Choosing War in Iraq: Lessons for Today

Why did America invade Iraq in 2003? What led policymakers to abandon a paradigm of containment and replace it with one of overthrow? Why did George W. Bush, who had run for president as a critic of nationbuilding, end up engaging in America's biggest nationbuilding project in decades? There are few people better equipped to answer that question than Mike Mazarr, who interviewed dozens of decisionmakers and dug through every declassified document from the period.   Michael J. Mazarr is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Previously he worked at the U.S. National War College, where he was professor and associate dean of academics; as president of the Henry L. Stimson Center; senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; senior defense aide on Capitol Hill; and as a special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His primary interests are U.S. defense policy and force structure, disinformation and information manipulation, East Asian security, nuclear weapons and deterrence, and judgment and decisionmaking under uncertainty. Mazarr holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Maryland.  The 2019 book that forms the basis for this discussion is Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy.