Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World

About this book

“An absolutely brilliant book . . . the most clearly argued critique yet of the Bush administration’s flawed approach to defeating jihadist terrorism.”—Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. Six years into the “war on terror,” are the United States and its allies safer than they were before it started? Sadly, we are not, and the reason is that we are fighting—and losing—the wrong war. In this paradigm-shifting book, Philip H. Gordon presents a new way of thinking about the war on terror and a new strategy for winning it. He draws a provocative parallel between the war on terror and the Cold War, showing how defense, development, diplomacy, and the determination to maintain our own values can again be deployed alongside military might to defeat a hostile and insidious ideology. Gordon also asks, “What would victory look like?”—a topic sorely missing from the debate today. He offers a positive vision of the world after the war on terror, which will end not when we kill or capture all potential terrorists but when their hateful ideology collapses. Gordon’s strategy for achieving this goal is achievable and realistic, but only if the United States changes course before it is too late.