War in the '90s

A book about American defense and foreign policy written before the transforming attacks of September 11 seems hardly worth the effort. But it would be a mistake to bypass David Halberstam's War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals.

This is Halberstam at his best--the master blender adding enough personality to his basic political analysis to produce a satisfying dish of historical journalism. His compelling biographical chapters about the leading figures who made U.S. foreign and defense policy during the past decade alternate with highly readable scrutiny of the events unfolding during that time. At the end, a reader can contemplate the drift and uncertainties of the 1990s with more insight and comprehension.

Indeed, it is remarkable that Halberstam, writing months before the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, identifies aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy that have only been publicly underscored since September 11--particularly the rise of deadly accurate air power, and the lack of impact the wars of the 1990s had on everyday Americans. Even now, the war in Afghanistan is not taxing the U.S. military as much as Kosovo or the ongoing involvement in the Balkans.

As Halberstam puts it when describing the reaction of the country to Clinton's Kosovo bombing campaign of 1999: "[The president] had authorized the military strike, the country was at war whether it wanted to admit it or not, our bombers were hitting southern Europe every day, and the country went about its business as usual. It was something stunningly new--war in a time of peace."

To see how right Halberstam still is, consider the advice that George W. Bush, until he recently rediscovered voluntarism, was giving to his countrymen who wanted to know what they could do to help with the war on terrorism: Go shopping.

The backbone of this book is the Balkans conflict. Halberstam's 500 pages start with George H.W. Bush's early dithering, continue through Clinton's many hesitations, and end with NATO's determination to win in Kosovo at any cost, even if it meant losing ground troops.

At the end, a reader is struck by the fact that what America and Europe were engaged in with Slobodan Milosevic was really a "10 Years' War." Except no one wanted to admit it, or as Halberstam put it, the nation was "shockingly self-absorbed." The runaway prosperity of the 1990s was just too important and too much fun to let a war--or massacres in Srebrenica or Rwanda--get in the way.

Some of the most enjoyable parts of the book are the profiles. The best are the portrayals of Anthony Lake, Clinton's first national security adviser, and Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's ambassador to Germany. Later, Holbrooke would serve as the U.N. ambassador and, ultimately, America's troubleshooter for the Balkans.

Lake and Holbrooke cut their teeth as youngsters in the State Department during the Vietnam War, were one-time friends who became intense rivals, and were polar opposites in personality. Lake, cool and intelligent, with the personality of a diffident academic, never established a personal connection to the garrulous Clinton and usually seemed to lack the necessary gumption to push and guide the inexperienced Arkansas native. Yet in the months before he left the administration, Lake was instrumental in getting Clinton to finally bomb the Serb forces in Bosnia to force a settlement.

In contrast, Holbrooke is presented as a relentless, brilliant, and talented diplomat, with an ego the size of a Humvee. Yet Halberstam says that Holbrooke masterfully guided the Dayton Accords to completion and was nearly always right about what Milosevic would do next.

Holbrooke is one of several Halberstam heroes. Among the others are William Perry--Clinton's second, and best, Defense secretary--and Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, who replaced the larger-than-life Colin L. Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Shalikashvili, the down-to-earth man with the unpronounceable name, whose father was born in the Russian client state of Georgia, demonstrated that he was far more willing than his predecessor to use force in the Balkans. He was famous for saying that the Pentagon could not just put up a sign on the door that read, "I'm sorry, we only do the big ones."

Moreover, Shalikashvili was a skilled diplomat and organizer, and he was the key figure in establishing Clinton's Partnership for Peace program--the "NATO-Lite" for Eastern European and Central Asian nations. The war against the Taliban in Afghanistan could not have taken root without the years of diplomatic tilling NATO did in the Central Asian nations under the Partnership for Peace.

It has been 20 years since Halberstam wrote The Best and the Brightest, his exhaustive analysis of the civilian and military leaders who got America into the Vietnam bog. That book echoes in this one, in his dead-on analysis of the tensions between civilians and the military in crafting American foreign and defense policy. This tension is one of the most important aspects of U.S. decision-making, and too few writers understand it. Halberstam does.

In the end, he concludes that foreign policy was never a priority throughout much of the 1990s because, in truth, the threats to American power and pre-eminence were insignificant. "Foreign policy was not high on the political agenda, primarily because whatever the forces that might threaten the future of this country were, they were not yet visible." They became so on September 11.