Thinking beyond War

This book argues that a major reason for America's propensity to 'lose the peace' is the way the nation defines war and how the U.S. military is currently organized for warfare. The author offers new propositions and operational approaches to war-planning that give new hope and practical solutions to overcoming the paradox of American Way of War.

"Thinking Beyond War is an exceptional examination of the historical, cultural, structural, and strategic underpinnings of the failure of the Bush administration to understand what victory in Iraq would look like and to fashion a viable plan to achieve it. In this penetrating analysis of US war making and its shortfalls since World War II, Isaiah Wilson reminds us that peace requires much more than operational military triumph and takes years to achieve even in the best of scenarios." - Peter R. Mansoor, Author of Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War

"Colonel Isaiah 'Ike' Wilson III is one of the brightest strategic thinkers in the U.S. army. As a soldier-scholar he has both served in Iraq and astutely examined what went wrong and sometimes right. In Thinking beyond War he offers us the fruit of years of first-hand study and careful analysis. He urges the U.S. military to get beyond its narrow focus on winning battles and to think more broadly about how to convert battlefield success into long-term political victories. Thinking beyond War offers an invaluable guide to thinking about these difficult yet vitally important issues." - Max Boot, Senior Fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of War Made New and The Savage Wars of Peace

ISAIAH WILSON is International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations.