his own foreign policy. Mann believes Bush took office without strongly-held opinions or knowledge of particular foreign policy issues, and that he is satisfied working within the assumptions of these six who serve under him.* While the members of the Bush foreign policy team had and still have numerous differences in their views on geopolitics, they did share one common belief. In the darkest days of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, all of them believed in reinvigorating the U.S. military, and that America's best days lie ahead. This put them at odds with the prevailing attitude of the 1970s' foreign policy elite, as best represented by Henry Kissinger. That view assumed America was in decline, and that it would have to come to an accomodation with the Soviet Union. Mann shows that these six -- to one degree or another --rejected that view. The failure of Vietnam did not represent the future of America for them; it was an aberration. Despite this common belief, Mann catalogues the various differences between the team members, and shows how important their experiences were in shaping their beliefs. Colin Powell is not nearly as dovish as popularly believed, but he is distrustful of civilians' grandiose expectations of military power because of his own experiences in Vietnam. Donald Rumsfeld's political instincts and opportunism were major reasons he turned against the Vietnam War during the Nixon administration, but the same traits also contributed to his later more hawkish sentiments as Secretary of Defense under both Ford and, much later, Bush. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, and Richard Armitage also each have their interesting and unique ways they came to their positions. The book is at its most fascinating when dealing with these early personal histories. Mann is fair in dealing with the six policymakers. He takes seriously their point of views, even though -- if I had to guess -- I would say he is not personally sympathetic to them. But instead of a negative critique, he's more concerned with showing how character and personal history affect foreign policy in this Bush administration. His book is a marvelous example of how valuable that approach can be. ***** * (I'm not sure Mann's view on the president is accurate. Daalder and Lindsay's "America Unbound" sees Bush as the ultimate authority on foreign policy in his White House -- someone who has overruled Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell on substantive foreign policy issues. Whatever the case, Bush is not a part of this story, and his absence does not affect the quality of this book.)
Rating:
Summary: Must Read Book
Review: This book was a gift for my birthday. I highly recommend it to anyone (right or left) who is interested in public policy and specifically, foreign policy. This is a must read book.
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Summary: Key To World Supremacy: Build Up Your Military, Young Man!!!
Review: This election year that's seen soullessly traitorous liberals degenerate into abominably more disparagingly insane, partisan venom segregatively against the president, it's comforting to have a tome produced by an author who neutrally doesn't take sides. Mann appreciably rejects vitriolic-motivated emotions for a sweeping, authoritatively cumulative approach at chronicling some of the Bush Admin.'s top policymakers, self-named after the Roman god of metalwork, proving even ex-LA Times correspondents are capable of fairness. To be sure, Mann's culpable of prejudices like opining Vietnam was a failure and taking the hardest stance in the Iraq war's aftermath, akin to squalid anti-war biases. Mann's aim is to scrutinize the six foreign policy advisers to inspect the influences their belief systems formed through experience have in shaping Bush's current policies. Thankfully, these six aren't suffering from liberals' "moral relativism", the notorious term that equivocally subordinates liberals to believe that hostile regimes will play fair, a side-effect from their refusal to judge anything. While liberals are afflicted with an obsession of "balance of power"-cruelly unrighteous mentality whereby upright systems like America willfully overlook blatantly genocidal regimes like the former USSR and present-day Arab countries-these Vulcans nobly insist on intervention when a regime's oppressive, likely communistic and thus hostile. However, the contrast must be emphasized that before Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick theorized in Commentary magazine's article that America employed double-standards for regimes that were pro-US versus communist ones, neoconservatives weren't keen on pushing democratic reforms on governments that were aiding America despite their personal abuses. The discomfort for neoconservatives was the Shah of Iran's pitiful example of democracy-instillation, as American influence unintentionally equaled Islamofascist revolution. Later on, America would successfully invert this slight apprehension to encourage democracy in the Philippines in a non-pestilent manner. There, the Reagan Admin. subtly pressured Marcos to resign to preempt a potentially genocidal coup by the bastard Communist movement arising out of the leftist gutter because it was gaining additionally antagonistic incitement under Marcos' dictatorship. The Vulcans believe in one overriding philosophy dictating their policy: American military power is unmatchable and used to advocate defense of America's national interests and democracy. This philosophy's most