America has invaded 43% of the countries in the world, and it has been militarily involved with nearly all the rest. This book offers a global tour of America's military activity, arranged by country, relating a history of gallantry and sacrifice as America has spread its power and influence worldwide.--Publisher.

Most books on the War of 1812 focus on the burning of Washington, D.C., the Battles of Baltimore and New Orleans, and the war in the Old Northwest. Scant attention, however, has been paid the Niagara Campaign of 1814-the American army's ambitious but failed attempt to wrest Canada from British control. While a few writers have dealt with aspects of this effort, Richard Barbuto is the first to offer a comprehensive study of the entire campaign. Barbuto covers every aspect of a campaign that saw the American army come of age, even as its military leaders blundered away potential victory and the acquisition of a coveted expanse of North American territory. Vividly recreating the major battles on the Niagara peninsula—at Chippawa, Lundy's Lane, Fort Erie, and Cook's Mill—Barbuto also clarifies the role of these engagements within the overall framework of American strategy. Despite early success at Chippawa, four long months of fighting finally ended in something like a draw, with the British still in control of Canada. Barbuto argues convincingly that the American government was never really able to harness, coordinate, and focus its tremendous resources in ways that would have allowed the campaign to succeed. Much of the blame, he shows, can be attributed to the poor leadership and confused strategic thinking of President James Madison and his secretary of war, John Armstrong. The American effort was further undermined by manpower shortages, a few ineffective field commanders, and the army and navy's inability to coordinate their objectives and operations. Even so, Barbuto contends that the American soldier, led by the likes of Jacob Brown and the legendary Winfield Scott, performed surprisingly well against one of the great armies of the nineteenth century. Barbuto's analysis, unmarred by national bias, presents a balanced picture of these events from the perspective of all participants—American, British, Canadian, and Native American. He also fills an important gap by providing the first ever capsule histories of all regimental-sized units involved in the campaign. Breathing new life into these events, his far-ranging study should become the definitive work on this long-neglected campaign.

Of back of book.

This edited volume presents the foremost scholarly thinking on why the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a pivotal event in both modern US foreign policy and international politics. In the years since the US invasion of Iraq it has become clear that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not as urgent as the Bush administration presented it and that Saddam Hussein was not involved with either Al Qaeda or 9/11. Many consider the war a mistake and question why Iraq was invaded. A majority of Americans now believe that the public were deliberately misled by the Bush administration in order to bolster support for the war. Public doubt has been strengthened by the growing number of critical scholarly analyses and in-depth journalistic investigations about the invasion that suggest the administration was not candid about its reasons for wanting to take action against Iraq. This volume begins with a survey of private scholarly views about the war’s origins, then assesses the current state of debate by organising the best recent thinking by foreign policy and international relations experts on why the US invaded Iraq. The book covers a broad range of approaches to explaining Iraq – the role of the uncertainty of intelligence, cognitive biases, ideas, Israel, and oil, highlighting areas of both agreement and disagreement. This book will be of much interest to students of the Iraq War, US foreign and security policy, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics and IR/Security Studies in general.

Presents an account of the Mexican War, providing an analysis of its cause, battles, weapons, and outcome.

One of the earliest U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns outside the Western Hemisphere, the Siberian intervention was a harbinger of policies to come. At the height of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched thousands of American soldiers to Siberia, and continued the intervention for a year and a half after the armistice in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to prevent the Japanese from absorbing eastern Siberia. Its tragic legacy can be found in the seeds of World War II, and in the Cold War.

Italy Invades, full of restless adventurers, canny generals, and the occasional scoundrel, is a fast-paced and compelling read, the perfect sequel to America Invades. Recreating their success with America Invades, Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock take another global tour, this time starting from Italy and exploring that country's military involvements throughout the ancient and modern worlds. From the empire building of the Romans, through the globe-spanning Age of Exploration, to the multinational cooperation of NATO, Italy has conquered and explored countries as diverse and far-ranging as Cape Verde and Mongolia and Uruguay. With the additional guide of maps and photographs, the reader can visually follow the Italians as they conquer the world. The book also contains an excerpt from the never before published An Adventure in 1914, written by Christopher Kelly's maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Tileston Wells. Wells served as the American consul general to Romania each summer; and in the summer of 1914, as war exploded across Europe, he was there with his wife and two children.