Deceit on the Road to War

In Deceit on the Road to War, John M. Schuessler examines how U.S. presidents have deceived the American public about fundamental decisions of war and peace. Deception has been deliberate, he suggests, as presidents have sought to shift blame for war onto others in some cases and oversell its benefits in others.

John M. Schuessler is Associate Professor of Strategy at the Air War College.

Schuessler (Air War College) has written a concise, sharply analytical book that challenges one of the pillars of the democratic peace literature. The book makes an excellent argument and can also be used as a primer in qualitative methods. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Michael C. Desch, University of Notre Dame, author of Democracy and Military Effectiveness:

Most Americans share our liberal tradition's faith that our democratic political system ensures that good foreign policy ideas regularly triumph over bad ones. But recent events in Iraq and elsewhere suggest that our marketplace of strategic ideas has become bankrupt. John M. Schuessler shows us that this problem is long-standing, teaches us that our unqualified faith in the normal functioning of our political system is naive given the ability of our leaders—especially Presidents—to circumvent it, and urges us to adopt a more worldly view about the relationship between deceit and decisions for war. Deceit on the Road to War provides invaluable directions to both scholars and policymakers as they navigate the twisted paths linking foreign and domestic policy in our democracy.

Deborah Welch Larson, UCLA, author of Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations during the Cold War:

Deceit on the Road to War is engagingly written and propels the reader forward. John M. Schuessler explains how and why presidents withhold or slant information to the public. He argues that leaders engage in blame shifting when they foresee a costly war (to show that leaders have no choice) and overselling the threat (when the adversary is not an imminent danger to national security). Schuessler's argument is relevant to democratic peace theory, which argues that democracies are less likely to enter into unwinnable wars.