visible materialization is Iraq today, where Bush's policies are implanting the foothold in democracy, modernity there (Bush's policies ARE progressively successful, fearmonger liberals!!!!). If the stereotypical anti-war/liberal crowd schemes to chide neoconservatives for the American buildup in unequaled military dominance, this book provides the refutation to their scapegoating. America's unreachable military might is solely an effect of other countries' post-Cold-War retrenchment in military budgets, as the Soviet threat disappeared, except America's leaders were savvy enough to foresee likely menaces emerging from areas beyond mere Soviet domination, such as the Middle East. Wolfowitz, particularly, was the author of a foreshadowing paper-Limited Contingency Study-that predicted precisely the shift of critical attention to the Middle East as the newly perilous zone where to expect invasion because of its vital oil supplies. While exorbitant-liberal felons like Teddy "Alcoholics Anonymous" Kennedy were misjudging to direct the suppositionally available funds from the reduced Soviet danger to unpromisingly sweeping, social-spending programs, Bush I's Admin.-Cheney, Wolfowitz, Powell-were maintaining that America required a steadfast level of military spending. RotV is covertly useful in murderously derogating the iniquitous brand scheming liberals cast on Bush-that he's "unilateral". Mann orderly tabulates the times throughout the nineties where America was already qualifying itself to take more "unilateral", more independent, positions in the post-Cold-war world and thus solidification of lone superpower status under BILL CLINTON!!!! That's right, obstinately discriminatory liberals-CLINTON initiated American "unilateralism" by, while not declaring North Korea, Iraq and Iran as the proverbial "axis of evil", grouping those dictatorships as the "three thoughest challenges faced" in nuclear weaponry and missile containment. Mann recounts how CLINTON also "defied" UN "authority" by conducting the Kosovo intervention!!!! CLINTON was accused of "unilateralism" first, when he, judiciously, spurned signing a treaty banning land mines' use, opposed joining the UN-tyrannical, unauthorized "International Criminal Court" (ignobly relapsing by "signing" the treaty immediately before leaving office doesn't count; Clinton still fought sending the treaty to the Senate, and didn't recommend Bush's incoming Admin. to have it ratified), and prohibited submitting the Kyoto treaty to Congress. Also noteworthy is some policies shadily attributed to Bush-arming Taiwan and zero exclusive talks with North Korea before multilateral talks about its nukes program-that have been vilely misconstrued by liberals are actually updated extensions of Dole's platforms in his 1996 election bid. Mann demonstrates how neoconservatism rose individually in the Democratic Party-callously sinking today's liberals' misconstructions that neoconservatism's a movement from the "radical right" of the Republicans. Many, once proud Democrats like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Jackson and Hubert Humphrey were LOTS more regenerate than today's counterculture wackjobs infesting Democrats nowadays, like Dean, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore and Byrd. These Democrats of old were so regenerate they joined with Republicans in voting for measures that helped America, unlike the five extremists aforementioned, like opposition to the left-wing-errant détente which imposed a "balance of power" tolerance liberals are irredeemably preoccupied with for hostile regimes, as long as they didn't overtly hurt America. The Vulcans'-especially Wolfowitz-neoconservatism embraced the breakthrough philosophy of Leo Strauss, who patronized denouncing liberalism's moral relativism, since that'd mislead into the gullible subterfuge of believing adverse regimes are equal with democracies-that'd in turn misdirect into getting duped by said regimes' clandestineness. Cheney's a prominent torchbearer for this mentality, while Mann offers that Rice is more of a "peacemaker" in the Admin., playing liaison between the hawks and more dovish-leaning members. Rumsfeld, curiously enough, was dovish during Vietnam, yet graduated into hawkish stands while administering Afghanistan and Iraq. Though conservative, Powell and Armitage may be segregated finely from hawks of the Admin.. The only ones with on-the-ground combat experience, they fishily espouse the most caution concerning committing Americans to war before a definitive plan, though firmly share the hawks' idealism of indomitable American power. As a bonus, Mann includes personal and professional photographs of the Vulcans from their early years onwards.
Rating:
Summary: A basically fair accessment....
Review: This is a pretty fair accessment of the Bush team, objectively written for the most part, neither favoring nor opposing our current foreign policy. In short, it succeeds in doing something 99 percent of historians today fail to do: divorce themselves of their personal politics and stick to the facts. That's not to say the book is PERFECTLY neutral, but Mann does a very good job compared to the extremely biased "history" you typically see in such books, even from the academic world. So this is a rare book, one that BOTH sides of the political spectrum can read and learn from. In future years, this will probably be one of the few current political books that is referenced as a legitimate source in this period of American history.
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