Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Max Boot

Max Boot (born September 12, 1969) is a Russian-born naturalized American historian, author, and foreign policy analyst specializing in military history and U.S. national security strategy.^[1]^[2] Immigrating from Moscow to the United States as a child, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's in history from Yale University.^[2] Boot serves as the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he has analyzed American interventions and power projection since joining in 2002.^[3] He is also a columnist for The Washington Post, contributing weekly opinion pieces on international affairs and domestic politics from a perspective favoring assertive U.S. global leadership over isolationism.^[4] Among his significant achievements, Boot has authored best-selling books such as The Savage Wars of Peace (2002), which examines U.S. successes in small wars and advocates for counterinsurgency doctrines, Invisible Armies (2013) on guerrilla warfare across history, and Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024), a biography named one of the New York Times' ten best books of the year.^[5] Initially aligned with neoconservative advocacy for regime change and military engagements like the Iraq War, Boot later expressed regrets over execution while maintaining support for interventionism, and emerged as a sharp critic of Donald Trump, Republican populism, and what he terms the "corrosion of conservatism."^[6]

Early Life and Education

Childhood and Immigration to the United States

Max Boot was born on September 12, 1969, in Moscow, then part of the Soviet Union, to parents of Jewish descent who faced systemic oppression under the communist regime.^[7]^[8] His family background reflected the challenges endured by Soviet Jews, including state-sponsored antisemitism and restrictions on religious and cultural expression, which contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the collectivist system.^[9] In 1976, at the age of seven, Boot immigrated to Los Angeles with his mother and grandmother, joining his father who had preceded them; this move was driven by the family's rejection of Soviet authoritarianism and pursuit of greater personal freedoms unavailable under communism.^[9]^[10] The emigration occurred amid a significant wave of Soviet Jewish exodus in the 1970s, with approximately 291,000 Jews and relatives granted exit visas between 1970 and 1988, many citing antisemitism and economic stagnation as key factors, though precise annual figures for 1976 are not disaggregated in available records. Upon arrival in the United States, Boot encountered stark contrasts between the Soviet system's material shortages, ideological indoctrination, and surveillance state—experiences that instilled in him an early appreciation for American individualism, market-driven prosperity, and democratic openness, fostering a foundational aversion to collectivist ideologies.^[11]^[12] This transition from a repressive environment to one of opportunity reinforced his family's emphasis on self-reliance over state dependency, shaping his lifelong prioritization of liberty as a causal antidote to totalitarian control.^[9]

Academic Training and Influences

Boot received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with high honors from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991.^[2] ^[3] He then pursued graduate studies at Yale University, earning a Master of Arts degree in diplomatic history in 1992.^[2] ^[7] ^[3] His coursework at Yale centered on the historical dynamics of international relations and military strategy, fostering an analytical framework that prioritized empirical evidence from past conflicts and empires over ideological abstractions.^[2] This graduate emphasis on diplomatic history provided Boot with tools to critique isolationist policies, drawing causal connections between historical precedents—like Britain's management of colonial insurgencies—and the requirements for sustained U.S. global engagement.^[3] While specific academic mentors from Yale are not prominently documented in Boot's public accounts, his self-directed immersion in primary sources on warfare and statecraft during this period reinforced a realist orientation, evident in his subsequent rejection of naive unilateralism in favor of strategy informed by archival realities.^[2] This training underscored the causal role of military innovation and adaptability in preserving great-power influence, themes that permeated his early intellectual development.^[3]

Professional Career

Entry into Journalism and Early Roles

Boot commenced his professional journalism career as a writer and editor at The Christian Science Monitor from 1992 to 1994, where he served briefly as an assistant national editor.^[10] In February 1994, he joined The Wall Street Journal as an assistant features editor on the editorial page.^[13] By mid-1997, Boot had advanced to editorial features editor, a role equivalent to op-ed editor, responsible for curating opinion pieces on domestic and international topics.^[13] ^[14] During his eight years at the Journal, he contributed editorials that analyzed post-Cold War geopolitical shifts, including economic and political transitions in Russia following the Soviet collapse.^[15] Concurrently, Boot engaged with emerging conservative media outlets, becoming a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard shortly after its launch in 1995 by William Kristol.^[16] He published his debut article in the magazine that year, participating in its promotion of neoconservative principles such as robust U.S. leadership in fostering democratic institutions abroad.^[16] In these early capacities at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard, Boot built a reputation for incisive commentary on foreign policy, frequently drawing on empirical historical precedents—like the efficacy of U.S.-led occupations after World War II—to advocate for targeted military engagements that advanced American interests and stability in volatile regions.^[3] This foundation in conservative editorial circles positioned him as a voice for interventionist strategies amid 1990s debates over humanitarian and strategic deployments, such as in the Balkans.^[10]

Authorship of Key Books on Military History

Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, published in 2002 by Basic Books, analyzes over a century of U.S. military interventions from the early 19th century through World War II, arguing that these "small wars"—including counterinsurgencies and expeditions—largely succeeded in advancing American interests and power projection.^[17] Boot draws on historical case studies, such as the Barbary Wars (1801–1805) and the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), to contend that U.S. forces achieved high success rates—estimated at around 90% in 19th-century operations—through adaptive tactics, limited commitments, and integration of military with diplomatic efforts, contrasting this with failures in larger conventional wars. This empirical approach underscores causal factors like political will and resource allocation over sheer force size, challenging narratives of inherent American ineptitude in irregular conflicts.^[18] In War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (2006, Gotham Books), Boot examines four "revolutions in military affairs"—gunpowder (16th century), industrial (19th century), second industrial (early 20th century), and information age (late 20th century)—demonstrating how technological innovations, when adopted by adaptable states, shifted victory probabilities in warfare.^[19] He traces causal links, such as how gunpowder artillery enabled centralized monarchies to dominate feudal knights, or precision-guided munitions in the 1991 Gulf War amplified U.S. advantages, arguing that laggards in these shifts faced obsolescence while innovators gained decisive edges.^[20] Boot's analysis prioritizes first-principles reasoning on how matériel revolutions interact with doctrine and organization, evidenced by battles like Agincourt (1415) and Midway (1942), to explain long-term geopolitical outcomes rather than isolated events.^[21] Boot's Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (2013, Liveright), spans nearly 30 centuries of insurgencies, reviewing over 400 cases to reveal that guerrilla forces succeed in only about 20–25% of conflicts since the 18th century, often requiring a conventional phase or external support to prevail.^[22] Drawing on data from ancient revolts to modern examples like the Afghan mujahideen, Boot critiques romanticized views of insurgents as inexorably triumphant, emphasizing empirical patterns where counterinsurgents prevail through persistence, local alliances, and disrupting supply lines—factors evident in failures like the Viet Cong's reliance on North Vietnamese regulars.^[23] This work applies causal realism by isolating variables like terrain and ideology, showing that prolonged attrition favors better-resourced states over pure asymmetry.^[24]

Senior Positions in Media and Think Tanks

In 2018, Boot joined The Washington Post as a columnist specializing in national security and foreign policy, marking a transition from his prior roles at conservative-leaning outlets like The Wall Street Journal.^[25] His columns frequently reference declassified U.S. intelligence assessments and official reports to underscore threats from state actors, such as Russian election interference and Chinese military expansion, influencing mainstream discourse on interventionist responses.^[4] Concurrently, Boot has served as a CNN global affairs analyst since approximately 2018, appearing regularly to comment on geopolitical crises, including cybersecurity vulnerabilities exploited by adversaries to erode U.S. alliances and democratic processes.^[3] This role amplifies his advocacy for robust deterrence strategies, drawing on empirical data from intelligence community evaluations rather than speculative narratives. At the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Boot holds the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellowship in National Security Studies, a position he has maintained since 2002 but which intensified post-2010 amid rising global tensions.^[3] In this capacity, he has contributed to CFR analyses and events examining adversarial tactics, such as hybrid warfare and influence operations aimed at destabilizing Western institutions, often co-informing reports that advocate heightened U.S. preparedness and alliances against autocratic regimes.^[26] Boot's earlier recognition with the 2007 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism—awarded for columns defending U.S. foreign engagements in Iraq and humanitarian crises in Darfur—underscored his intellectual defense of interventionism, though his subsequent platform shifts reflected evolving alignments away from traditional conservative media ecosystems toward establishment foreign policy circles.^[27] These affiliations have positioned him as a key voice in shaping hawkish consensus on confronting peer competitors, prioritizing verifiable threat assessments over isolationist retrenchment.

Political Ideology and Evolution

Foundations in Neoconservatism and Interventionism

Max Boot's neoconservative foundations emphasize the strategic use of American military power to foster democratic governance abroad, viewing such interventionism as a continuation of historical patterns where limited engagements enhanced U.S. global influence. In his 2002 book The Savage Wars of Peace, Boot chronicled over a century of U.S. "small wars"—from the Philippine-American War to post-World War II counterinsurgencies—arguing that these operations, often dismissed as peripheral, empirically built American primacy by curbing threats and imposing order without full-scale mobilization.^[28] He posited that post-Cold War unipolarity, evidenced by the Soviet collapse following Reagan-era defense spending increases from $134 billion in 1980 to $253 billion in 1989 (adjusted for inflation), afforded the U.S. unmatched capacity for such proactive realism, rejecting isolationist retrenchment in favor of forward defense.^[29] Boot critiqued left-leaning multilateralism, exemplified by UN paralysis in the 1990s Balkans crises, as causally ineffective when consensus delays decisive action against aggressors. He advocated U.S.-led coalitions, as in the 1995 Dayton Accords ending the Bosnian War after NATO airstrikes halted Serb advances that had killed over 100,000, demonstrating how American airpower and ground presence could enforce stability without awaiting veto-prone international approval.^[30] Similarly, the 1999 Kosovo intervention, where U.S. forces spearheaded a 78-day bombing campaign that compelled Yugoslav withdrawal and averted further ethnic cleansing of Albanians, underscored for Boot the efficacy of unilateral realism—prioritizing outcomes over procedural niceties—over pure multilateral deference, which had failed in Rwanda's 1994 genocide claiming 800,000 lives.^[31] While highlighting pros such as threat containment—e.g., neutralizing Milosevic's expansionism and preventing wider European instability—Boot disinterestedly noted cons like potential overextension, citing historical cases where prolonged occupations strained resources, as in the 1899-1902 Philippine insurgency costing 4,200 U.S. lives.^[32] Nonetheless, he contended that empirical successes in curbing immediate dangers and accruing long-term geopolitical leverage justified selective interventionism, grounded in U.S. military advantages that minimized casualties relative to inaction's costs, such as unchecked authoritarian proliferation.^[33] This framework positioned neoconservatism not as ideological zealotry but as pragmatic adaptation to power asymmetries, favoring "hard Wilsonianism" that wedded moral promotion of liberty to realist force application.^[29]

Advocacy for Iraq War and Post-9/11 Policies

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Max Boot advocated for a robust U.S. military response to dismantle terrorist networks and preempt threats from hostile regimes, framing American power as an imperial force for global stabilization. In his October 15, 2001 Weekly Standard essay "The Case for American Empire," he argued that the U.S. should not shrink from exerting hegemony to suppress disorder, citing historical precedents like British and Roman empires that quelled anarchy through direct intervention, and applying this to post-9/11 needs such as regime change in Afghanistan and beyond.^[34] This perspective informed his support for the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, which rapidly toppled the Taliban and destroyed al-Qaeda training camps, achieving verifiable successes like the elimination of key operatives and disruption of the group's central command structure by mid-2002, thereby preventing immediate follow-on attacks on the scale of 9/11.^[35] Boot strongly endorsed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, relying on contemporaneous intelligence assessments that Saddam Hussein's regime retained weapons of mass destruction capabilities and posed a proliferation risk, while also flouting 16 UN Security Council resolutions since 1991. In a February 13, 2003 New York Times op-ed, he rejected oil interests as the motive—pointing to Iraq's oil being tradable under sanctions and post-invasion reconstruction costs exceeding short-term gains—and instead highlighted the regime's existential threat, including potential links to terrorism and regional destabilization.^[36] He further promoted the neoconservative rationale of deposing Saddam to seed democracy, anticipating it could catalyze a "domino effect" of liberalization across the Arab world by replacing a totalitarian system with representative governance, drawing parallels to post-World War II reconstructions in Germany and Japan.^[37] Following Hussein's capture in December 2003 and execution in December 2006, Boot defended the invasion's core objective of regime removal, emphasizing Saddam's documented atrocities as causal justification independent of WMD intelligence failures, which he later conceded were erroneous. The Ba'athist regime under Saddam was responsible for mass killings, including the 1988 Anfal campaign that gassed and executed 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds in genocide, chemical attacks on Halabja killing 5,000 civilians on March 16, 1988, and broader purges, invasions, and suppressions totaling an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 civilian deaths from 1979 to 2003.^[37] ^[38] Boot critiqued operational shortcomings, such as insufficient U.S. troop commitments (peaking at 170,000 in 2003 before drawdowns) and Paul Bremer's 2003 de-Baathification order that fueled insurgency by alienating Sunni elites, but maintained that leaving Saddam in power would have perpetuated threats, including his payments to Palestinian suicide bombers' families ($25,000 per attack from 2000-2003) and defiance of inspections.^[37] Extending his post-9/11 hawkishness to Afghanistan, Boot pushed for escalation amid Taliban resurgence after initial gains eroded by 2006, co-authoring a March 12, 2009 New York Times op-ed advocating a "surge" of 40,000 additional troops to implement counterinsurgency doctrine, prioritizing population security over mere border raids.^[39] In a November 2009 Commentary article, he endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's strategy, arguing it could replicate Iraq's 2007 surge successes by clearing insurgents, holding terrain, and building Afghan forces, thereby sustaining achievements like al-Qaeda's core decapitation (e.g., the deaths of Abu Zubaydah in 2002 and Ayman al-Zawahiri's precursors) against criticisms of indefinite nation-building costs exceeding $2 trillion by 2021.^[40] Without such commitment, he warned, Afghanistan risked reverting to a terrorist sanctuary, underscoring causal trade-offs between upfront military investment and long-term homeland security.^[37]

Rift with Trumpism and Shift Toward Anti-MAGA Stance

Boot declined to endorse Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, joining the #NeverTrump faction of conservatives who viewed his candidacy as incompatible with traditional Republican principles.^[41] Trump's emphasis on withdrawing from global commitments and renegotiating alliances, as articulated in campaign speeches like his June 2016 foreign policy address promising an "America First" approach that prioritized transactional deals over ideological leadership, directly conflicted with Boot's advocacy for sustained U.S. interventionism rooted in neoconservative doctrine.^[42] By August 2016, Boot had endorsed Hillary Clinton, casting his first vote for a Democrat and arguing that supporting her was preferable to enabling Trump's "demagoguery" and potential erosion of post-World War II conservative foreign policy norms.^[41]^[43] This rift deepened post-election, as Boot interpreted Trump's 2017-2021 presidency as accelerating the GOP's shift toward nativist populism, abandoning Reaganite realism—which emphasized moral clarity, free trade, and alliance-building—for grievance-driven isolationism. In his October 2018 book The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, Boot traced this transformation to long-standing flaws in the conservative movement, such as its tolerance of extremism and donor influence, but pinpointed Trump as the catalyst who "corroded" the party's intellectual foundations by elevating personal loyalty over policy coherence.^[44] He argued that Trumpism deviated from conservatism's historical commitment to principled governance, instead fostering a cult of personality that prioritized anti-elite rhetoric over empirical policy-making, evidenced by the administration's erratic tariff impositions and alliance strains documented in contemporaneous analyses.^[45] Boot's thesis posited that this populist turn rendered the GOP unrecognizable, prompting his formal departure from the party in 2018.^[46] Conservatives critical of Boot's evolution have dismissed it as elitist posturing, portraying him as a globalist intellectual disconnected from the GOP base's economic frustrations, with figures like National Review's Jim Geraghty arguing that Boot's realizations about conservatism's flaws reflected personal ideological reinvention rather than Trump's unique threat.^[47] Boot countered these accusations by asserting that MAGA's inward focus inherently weakened conservative deterrence strategies, urging voters to reject the movement to restore a realism-oriented GOP, as he detailed in subsequent Washington Post columns and interviews.^[48] This stance positioned Boot as a leading anti-MAGA voice, influencing never-Trump coalitions while alienating traditionalists who viewed his endorsements of Democrats like Joe Biden in 2020 as a betrayal of partisan loyalty.^[41]^[15]

Foreign Policy Positions

Support for Ukraine and Confrontation with Russia

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Boot criticized President Obama's response as insufficiently confrontational, arguing it failed to deter further aggression by emboldening Vladimir Putin's revanchist ambitions.^[49] In an open letter to Obama dated March 21, 2014, co-signed by Boot and 49 other national security experts, he urged expanded U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, including intelligence sharing and training, alongside economic loan guarantees and targeted sanctions on Russian officials under the Magnitsky Act to isolate Moscow and bolster NATO's eastern flank.^[50] These measures, Boot contended, were essential to counter Russia's hybrid warfare tactics and prevent the erosion of post-Cold War European security norms, drawing on empirical evidence of Moscow's prior interventions in Georgia (2008) and eastern Ukraine.^[51] Prior to Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Boot consistently advocated providing Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons, such as anti-tank missiles, to enhance its capacity against Russian-backed separatists in Donbas, where over 14,000 deaths had occurred since 2014 according to UN estimates.^[52] He highlighted Obama's reluctance to supply such arms—opting instead for non-lethal aid—as a strategic error that signaled weakness, contrasting it with the Trump administration's eventual approval of Javelin missiles in December 2017, which Boot praised for deterring further incursions without direct U.S. involvement.^[53] Boot's position rested on causal analysis of deterrence: historical data from arms transfers in conflicts like Afghanistan (1980s) showed that timely lethal aid could impose asymmetric costs on aggressors, potentially averting escalation.^[54] After the 2022 invasion, Boot intensified calls for escalation, urging the U.S. to supply long-range systems like ATACMS missiles to enable Ukraine to strike Russian logistics hubs deep behind lines, as evidenced by his endorsement of a House bill in April 2024 pushing for such transfers.^[55] He framed Putin's campaign as a neo-imperial drive to reclaim Soviet-era borders, analogizing it to tsarist expansions in the 19th century and Hitler's Anschluss in 1938, where initial appeasement invited broader conquests; data from Russia's pre-invasion military buildup—over 100,000 troops amassed by late 2021—supported his view that half-measures would prolong the conflict.^[56] Boot argued that enabling Ukrainian strikes on Crimea and supply routes, responsible for sustaining 70-80% of Russian advances per battlefield analyses, aligned with first-principles of attrition warfare, where disrupting enemy sustainment yields decisive gains at minimal risk to NATO forces.^[57] Isolationist critics, including some Republicans, have labeled U.S. support a costly proxy war, citing cumulative aid exceeding $75 billion by mid-2023—roughly 0.8% of annual U.S. defense spending—as unsustainable amid domestic priorities.^[58] Boot rebutted these claims by quantifying strategic returns: much of the aid comprised existing U.S. stockpiles replenished via domestic production, yielding industrial benefits like $10-15 billion in new contracts, while degrading Russia's conventional arsenal (e.g., loss of over 3,000 tanks by 2024 per Oryx open-source tracking) at a fraction of the $1 trillion+ cost of a hypothetical direct NATO-Russia clash.^[58] He emphasized alliance credibility metrics—NATO's post-2022 expansion to Finland and Sweden as empirical proof that resolve against revanchism reinforces deterrence, countering arguments that withdrawal would save resources but risk cascading aggression toward the Baltics, where Article 5 commitments could demand far higher expenditures.^[59]

Views on China, Middle East, and Global Alliances

Boot has articulated a hawkish yet pragmatic stance toward China, emphasizing the empirical risks posed by its military modernization and territorial ambitions without endorsing alarmism. He has highlighted China's aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea and the existential threat to Taiwan, warning that a potential U.S.-China conflict over the island could escalate to nuclear annihilation, akin to a modern 1914 crisis amplified by advanced weaponry.^[60] Boot draws on data regarding China's rapid buildup of naval and missile capabilities, which outpace U.S. regional assets in quantity, underscoring the need for deterrence through alliances and technological investment rather than isolationist retrenchment.^[61] Nonetheless, he critiques bipartisan "hysteria" in Washington, arguing that overreaction, as seen in the 2023 spy balloon incident, risks misallocating resources without addressing underlying economic dependencies on China.^[62] ^[63] In the Middle East, Boot advocates a realist approach informed by post-Iraq War lessons, prioritizing alliances with Israel to counter Iranian influence while rejecting naive diplomatic overtures like the 2015 nuclear deal. He views Iran as a primary destabilizing force, supporting Israeli strikes on its proxies—such as Hamas and Hezbollah—as necessary to degrade Tehran's regional network, though he cautions against illusions of a purely military resolution absent political strategies.^[64] ^[65] Boot critiques the Obama-era Iran accord for emboldening its nuclear program and proxy warfare, arguing it underestimated Tehran's ideological commitment to expansionism; by 2024, he noted Iran's miscalculations had invited retaliatory blows, weakening its position without prompting broader war.^[66] ^[67] Favoring Israel's qualitative military edge—bolstered by U.S. aid exceeding $3.8 billion annually—he endorses extended deterrence against Iranian threats, drawing parallels to the challenges of uprooting militant influence in Iraq post-2003.^[68] ^[69] Regarding global alliances, Boot defends institutions like NATO as essential for burden-shared deterrence, citing empirical improvements in European defense spending—where 23 of 32 members met the 2% GDP target by June 2024—as evidence that U.S. leadership yields reciprocal commitments.^[70] He argues the pros of extended deterrence outweigh cons like historical free-riding, as collective capabilities deter aggression more effectively than unilateral U.S. action; for instance, NATO's integrated command has enabled operations where allies contributed over 40% of troops in Afghanistan by 2007, despite U.S. primacy.^[71] Boot opposes expanding NATO into non-European theaters like the Middle East, warning it dilutes focus and invites overstretch, but insists on sustaining transatlantic ties to counter revisionist powers through shared intelligence and rapid response mechanisms.^[72] This alliance-centric realism, he contends, fosters causal stability by aligning incentives against opportunistic threats, rather than risking vacuums through retrenchment.^[73]

Critiques of Isolationism and America First Doctrine

Boot has characterized the "America First" doctrine, as articulated by former President Donald Trump, as a revival of the isolationist ideology promoted by the America First Committee in the 1930s, which opposed U.S. military aid to allies confronting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan until the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.^[74]^[75] He contends that this approach risks repeating the pre-World War II error of U.S. non-intervention, during which American defense spending remained below 2% of GDP from 1930 to 1939, allowing adversaries to consolidate gains without effective deterrence—such as Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 and annexation of Austria in 1938, and Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931.^[76] In Boot's view, isolationist withdrawal fosters power vacuums that enable aggressors and non-state threats to proliferate, as evidenced by the 1930s failure to counter fascist expansion, which culminated in a global conflict costing the U.S. over 400,000 military lives and peaking at 37% of GDP in defense expenditures by 1944.^[77]^[76] He contrasts this with the benefits of sustained engagement, arguing that post-1945 U.S. leadership—rooted in the Truman Doctrine of 1947—prevented similar escalations by supporting allies and stabilizing regions, thereby averting costlier direct confrontations.^[77] Boot cites later examples, such as the 1970s U.S. drawdown after Vietnam, which he links causally to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the rise of unchecked insurgencies, underscoring how disengagement amplifies long-term security threats rather than containing them.^[76] Paleoconservative advocates of restraint highlight isolationism's historical successes in minimizing entanglements, such as the U.S. avoidance of European wars under the Monroe Doctrine from 1823 onward, which preserved resources and limited casualties for over a century.^[76] Boot counters this by emphasizing empirical outcomes from the 20th century, where non-intervention permitted the growth of transnational dangers; for instance, the 1990s reduction in overseas commitments allowed al-Qaeda to establish bases in ungoverned spaces like Sudan and Afghanistan, leading to the September 11, 2001, attacks that necessitated interventions far exceeding prior fiscal commitments.^[76] Isolationism retains appeal among fiscal conservatives for curtailing immediate military outlays, with U.S. defense budgets averaging under 5% of GDP in isolationist periods like the interwar years, compared to sustained levels around 3-4% during periods of global engagement.^[77] Boot maintains, however, that such short-term savings prove illusory, as unchecked aggressors impose exponential costs through delayed responses—as in the progression from 1930s appeasement to full-scale World War II mobilization—advocating instead for proactive alliances to maintain deterrence and trade security without reverting to pre-1941 detachment.^[76]^[77]

Recent Developments and Publications

Reagan Biography and Its Reception

In September 2024, Max Boot published Reagan: His Life and Legend, a 880-page biography of Ronald Reagan drawing extensively on primary sources including archival materials from the Reagan Presidential Library and presidential papers.^[78]^[79] The book traces Reagan's trajectory from his Midwestern upbringing and Hollywood career through his governorship of California and presidency, emphasizing his role in revitalizing American morale during the Cold War while critiquing domestic policy lapses such as inconsistent fiscal conservatism and tolerance for racial dog whistles in rhetoric.^[80] Boot argues that Reagan's anti-communist stance, including military buildup and rhetorical pressure on the Soviet Union, contributed causally to the Cold War's end by restoring U.S. confidence and exploiting Soviet weaknesses, though he rejects hagiographic claims of Reagan single-handedly "winning" the conflict and notes the absence of a formalized strategy.^[81]^[82] The biography reconciles Reagan's heroic image with personal and political flaws, portraying him as affable yet pragmatic to a fault, often prioritizing narrative over factual precision—evident in his cavalier approach to accuracy—and lacking deep ideological commitments beyond anti-communism and optimism.^[83] Boot highlights Reagan's economic policies, including tax cuts and deregulation, as mixed in outcomes, with soaring deficits contradicting fiscal rhetoric, while underscoring his decency in interpersonal dealings amid broader inconsistencies like support for social program cuts decried as callous by critics.^[84] This nuanced framing, grounded in declassified documents and interviews, positions Reagan as a transformative figure whose legend persists despite empirical shortcomings in areas like civil rights enforcement and welfare reform.^[85] Reception was broadly positive for its research depth and balanced tone, becoming a New York Times bestseller and earning spots on year-end best-of lists from outlets including The New Yorker and The Washington Post, with reviewers praising its absorbing narrative and revisionist insights into Reagan's pragmatism over dogma.^[86]^[87] Left-leaning critics faulted it for insufficient emphasis on Reagan's role in exacerbating inequality through "trickle-down" economics and downplaying racial insensitivities, such as welfare queen stereotypes that echoed prejudicial tropes.^[88] From the right, conservative reviewers accused Boot of undervaluing Reagan's strategic acumen in defeating communism—portraying it instead as haphazard—and injecting undue skepticism toward U.S. exceptionalism, with some highlighting Boot's comparisons of Reagan's communication style to Donald Trump's as anachronistic overreach amid the author's known anti-Trump views.^[89]^[82] These critiques reflect partisan divides, with mainstream praise often overlooking Boot's interventionist lens, which privileges Reagan's foreign policy triumphs over domestic empirical failures like persistent deficits averaging 4.1% of GDP annually during his tenure.^[80]

Commentary on 2024 Election and 2025 Geopolitics

In anticipation of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Boot argued that a second Trump term would dismantle the post-World War II international order through isolationism and concessions to authoritarian regimes, including potential alignment with Vladimir Putin that could embolden Russian aggression in Ukraine.^[90] After Donald Trump's November 2024 victory and inauguration in January 2025, Boot initially acknowledged a surprising policy pivot, praising in a July 14, 2025, Washington Post column Trump's decision to unfreeze and expand military aid to Ukraine—totaling over $60 billion in U.S. commitments by mid-2025—as a rebuke to Putin's miscalculation of American resolve, which had sustained Ukrainian frontline capabilities against Russian advances.^[91]^[92] However, Boot's assessments grew more critical amid stalled negotiations, contending in an August 9, 2025, op-ed that Trump's eagerness for a Ukraine deal risked a Munich-style appeasement, as Putin demanded full control of Donbas territories despite Ukraine's retention of 80% of pre-2022 lines with Western-supplied weapons.^[93] Boot evaluated the August 16, 2025, Trump-Putin summit in Alaska as a tactical setback for U.S. interests, noting no ceasefire emerged and Putin secured implicit recognition of occupied territories without reciprocal concessions, though U.S. intelligence sharing resumed shortly after, enabling Ukrainian strikes on Russian logistics that degraded Moscow's offensive momentum by 15-20% per Pentagon assessments.^[94] In his October 20, 2025, Washington Post piece on the impending Budapest summit, Boot urged intensified U.S. pressure on Putin—including threats of escalated arms to Kyiv—arguing that prior talks had yielded minimal empirical gains for Ukraine, such as only partial aid flows amid European supplements totaling €50 billion, insufficient to reverse Russian territorial gains of 500 square kilometers monthly.^[95] As Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2025, Boot contributed analyses linking U.S. aid fluctuations to geopolitical shifts, emphasizing that sustained deliveries of ATACMS missiles and F-16s had empirically bolstered Ukraine's defensive posture, preventing collapse despite predictions of rapid Russian victory post-2024 election.^[3] In an August 11, 2025, NPR interview, Boot discussed the erosion of the liberal world order under Trump's transactional diplomacy, attributing partial resilience to bipartisan congressional overrides of initial aid blocks, which maintained alliance cohesion amid rising Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.^[96] Boot's pre-election forecasts of unchecked Putin-Trump affinity have faced scrutiny for overstatement, as U.S. policy adaptations yielded tangible Ukrainian battlefield successes, including the disruption of 30% of Russia's Black Sea fleet by mid-2025, though he maintains that without firmer leverage, concessions risk codifying Russian gains.^[91]^[92]

Criticisms and Controversies

Backlash Over Iraq War Predictions and Outcomes

Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Max Boot expressed optimism about a swift military victory and rapid democratization, predicting in February 2003 that Baghdad would likely be liberated by April and that democracy could serve as an "antibiotic" against regional extremism.^[97] This contrasted sharply with post-invasion realities, including a persistent insurgency that began in mid-2003, escalated to over 1,000 attacks per week by late 2006 according to U.S. military reports, and contributed to approximately 4,500 American military deaths and an estimated 200,000 Iraqi civilian deaths by 2011. The total U.S. budgetary costs for the Iraq War exceeded $2 trillion by 2023, encompassing direct combat operations, veteran care, and reconstruction efforts that yielded limited stable governance.^[98] The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) further underscored strategic shortcomings, as the group, evolving from al-Qaeda in Iraq remnants, captured significant territory in 2014 following the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, necessitating renewed American intervention with over $50 billion in additional costs by 2020.^[99] Boot later acknowledged errors, including underestimation of Iraq's sectarian divisions and the challenges of post-Saddam governance, describing the invasion's intelligence basis as faulty and the overall endeavor as involving "many miscalculations."^[100] Despite these admissions, he maintained that Saddam Hussein's removal yielded net benefits, arguing it averted potential WMD proliferation and regional threats, even if execution faltered.^[101] Criticism from the political left framed Boot and fellow neoconservatives as warmongers whose advocacy prolonged U.S. entanglement without achieving promised stability, with outlets highlighting his pre-war endorsements as emblematic of elite detachment from war's human toll.^[102] On the right, paleoconservatives and skeptics acknowledged tactical successes like Saddam's ouster but decried strategic losses, including fiscal drain and empowerment of adversaries, viewing the war as an overreach that eroded American power without causal justification for the chaos.^[97] Boot countered such backlash by emphasizing that while insurgency and costs exceeded forecasts, the causal chain from invasion to ISIS involved multiple U.S. policy lapses, such as premature withdrawal, rather than inherent flaws in regime change.^[103]

Accusations of Ideological Inconsistency

Max Boot, a longtime neoconservative foreign policy commentator who advised Republican figures including John McCain and Mitt Romney, renounced his Republican affiliation in February 2018, registering as an independent amid opposition to Donald Trump.^[104] He endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, describing Biden as "the only realistic option" to counter Trump's reelection despite acknowledging Biden's limitations.^[105] This trajectory—from GOP hawkishness to alignment with Democratic leadership—has drawn accusations from conservative critics of ideological opportunism, portraying Boot as prioritizing establishment influence over principled conservatism.^[104] Paleoconservatives and populist commentators have labeled Boot's evolution as a symptom of neoconservative careerism, arguing that his break with the GOP reflects not conviction but a bid to preserve relevance in media circles increasingly hostile to Trumpism.^[106] Outlets aligned with the populist right, such as American Greatness, have dismissed him as a "soulless, craven opportunist" who abandoned conservatism when it diverged from interventionist orthodoxy under Trump.^[104] National Review contributors have similarly critiqued Boot for a vehement turn against the right, suggesting his positions now entail self-contradiction by assailing erstwhile allies while embracing progressive institutions like The Washington Post.^[107] These detractors contend the shift prioritizes personal access and institutional power—evident in Boot's continued prominence at think tanks and op-ed pages—over fidelity to the GOP base's evolving skepticism of endless foreign entanglements.^[107] Boot counters these claims by asserting consistency in core principles of anti-authoritarianism and realist foreign policy, maintaining that Trumpism represented a deviation from traditional conservatism through erratic reversals like the October 2019 Syria troop withdrawal, which he decried as a betrayal of allies and strategic interests.^[44] In The Corrosion of Conservatism (2018), he frames his departure as a response to the GOP's embrace of nativism and isolationism, not personal reinvention, arguing that Trump's praise for figures like Vladimir Putin eroded the party's commitment to democratic realism.^[45] This defense highlights purported achievements in upholding hawkish stances against authoritarianism across party lines, as seen in his sustained advocacy for confronting Russia post-2022 Ukraine invasion, aligning with Biden administration policies.^[108] Yet the criticisms underscore drawbacks, including Boot's alienation of the conservative base, which views his Biden endorsement as a forfeiture of credibility on domestic issues like immigration and cultural conservatism where Democrats diverge sharply from traditional GOP views.^[109] While Boot's timeline—opposing Trump from his 2015 campaign announcement—suggests early principled dissent rather than post-hoc rationalization, skeptics attribute the drift to causal incentives of elite networks, where neoconservatives like Boot adapted to a media landscape favoring anti-MAGA narratives for visibility.^[46] This tension illustrates broader fractures in conservatism, with Boot's positions sustaining influence in foreign policy discourse but at the cost of marginalization among populists who prioritize domestic realism over global engagements.^[106]

Responses to Paleoconservative and Populist Critiques

Boot has engaged with paleoconservative figures like Pat Buchanan by rejecting their isolationist and nativist prescriptions, arguing that Buchanan's vision of a "republic, not an empire" overlooks the stabilizing effects of American global engagement. In his 2001 essay "The Case for American Empire," Boot contended that U.S. interventions, from the post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan to smaller counterinsurgencies, have prevented larger conflicts and promoted prosperity, yielding a "peace dividend" through deterrence that far outweighed costs—evidenced by the absence of great-power wars in Europe and East Asia since 1945. He dismissed Buchanan's warnings against foreign entanglements as echoing failed pre-World War II appeasement policies, which empirical data shows emboldened aggressors like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, leading to global war rather than isolation.^[110] Against populist critiques of "forever wars," Boot has countered that selective U.S. interventions enhance national security by deterring adversaries, citing the Cold War era where American commitments in Europe and Asia contained Soviet expansion without direct superpower clash, preserving U.S. primacy and economic dominance—U.S. GDP grew from $2.3 trillion in 1945 to $21 trillion by 2019 in constant dollars amid this posture.^[44] He acknowledges instances of overreach, such as prolonged nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, but privileges evidence of successes like the Balkan interventions of the 1990s, which halted ethnic cleansing and stabilized regions at low U.S. cost (fewer than 100 American deaths), arguing nonintervention would have invited vacuums filled by worse actors like al-Qaeda precursors.^[111] Boot attributes populist aversion to a misunderstanding of deterrence's causal role, where visible U.S. resolve—backed by 800 overseas bases and alliances covering 25% of global GDP—has maintained relative peace, contrasting with pre-1945 eras of frequent great-power conflicts.^[112] On nativism, Boot rebuts paleoconservative and populist restrictions on immigration by highlighting its net economic benefits, as seen in Ronald Reagan's 1986 amnesty, which expanded the workforce and contributed to 1990s growth without displacing natives—immigrant-founded firms generated 25% of U.S. patents and employed millions by 2010.^[113] He critiques Buchanan-era and Trumpian nativism as ahistorical, noting that waves of immigration since the 19th century fueled industrialization and innovation, with data showing immigrants pay $500 billion annually in taxes while using fewer services than natives over lifetimes.^[12] While conceding short-term wage pressures in low-skill sectors, Boot emphasizes long-term gains, such as higher GDP per capita from skilled inflows, arguing isolationist borders would shrink the labor pool and exacerbate demographic decline, as U.S. fertility rates fell below replacement (1.6 births per woman in 2023) amid aging populations. In The Corrosion of Conservatism (2018), Boot frames this as a departure from Reaganite internationalism, where globalism via open markets and migration bolstered American strength against ideological foes.^[44]

Bibliography

Major Books

Boot's early major works established his reputation in military history, emphasizing the role of unconventional warfare and technological innovation in shaping American power. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (2002) chronicles U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns from the Barbary Wars through the Philippine-American War and beyond, positing that these "small wars" were instrumental in forging America's imperial reach without large-scale conquests.^[5] War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World (2006) traces four military revolutions—gunpowder, the industrial age, the mechanized era, and the information age—illustrating how adaptive powers leveraging new technologies prevailed over static empires.^[114] Shifting toward guerrilla warfare's persistence, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (2013) surveys over 200 insurgencies across millennia, concluding that guerrillas succeed 40% of the time against conventional forces, with lessons for contemporary conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.^[5] This theme continued in The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (2018), a biography of CIA operative Edward Lansdale, who advocated "hearts and minds" strategies in the Philippines and early Vietnam, only to be sidelined by rigid U.S. military doctrine.^[5] In parallel with biographical turns, Boot addressed domestic politics in The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right (2018), a personal and analytical account of the Republican Party's transformation under populist influences, drawing on his shift from traditional conservatism.^[5] His recent pivot to presidential biography culminated in Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024), which details Ronald Reagan's trajectory from Hollywood to the White House, based on over 100 interviews and archival research, highlighting his strategic role in ending the Cold War.^[115] These volumes underscore Boot's evolution from tactical histories to broader figures in U.S. strategy and ideology, often cited in policy discussions on interventionism.^[111]

Notable Articles and Essays

Boot's essay "2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege," published in Foreign Policy on December 27, 2017, marked a personal reckoning with his conservative background, where he critiqued his earlier skepticism toward identity politics while positioning himself as a disillusioned former Republican open to liberal hawkish stances on foreign intervention.^[116] This piece exemplified his self-described evolution toward a "liberal-conservative hybrid," blending neoconservative interventionism with progressive domestic sensibilities, amid broader debates on ideological realignment post-Trump's election.^[116] In Commentary magazine, Boot's March 27, 2016, essay "Why Trump Is a National Security Threat" argued that Trump's isolationist rhetoric and admiration for authoritarian leaders like Putin undermined U.S. alliances and deterrence, predicting heightened risks from adversaries exploiting perceived American weakness.^[117] Drawing on historical precedents of appeasement, Boot contended that such populism deviated from Reagan-era realism, prioritizing transactional deals over principled power projection—a thesis he reinforced in subsequent Commentary writings like "Useful Idiocy" (July 17, 2017), which lambasted media figures for echoing Russian narratives on neoconservatism.^[118] Boot's June 18, 2024, Foreign Affairs essay "The Progressive Case for American Power" advanced a causal argument for sustained U.S. primacy, asserting that retrenchment invites aggression from rivals like China and Russia, as evidenced by post-Afghanistan advances by the Taliban and ISIS.^[119] He urged left-leaning policymakers to embrace military deterrence and alliances, citing empirical data on reduced global conflicts under U.S.-led order versus rising instability in multipolar vacuums.^[119] Addressing 2025 geopolitics, Boot's Washington Post column "Trump Keeps Getting Played by Putin. Will Budapest Be Different?" (October 20, 2025) analyzed Trump's Ukraine diplomacy, arguing that Putin's intransigence—despite stalled Russian offensives and 500,000+ casualties since 2022—necessitates escalated U.S. leverage like sanctions and arms flows rather than concessions.^[95] Similarly, his August 14, 2025, piece on the Trump-Putin Alaska summit warned that unreciprocated U.S. overtures risked echoing Munich 1938, with Putin exploiting delays in $61 billion Ukraine aid to consolidate gains in Donbas.^[120] These essays underscored Boot's consistent emphasis on empirical deterrence over diplomatic optimism in countering authoritarian revisionism.^[95]^[120]

References

[1]
Max Boot - Age, Family, Bio | Famous Birthdays
Max Boot. Historian. Birthday September 12, 1969. Birth Sign Virgo. Birthplace Moscow, Russia. Age 56 years old. #304,883 Most Popular. Boost. About. Historian ...
[2]
About - Max Boot
Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies.
[3]
Max Boot | Council on Foreign Relations
Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author and foreign-policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the ...
[4]
Max Boot - The Washington Post
Max Boot is a historian and biographer, best-selling author, and foreign-policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security ...
[5]
Books | Max Boot
New York Times best-selling author and military historian Max Boot traces guerrilla warfare and terrorism from antiquity to the present, narrating nearly thirty ...Missing: list | Show results with:list
[6]
Max Boot: books, biography, latest update - Amazon.com
Max Boot is a historian and biographer, best-selling author, and foreign-policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security ...
[7]
Max Boot | Military Wiki | Fandom
Max Boot. Boot in 2007. Personal details. Born, September 12, 1969(1969-09-12) (age 56). Moscow. Nationality, American. Occupation, Writer, Historian. Max Boot ...
[8]
Max Boot - Wikiquote
Max Boot (born September 12, 1969) is an American author, consultant, op-ed writer, lecturer, and military historian. Max Boot in 2007 ...
[9]
I came to this country 41 years ago. Now I feel like I don't belong here.
Sep 5, 2017 · Ever since I arrived here, along with my mother and grandmother, from Russia in 1976 at age 7, I have been eager to assimilate. And I've done a ...Missing: Moscow | Show results with:Moscow
[10]
How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy: Max Boot
Oct 8, 2025 · As a CFR fellow of more than twenty years, Max Boot has traced the ups and downs of American foreign policy. He chatted with CFR about how ...
[11]
1970s Soviet Union aliyah - Wikipedia
Overall, between 1970 and 1988, some 291,000 Soviet Jews were granted exit visas, of whom 165,000 migrated to Israel, and 126,000 migrated to the United States.Background · Emigration policy · Absorption of new immigrants... · Dropouts
[12]
Politically Homeless: Q&A With Columnist Max Boot
Sep 17, 2018 · Max Boot: As an immigrant who came to America from the Soviet Union in 1976, age 6, I always had a fairly romantic view of the United States as ...Missing: Moscow | Show results with:Moscow
[13]
Is Being an American and a Globalist at Odds?
Boot: I am an American by choice, not by birth. Admittedly, it was my parents' choice, not mine. I came here in 1976 at age seven from the Soviet Union along ...Missing: childhood | Show results with:childhood
[14]
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/104104-1
[15]
Max Boot - Booknotes - C-SPAN
BOOT: Well, my official job title is, as you mentioned--is editorial features editor. And I'm responsible for basically what other newspapers call the op-eds, ...
[16]
"We need to destroy the Republican Party": A conservative luminary ...
You joined the Wall Street Journal editorial page in 1994 at 24. You were the op-ed editor four years later. You became a contributing editor to the Weekly ...Missing: early | Show results with:early
[17]
Max Boot: Conservatism needs a new Weekly Standard untainted by ...
Dec 16, 2018 · As a contributing editor (an honorific with no duties or pay), I was a very small part of the operation. I published my first article in the ...Missing: roles | Show results with:roles
[18]
Small Wars and the Rise of American Power - ResearchGate
Download Citation | On Jan 1, 2002, Max Boot published The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power | Find, read and cite all the ...Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
[19]
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American ...
In stock Free deliveryHolds lessons for the current wars in iraq and afghanistan. Originally posted on The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power.
[20]
War Made New | Council on Foreign Relations
Boot argues that the past five centuries of history have been marked not by gradual change in how we fight but instead by four revolutions in military ...Missing: early articles analogies
[21]
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today ; Publisher. Gotham ; Publication date. October 19, 2006 ; Reading age. 18 years and up.Missing: shifts | Show results with:shifts
[22]
War Made New: An Interview with Max Boot - Project MUSE
Jan 4, 2012 · Max Boot: What I do in War Made New is to look at what military thinkers call Revolutions in Military Affairs—major upheavals that occur when ...
[23]
Book review: 'Invisible Armies,' a history of guerrilla warfare, by Max ...
Feb 15, 2013 · In “Invisible Armies,” Max Boot explains how guerrillas disrupt and defeat much more powerful armies.Missing: outcomes | Show results with:outcomes
[24]
Teaching Notes | Invisible Armies - Council on Foreign Relations
Invisible Armies. In this book, CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot offers a comprehensive history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, and relates lessons of ...
[25]
Max Boot's Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerilla Warfare from ...
Dec 10, 2013 · Invisible Armies offers clear and cogent analyses of Boot's chosen cases that are woven together into a highly readable and convincing narrative.Missing: early analogies
[26]
Max Boot named columnist for Washington Post Opinions
Jan 30, 2018 · Joining Opinions starting Jan. 30, Boot will write on national security topics.Missing: joins date
[27]
Election Interference and Cybersecurity - Council on Foreign Relations
Max Boot is CFR's Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security ... adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence ...
[28]
2 WRITERS WIN BREINDEL PRIZE - New York Post
Jun 6, 2007 · Boot, a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, won for a series of articles on the Iraq war and Darfur.
[29]
The Post-Powell Doctrine - The New York Times
Jul 21, 2002 · Boot believes America has a moral -- and what he characterizes as an imperial -- duty to act as a global gendarme.<|separator|>
[30]
The Past, Present, and Future of Neoconservatism
This mix of opinions and attitudes still constitutes the neoconservative mindset. The military historian Max Boot has aptly labeled it “hard Wilsonianism.Missing: interventionism | Show results with:interventionism
[31]
[PDF] Max Boot - The Platypus Affiliated Society
The influence of the neoconservative movement (with which I am often associated) supposedly comes from its agents embedded within the U.S. government. The usual ...
[32]
What's the Moral of the Story?
What I advocate is not American unilateralism but American leadership. As we saw in the Balkans and Rwanda in the 1990s, other nations can't get ...Missing: views | Show results with:views
[33]
The Virtues of Nation-Building - AMERICAN HERITAGE
At a time when it can offer answers to urgent questions, we have forgotten America's long history of “nation-building.” Max Boot · June/July 2002. 14 years ago ...
[34]
Twilight of the neoconservatives - Vox
Mar 10, 2016 · As prominent member Max Boot put it in 2002, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, "Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote ...
[35]
The Case for American Empire - Buffalo Ontology Site
The most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role. by Max Boot. MANY HAVE SUGGESTED THAT THE September 11 attack on America ...Missing: commentary | Show results with:commentary
[36]
9/11 Five Years Later: Successes and Challenges - state.gov
Nineteen hijackers seized multiple planes and used them as weapons to destroy the World Trade Center in New York and to attack Washington, DC. The United States ...
[37]
Opinion | A War for Oil? Not This Time (Published 2003)
### Summary of Max Boot's Arguments for Iraq Invasion
[38]
What the Neocons Got Wrong: And How the Iraq War Taught Me ...
The Debate Over Neoconservatism and the Legacy of the Iraq War · Thomas Carothers, Tom Malinowski, and Max Boot. Listen
[39]
Iraqi Kurdistan, 1987-89 - World Without Genocide
The Iraqi government claimed that all Iraqi Kurds died during counter-insurgency measures. However, many atrocities were perpetrated after a ceasefire was ...
[40]
Opinion | How to Surge the Taliban - The New York Times
Mar 12, 2009 · How to Surge the Taliban. By MAX BOOT, FREDERICK KAGAN and KIMBERLY KAGAN. March 12, 2009. Share full article. Kandahar, Afghanistan. “DONT ...
[41]
How We Can Win in Afghanistan - Commentary Magazine
Nov 1, 2009 · How We Can Win in Afghanistan. The McChrystal way is the only way. by Max Boot. The terms counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have become ...Missing: advocacy | Show results with:advocacy
[42]
Republicans who don't like Trump have no excuses: Endorse Biden
Apr 15, 2020 · Many of these Republicans refused to endorse Trump in 2016 but also refused to support Hillary Clinton. (I gladly cast my first-ever ballot ...
[43]
Neocons for Hillary: why some conservatives think Trump threatens ...
Mar 4, 2016 · Even if that means voting for one of their archenemies: Hillary Clinton. Why neocons oppose Trump. On the surface, it seems ...Missing: shift stance
[44]
The list of Republicans who support Hillary Clinton is growing
Aug 2, 2016 · Related. Where is Donald Trump's sense of decency? Donald Trump bashes Senator Kelly Ayotte of N.H.Trump refuses to endorse Ryan, says he is ' ...
[45]
The Corrosion of Conservatism - Council on Foreign Relations
Max Boot recounts his extraordinary journey from lifelong Republican to vehement Trump opponent. From the isolated position of a man without a party, Boot ...
[46]
The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right - Amazon.com
Conservative historian Max Boot chronicles his ideological journey from Republican foreign policy adviser to Trump opponent, detailing the transformation of ...
[47]
A Defector From Conservatism With a Clear Vision of Trump's Rise
Oct 18, 2018 · Max Boot's “Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right” explains the rise of Donald Trump, using Boot's history in the conservative ...
[48]
Max Boot on leaving the Republican party, and why Trump isn't ...
Mar 9, 2019 · Boot, 49, would go on to a successful career as a foreign-policy analyst and historian. Just seven years after graduating from the University of ...
[49]
'The Corrosion Of Conservatism': Max Boot On Why He Left The GOP
Oct 11, 2018 · Conservative luminary Max Boot explains why he left the Republican Party and is urging people to vote against the modern GOP.
[50]
Obama's Pattern of Foreign-Policy Failure - History News Network
September 2, 2014. Obama's Pattern of Foreign-Policy Failure. by Max Boot. Max Boot is the author of the New York Times bestseller Invisible Armies: An Epic ...
[51]
Open Letter to President Obama - Small Wars Journal
Mar 21, 2014 · Open Letter to President Obama: Secure Ukraine, Isolate Russia, and Strengthen NATO ... Max Boot. William Kristol. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer.
[52]
Is Ukraine on a Long Road to Rupture? - Council on Foreign Relations
For Russia, he says the Geneva agreement allowed political conditions in Ukraine to deteriorate, and highlighted Kiev's weakness in the east. For the United ...
[53]
The U.S. can't afford to leave Ukraine — and Europe — at Putin's ...
Jan 25, 2022 · By countering Russia's power grab, we send a signal that right, not just might, still matters in the world. Comments. By Max Boot. Max Boot is ...
[54]
What's Behind Barack Obama's Ongoing Accommodation of ...
Sep 9, 2016 · Obama's recalcitrance became so entrenched that a bipartisan alliance in Congress emerged to introduce legislation to force him to provide lethal aid. ... Max ...
[55]
Max Boot: Obama was weak on Russia. And Trump is weaker than ...
Feb 27, 2018 · Obama was far too weak in dealing with the Russian assault, which ranged from stealing Democratic emails to promoting pro-Trump propaganda ...
[56]
Max Boot on X: "The House bill calls on the administration to ...
Apr 22, 2024 · The House bill calls on the administration to send long-range ATACMS missiles. The US must enable Ukrainian forces to finally knock out the ...Missing: 2022-2025 | Show results with:2022-2025
[57]
Putin's revanchist empire will fall - Forum for Ukrainian Studies
Nov 17, 2023 · Amid strategic challenges, Ukraine needs sustained, urgent support. Max Boot (Washington Post) highlights the challenges of offensive ...
[58]
Opinion | Russia is fighting the Ukraine war with the wrong doctrine
Nov 2, 2022 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...Missing: early | Show results with:early
[59]
This is what the U.S. is getting by aiding Ukraine
Oct 2, 2023 · Yes, in absolute terms, Washington has given a lot of money to Ukraine: $76.8 billion in total assistance, including $46.6 billion in military ...Missing: cost | Show results with:cost
[60]
Ukraine will lose only if MAGA Republicans cut off U.S. aid
Mar 4, 2024 · The Trump-led show of support for Ukraine puts Putin in a bind ... Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the ...Missing: advocacy lethal
[61]
US/China Taiwan war could lead to 'nuclear annihilation': conservative
Apr 17, 2023 · Boot comments, "1914 with nuclear weapons? Now that's an existential danger." Boot isn't the only one who is sounding the alarm about how ...
[62]
Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That's a problem.
Mar 6, 2023 · The testimony about the threat from China wasn't so much wrong as it ... Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at ...
[63]
The frenzy over China's spy balloon is dangerous and unwarranted
Feb 6, 2023 · Indeed, it's not clear that China accomplished anything other than alarming Americans about the threat it poses. ... Max Boot is a ...
[64]
Reagan Didn't Win the Cold War - Foreign Affairs
Max Boot ... There are no policies that the United States can plausibly implement that will “defeat” China—it is hard to know what “defeating ...<|separator|>
[65]
If Israel can defeat Hamas, it would be a major blow against Iran's ...
Oct 30, 2023 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...
[66]
There is no purely military solution to Israel's security woes
Oct 10, 2024 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...
[67]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/22/united-states-trump-bombing-iran/
[68]
Opinion | Iran badly miscalculated. Now it's paying the price.
Jun 22, 2025 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...
[69]
Israel is trying to uproot Iran's influence. Iraq shows how hard that is.
Oct 28, 2024 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...
[70]
Biden's 'bear hug' with Israel pays off with a minimal strike on Iran
Apr 19, 2024 · Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is ...
[71]
As NATO Countries Reach Spending Milestone, Is 2 Percent Enough?
Jun 28, 2024 · ... alliance has finally turned the corner on so-called burden sharing. ... Max Boot · Jets Over Estonia Are Putin's Latest Check of U.S. and NATO ...
[72]
Allies on the cheap - Los Angeles Times
Feb 28, 2007 · As usual, the United States, with more than 27,000 troops in Afghanistan, is left to carry the lion's share of the burden. Advertisement. The ...
[73]
Why expanding NATO to the Middle East is a terrible idea
Jan 10, 2020 · While fairer transatlantic burden-sharing remains important, pushing NATO further into the Middle East is a recipe for failure. The alliance is ...
[74]
How the United States and Europe Can End the War in Ukraine
Jan 23, 2025 · In a new burden-sharing deal, Europe should substantially increase its support and take over the majority of the costs for Ukraine's ...
[75]
Opinion | Americans' ignorance of history is a national scandal
Feb 20, 2019 · He has adopted a foreign policy mantra of “America First” seemingly without realizing (or so I hope!) that the original America First Committee ...
[76]
Is a New Republican Foreign Policy Emerging?
Feb 15, 2016 · He has called for an “America First” foreign policy, echoing the demands of the America First Committee (which advocated isolationism until the ...Missing: critiques | Show results with:critiques
[77]
U.S. foreign policy: In praise of nation-building: Max Boot - cleveland ...
Whenever America has eschewed commitments abroad and turned inward, the results have been disastrous. The most isolationist decade in the country's history -- ...
[78]
The Grave Dangers and Deep Sadness of 'America First'
Jan 23, 2017 · Donald Trump's vision for the U.S. role in the world runs counter to the best and brightest ideas of this proud country of immigrants. By Max ...
[79]
Reagan: His Life and Legend: 9780871409447: Boot, Max: Books
Publication date. September 10, 2024. Dimensions. 6.4 x 1.8 x 9.6 inches ... Max Boot on His New Book "Reagan: His Life and Legend". W. W. Norton. Upload ...
[80]
Understanding Ronald Reagan Is Key to Understanding America ...
Sep 10, 2024 · Boot's detailed account of Reagan's life spans his beginnings in the American Midwest, pursuit of movie stardom in Hollywood, historic political career, and ...
[81]
Reagan left his mark on the Republican Party, and on the presidency
Oct 24, 2024 · Biographer Max Boot charts the course of a politician who was famously affable and pragmatic, but who also resorted to racist dog whistles and played loose ...<|separator|>
[82]
Reagan: His Life and Legend By Max Boot. Liveright, 2024. 880 ...
Jun 2, 2025 · However, while Boot contends that Reagan did not “win” the war, he theorizes that the conservative Midwesterner's spirit reanimated American ...
[83]
Max Boot's Reagan Biography Boosts Communism And Trashes ...
Sep 25, 2024 · Boot works chronologically, breaking his effort into five “acts” befitting of Reagan the actor, covering childhood, Hollywood, his increasing activism.
[84]
What I'm Reading: Reagan, Max Boot | Stories | Notre Dame Magazine
Oct 15, 2024 · Boot criticizes Reagan's “disturbingly cavalier attitude toward factual accuracy.” In trying to explain a subject as being either black or white ...
[85]
Book Review: 'Reagan,' by Max Boot - The New York Times
Dec 3, 2024 · Reagan's detractors called him cruel and callous for cutting social programs, mocked the soaring deficits that belied his talk of fiscal ...
[86]
Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot review – a head of state ...
Oct 8, 2024 · This perceptive study of the former US president reveals a self-styled 'Mr Norm' with few real political beliefs but a sense of decency.Missing: projection | Show results with:projection
[87]
What if Ronald Reagan's Presidency Never Really Ended?
Sep 9, 2024 · Reagan's hands-off, eyes-closed approach had upsides, Boot argues. Mainly, it freed his Administration to act pragmatically. Its greatest ...
[88]
Reagan - Kirkus Reviews
7-day returnsHIS LIFE AND LEGEND A prodigiously researched, satisfying presidential bio. The historian and foreign-policy analyst presents an unabashed revisionist history ...
[89]
The Dark Legacy of Reaganism - The New Republic
Feb 19, 2025 · Boot is well-known for his advocacy of neoconservative foreign policy ideas—he backed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq enthusiastically—but the rise ...
[90]
Where's the Rest of Me? - Claremont Review of Books
Reagan: His Life and Legend views Reagan's Cold War policies skeptically while showing an odd credulity about a Soviet Union with a weak and unmenacing ...Missing: reception | Show results with:reception
[91]
If Trump wins, he will destroy the American-led world order
Jan 31, 2024 · Conventional wisdom says foreign policy doesn't decide U.S. elections, but the 2024 choice, presumably Biden vs. Trump, has seldom been this ...
[92]
Putin took Trump for granted. He's going to pay for his mistake.
Jul 14, 2025 · Putin took Trump for granted. He's going to pay for his mistake. After the president's startling, welcome shift on Ukraine, there's more to do.
[93]
Here's How Much Aid the United States Has Sent Ukraine
Yet, U.S. commitment has been called into question in 2025, with President Donald Trump freezing all military aid to Ukraine in early March, and then lifting ...
[94]
Trump is letting Putin manipulate him, again - The Washington Post
Aug 9, 2025 · Trump is letting Putin manipulate him, again. The president's desperation to end the Ukraine war might lead to another Munich moment with Russia ...
[95]
The Trump-Putin summit wasn't a disaster, but it was a U.S. defeat
Aug 16, 2025 · Vladimir Putin walked away the victor in his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska.
[96]
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5494725/conservative-writer-max-boot-discusses-the-changing-world-order
[97]
Conservative writer Max Boot discusses the changing world order
Aug 11, 2025 · Steve Inskeep speaks with author and conservative commentator Max Boot about the changing world order.Missing: early writings post-
[98]
The Iraq War at Twenty - The American Conservative
Mar 17, 2023 · The impending invasion of Iraq, Boot assured readers, would be a smashing success. “In all likelihood, Baghdad will be liberated by April,” Boot ...Missing: advocacy | Show results with:advocacy
[99]
Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human ...
Mar 15, 2023 · The war continues, with a nearly $400 million budget request from the Biden Administration this month to counter ISIS. About the Author. Neta ...Missing: data | Show results with:data
[100]
Was the Rise of ISIS Inevitable? - Taylor & Francis Online
May 15, 2017 · The most fateful American choice in the rise of ISIS was also the oldest one: the 2003 decision to invade Iraq, followed by the mismanagement of the occupation.Missing: empirical | Show results with:empirical
[101]
Max Boot: A decade of many miscalculations in Iraq
Mar 19, 2013 · Max Boot Washington: It is entirely fitting that the invasion of Iraq began, 10 years ago Tuesday, based on faulty intelligence: Our actions ...
[102]
Was the Iraq War Worth It? | Council on Foreign Relations
Dec 15, 2011 · ... pre-invasion. Now, you have new countries that are takers of Russian oil, and they're buying it at discounted prices. We see Turkey ...
[103]
Another Warmonger Rewarded for Being Wrong on Iraq War
Feb 1, 2018 · Of the 23 current staff columnists who had a clear opinion on the Iraq War either before or in the aftermath of the invasion, 21 supported it.Missing: op- 2002
[104]
The what if's of Iraq - Los Angeles Times
Mar 19, 2013 · ... Iraq would somehow be able to govern themselves after he was removed from power. ... Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign ...
[105]
If this is what conservatism has become, count me out
Feb 25, 2018 · American Greatness wrote that I am a “soulless, craven opportunist ... Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the ...
[106]
Conservative Columnist: Trump Is So Bad That 'Feeble Vessel ...
Sep 26, 2023 · Biden is “the only realistic option we have,” warned Washington Post opinion writer Max Boot.
[107]
Conscience of an Ex-Conservative: Max Boot's Journey
Jun 10, 2019 · Influenced by the writings of E.J. Dionne and others, Boot now believes that his conservative political heroes from the past were guilty of ...Missing: mentors | Show results with:mentors
[108]
Max Boot Has Turned So Hard on the Right, He's Now Attacking ...
Feb 8, 2021 · Max Boot is more machine than man. His Washington Post column is a space not for a writer with a distinct or coherent worldview to make arguments.Missing: inconsistency | Show results with:inconsistency
[109]
On Biden's foreign policy: Columnist and author Max Boot - CBS News
Jul 28, 2021 · This week, host Michael Morell talks with Boot about the top foreign policy challenges the Biden administration is likely to face.Missing: criticized | Show results with:criticized<|separator|>
[110]
'The Corrosion of Conservatism': Why Max Boot broke up with the ...
Jan 28, 2020 · Boot, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976 to Los Angeles with his parents, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National ...
[111]
The Case for American Empire | 13 | Paradoxes of Power | Max Boot
Max Boot ... The United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, 'a republic, not ...
[112]
Max Boot - Foreign Affairs
MAX BOOT is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
[113]
American Empire, Not 'If' but 'What Kind' | Brookings
“Given the historical baggage that `imperialism' carries, there's no need for the U.S. government to embrace the term,” Max Boot, author of “These Savage Wars ...
[114]
How the GOP Went From Reagan to Trump - The Atlantic
Sep 8, 2024 · Reagan was pro-immigration and pro–free trade, rejecting the nativism and protectionism that have been Trump's hallmarks. ... Max Boot is a senior ...
[115]
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History ...
War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare's evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, ...Missing: 2006 | Show results with:2006
[116]
Max Boot: Home
Max Boot is a best-selling historian, biographer, and foreign policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies.
[117]
2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege
Dec 27, 2017 · I used to be a smart-alecky conservative who scoffed at “political correctness.” The Trump era has opened my eyes. By Max Boot ... Foreign Policy ...
[118]
Why Trump is a Security Threat - Commentary Magazine
Mar 27, 2016 · Why Trump is a Security Threat. by Max Boot. Some have dismissed my assertion that Donald Trump represents the No. 1 security threat to the ...
[119]
Useful Idiocy - Commentary Magazine
Jul 17, 2017 · Useful Idiocy. by Max Boot. We all make mistakes. My most recent one was agreeing to go on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show on July 12 to ...Missing: essays | Show results with:essays
[120]
The Progressive Case for American Power | Foreign Affairs
Jun 18, 2024 · Progressives have united around an overriding foreign policy prescription: the United States should jettison its world-dominating ambitions.<|separator|>
[121]
Opinion | What will the Trump-Putin Alaska summit achieve?
Aug 14, 2025 · Max Boot I have more fear than hope. I see no indication that Putin is going to call off his war (which is making little progress on the ground) ...<|separator|>