Why America Loses Wars

This provocative challenge to US politics and strategy maintains that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war.

How can you achieve victory in war if you don't know your political aims or what victory means? Donald Stoker reveals the flaws in US political thinking and strategy from the Korean War to the withdrawal from Afghanistan and lays the foundations for a better approach to the wars of tomorrow.How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political aims and a vision of what victory means? In this provocative challenge to US political aims and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly wars fought for limited aims, taking the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory and thus the ending of the war. He reveals how flawed ideas on so-called 'limited war' and war in general evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These ideas, he shows, undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace. Now fully updated to incorporate the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Why America Loses Wars dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow.