★★★★★ 5
It's How Wars End That Become Important Afterward
Format: Paperback
The twentiety century taught us a lot about wars and how they end. World War I showed us that making strong demands on the defeated (who didn't admit defeat to their own people) set the stage for the next big war.
World War II was fought until the Unconditional Surrender of the Germans and Japanese. Something that thinkers still debate as having made them fight all that harder.
VietNam was fought with no clear end in sight, and "another VietNam" entered our language.
The first Gulf War was ended when Colin Powell and Bush II debated how to end the war. They stopped before they had to go in and see what the Sunni's, Shiite's and Kurds made of the power vacuum left by the removal of Saddam would have created. Bush II is learning about this now.
This is the second revised edition of this book, originally published in 1971 and then updated in 1991 and now 2005 to reflect happenings in new wars.
Still some of the old wars had interesting insights that I didn't know before, such as how Finland, originally on Germany's side against Russia, made a peace with Russia and kicked the Germans out before they became a Russian province. Great Book.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2005
