The Fog of War

When the history of most major American wars has been written, both the US government and historians have promoted the idea that great "threats" from foreign nations motivated the conflicts. Yet in the vast majority of US conflicts, domestic politics, political movements, public opinion, and economic considerations had a crucial role in exaggerating foreign threats, excessively defining US interests and objectives, and causing or driving the American march to war. Analyses of such...
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When the history of most major American wars has been written, both the US government and historians have promoted the idea that great "threats" from foreign nations motivated the conflicts. Yet in the vast majority of US conflicts, domestic politics, political movements, public opinion, and economic considerations had a crucial role in exaggerating foreign threats, excessively defining US interests and objectives, and causing or driving the American march to war. Analyses of such domestic forces remain stunted as many American historians, whether consciously or not, buy into the myth that the US democracy goes to war reluctantly only when foreign "threats" become unbearably severe to American or world security. In The Fog of War: Piercing the Domestic Roots of Conflicts Throughout American History, Ivan Eland sheds this "heroic narrative" and shines a light on hidden underlying domestic forces, some unseemly, that often have propelled the United States to war throughout its history. Thus, when such factors are considered, many US wars look less heroic, more nuanced, or even excessively aggressive or unnecessary. Also, The Fog of War highlights the plethora of domestic ill-effects of wars--the most critical but sorely neglected ones-for example, penetration of central government control into civil society, distortion of the US checks and balances system by aggrandizement of presidential power at the expense of other governmental branches, and the severe erosion of civil liberties, including censorship, unconstitutional surveillance, denial of the right to a jury trial, illegal detention, and citizens' right to challenge their detention in court. When such consequential damage to the American republic at home is considered, Eland cautions that decisions to go war in the past often have been rash or unnecessary, thus arguing for greater congressional and societal deliberation in the future.