Oh What a . . . Small War.

The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot (Basic, 428 pp., $30)

When George W. Bush became president, academics and policymakers alike fretted that his election signaled a "return to isolationism." That the United States was isolationist until the early part of the 20th century, and that even afterward isolationism remained the default preference of the American people, are among the things that "everyone knows." Everyone also "knows" that the traditional purpose of the U.S. military has been to fight and win the nation's wars in defense of vital national interests, and that the sort of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in which the U.S. military has been involved since the end of the Cold War constitute "non-traditional" missions. Finally, they "know" that the "American Way of War" seeks to annihilate the enemy, relies on technology and firepower to reduce U.S. casualties, requires the services of "citizen soldiers," and has as its goal total victory in conventional wars against other states.

But as the Wall Street Journal's Max Boot illustrates in this remarkable new book, when it comes to the history of U.S. foreign policy, Will Rogers was right when he claimed that "it's not the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't true." The real history of U.S. policy has been, from the very beginning, about as far removed from these shibboleths as one can imagine.

Boot makes it clear that the U.S. has never been shy about pursuing an activist foreign policy, and that it has done so for a variety of reasons -- not just out of concern for economic and security interests, but also to advance moral and humanitarian goals. Often, all such causes were in play at the same time -- as with the U.S. interventions in the Caribbean during the early part of the 20th century.

He also demolishes the claim that the primary focus of the U.S. military traditionally has been to fight and win big wars. Indeed, throughout most of its history, the norm has been what the British soldier and military writer C. E. Calwell described as "campaigns undertaken to suppress rebellion and guerrilla warfare . . . where organized armies are struggling against opponents who will not meet them in the open field." In recent years, American policymakers have coined for these sorts of operations such bureaucratic terms as "non- traditional missions," "low-intensity conflict," or "military operations other than war"; but before World War II, they were called small wars. Kipling called them "the savage wars of peace."

This book is not only an eminently readable and entertaining narrative history of America's small wars, but also a serious analysis of current strategic challenges. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. has become a de facto imperial power, and a major military requirement of such a power is to conduct constabulary operations that amount to "imperial policing." As Boot shows, we have been doing this since the 19th century.

His narrative has three parts. The first covers the rising commercial republic, until the end of the 19th century. During this period, U.S. forces were extensively involved in operations stretching from the Mediterranean to China, including expeditions to Sumatra, Korea, and Samoa; the longest and most important was against the Barbary states of North Africa. Most of these operations were naval in character, short- term expeditions of the sort the British called "butcher and bolt."

The book's second part describes America's rise to great-power status, up to World War II. This was the heyday of small wars, as the U.S. policed the empire it had seized from Spain. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines conducted operations in China (the Boxer Rebellion), the Philippines, Russia, Mexico, and the Caribbean and Central America, where a Pax Americana was created. These campaigns were often sustained, requiring the occupation and pacification of extensive territories. Most were successful. Some were not.

The Central American operations, often derided as "banana wars," helped to keep the Europeans, especially the Germans, away from the approaches to the Panama Canal. But they frequently transcended realpolitik. For instance, U.S. Marines engaged in what today would be called "nation building" and even sought to create the conditions necessary to establish constitutional government in places such as Haiti and Nicaragua. Taking issue with those who have criticized U.S. imperialism in this region, Boot writes that the region's history proves that "the only thing more unsavory than U.S. intervention . . . was U.S. nonintervention."

In his third section, Boot examines America as a post-World War II superpower. It was during this period that the U.S. largely abandoned its small-wars tradition, as professional soldiers turned their attention to preparing for large-scale conventional wars against the armed forces of other states. "The Marines alone embraced [small wars] as part of their raison d'etre," Boot writes, "and in the decade leading up to World War II they compiled the lessons of their hard-won experience in the Small Wars Manual." The Army's preference for fighting a conventional large war was on display in Vietnam. In the book's most controversial chapter, Boot analyzes the Vietnam War and concludes that the outcome might have been different had the U.S. pursued the small-wars approach -- which had worked well in the past -- instead of large-unit "search and destroy" operations. His argument pits him against such respected analysts as the late Harry Summers, but places him on the same side as Andrew Krepinevich and the legendary Marine general Victor H. Krulak.

Boot offers a persuasive critique of the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, which holds that the U.S. should use force only when "vital interests" are at stake, and even then only if there is nearly total public support, as well as an "exit strategy" designed to bring the troops home as quickly as possible. He argues that the lessons of past small wars serve as a better guide for policymakers; after all, he observes, there is nothing novel in U.S. history about undeclared wars, wars without "exit strategies," wars in which soldiers serve as "social workers," wars not involving "vital national interests," and wars without significant popular support.

Boot is an exceptional writer and his engaging style is tailor-made for this type of narrative. Ranging from Stephen Decatur and operations against the Barbary pirates to the exploits of such legendary Marines as Smedley Butler and Chesty Puller as they chased bandits, kept the peace, and engaged in nation building in the Caribbean, Boot's tale is fascinating. He does for U.S. military history what Byron Farwell did for the British in his popular book Queen Victoria's Little Wars.

But The Savage Wars of Peace is far more than a collection of colorful vignettes about Americans fighting in exotic places. It has an important purpose: to raise the question of how best to use force to manage America's informal -- but nonetheless very real -- empire. Boot is one of a group of prominent writers -- including Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kaplan -- who argue that U.S. "primacy," or what Robert Kagan calls "benevolent hegemony," is best not only for the U.S. but also for the rest of the world, insofar as it wishes to benefit from a liberal world order. Primacy is based on a theory of international relations called "hegemonic stability," which holds that a liberal international trade regime does not arise spontaneously through the actions of a global "invisible hand"; it arises only in the presence of a hegemonic power, a state willing and able to provide the world with the collective goods of economic stability and international security. As Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times has put it, "the hidden hand of the global market would never work without the hidden fist."

According to this theory, a decline in relative U.S. power could create a more disorderly, less peaceful world. The precedent is the decay of Pax Britannica -- which decay, many believe, created the necessary if not sufficient conditions for the two world wars of the 20th century. As British hegemony declined, smaller states that had previously had incentives to cooperate with Britain "defected" to other powers, causing the international system to fragment. The outcome was depression and war.

Boot argues that U.S. leaders should be less apologetic, less hesitant, and less humble about deploying American power. He acknowledges that there is always the danger of imperial overstretch and hubris; but there is, he concludes, "an equal, if not greater, danger of undercommitment and lack of confidence. America should not be afraid to fight 'the savage wars of peace' if necessary to enlarge the 'empire of liberty.' It has done it before."

Boot makes a strong case in behalf of Pax Americana, and a military prepared to conduct imperial policing. But while he praises the Marines for their attention to small wars, he doesn't address what it might take to change the mindset of the U.S. Army regarding these tasks. The Army, after all, must continue to plan to fight conventional wars; how will it adapt to the use of its ground troops for imperial policing?

There is a strong tendency among today's Army officers to view such operations as "non-traditional missions." This is because today's U.S. Army is Emory Upton's army. Upton was an innovative officer with an outstanding Civil War record who later became a protege of William Tecumseh Sherman. When Sherman became general-in-chief of the Army, he sent Upton around the world as a military observer. Upton was impressed by Prussian military policy and its emphasis on professionalism; upon his return to the U.S., he proposed a number of radical reforms, including abandoning the citizen-soldier model, relying on a professional soldiery, and reducing civilian interference in military affairs. All of his proposals, naturally, were rejected; in ill health, he resigned from the Army and later committed suicide.

But he was ahead of his time. With the triumph of Progressivism (and its emphasis on scientific expertise and professionalism), the end of the Army's constabulary duties on the western frontier, and the problems associated with mobilizing for and fighting the Spanish- American War, Upton's proposals became more attractive to the Army's officer corps. In 1904, secretary of war Elihu Root published Upton's Military Policy of the United States. While many of Upton's more radical proposals remained beyond the pale, his idea of reorienting the Army away from constabulary duties to a mission focused on defeating conventional forces became U.S. policy. The Army returned to constabulary duties after World War I, but Upton's spirit had permeated the professional Army culture. World War II seemed to vindicate his opinions, which continue to dominate most of the Army today, with the possible exception of its small and elite Special Operations Forces.

The fact that transforming military bureaucracies will not be easy is no reason not to start. Boot's book provides a readable, entertaining, and enlightening rationale for doing so. He observes that "the past is an uncertain guide to the future, but is the only one we have"; and thanks to him, the past has been illuminated in a way that improves its value as a guide to the future.