Looking backwards and forwards

At one point in "War in a Time of Peace," David Halberstam mentions that America's Vietnam experience changed everything it touched. I think that can be applied to Halberstam himself. His work as a young reporter in Vietnam made his reputation, and his book on the job, "The Best and the Brightest," is considered a classic.

I get the sense that Halberstam wrote this book because he wanted to know if Vietnam's legacy was as present in other people and institutions as it was in him. He found the answer was yes. We're still grappling with the problems of being a superpower in a world that doesn't fit into neat compartments.

America wasn't too concerned with foreign policy in the 1990's, spending more time worrying about the NASDAQ index and 401k plans once the Gulf War was over. Halberstam tries to fill in the gaps here, focusing mostly on the problems in the Balkan states. As you might remember if you were one of those paying attention, the people of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, etc., have been hating each other for hundreds of years, and once Yugoslavia broke apart those people went back to their rivalries. It took a couple of different efforts to get Slobodan Milosovic under control and out of the region.

Halberstam reviews the events in the region, keeping an eye on the fact that memories of Vietnam and it's "we aren't willing to win at any cost" policy still was in the backs of leaders' minds. The author does a good job of sorting out who's who over there, no easy task.

But it's back in America where Halberstam really shines. His profiles of the decision-makers in the first Bush and Clinton administrations are revealing and insightful. Visitors who met James Baker and George Bush for the first time thought Baker was the more charismatic person and more likely to be Presidential timber. Madeleine Albright learned about her ethnic heritage essentially through a Washington Post article. Richard Holbrook, Sandy Berger, Colin Powell -- all of the principals in the past 10 years are reviewed. The decision-making process of military matters also is given full scrutiny.

And, of course, events since Sept. 11 have given the book an entirely new relevance. At times this reads like ancient history, since it's about a time when foreign affairs didn't seem to matter to the country. At other times it's amazingly fresh, since many of the principals are back in the new Bush administration. The updates on our military capability are particularly interesting; our progress since 1991 is a bit stunning.

Here's an example of foreshadowing, written well before Sept. 11. It's about why Donald Rumsfeld's support of a missile defense system is ill-founded:

"(There's) a belief among many senior intelligence analysts that the greatest threat to an open society like America came from terrorists, rather than the military power of rogue states, which offered exceptional targets themselves. The real danger to an open society like America was the ability of a terrorist, not connected to any sitting government, to walk into an American city with a crude atomic weapon, delivered, as it were, by hand in a cardboard suitcase."

These days, it's important to know where we've been and we're going, and this book explains much about the journey. It would be interesting and well done under any circumstances, but today's times make it a five-star achievement.

Thank you for reading this review.