Max Boot

Max Boot is a foreign policy scholar and author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. In the following viewpoint he argues that the United States has the power and resources to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 war, provided that it is willing to expend them. The major obstacle to success, he contends, is America’s reluctance to use its powers to impose order and democracy in Iraq for fear of being accused of imperialism. Boot defends American imperialism, arguing that the United States has a long and positive historical record of imperial control of foreign nations. A successful rebuilding of Iraq could require spending billions of dollars and the permanent stationing of American troops in that country, he concludes.

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