From his perch as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Max Boot, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar, has been one of the country's most garrulous supporters of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, publishing broadsides defending everything from the interrogation techniques used in U.S. detention facilities to the need to expand the "war on terror" to places like Saudi Arabia. Boot is a contributing editor—along with the likes of Irwin Stelzer, Charles Krauthammer, and Robert Kagan—of the neoconservative flagship magazine the Weekly Standard, edited by William Kristol. He was also a supporter of the advocacy work of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the now largely defunct letterhead group closely associated with the American Enterprise Institute; PNAC played a key role in fomenting public and official support for the Iraq War.
In some respects, Boot occupies the extremist end of the neoconservative ideological spectrum. While some figures, like neocon trailblazer Irving Kristol, have argued caution when it comes to the United States becoming the world's sheriff, Boot has unflinchingly argued that the United States should "unambiguously ... embrace its imperial role" (quoted in Paul Crespo, "A New Age of American Imperialism," Miami Herald, June 23, 2003).
A senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Boot has not shied from his opinion that the United States would be justified in taking action against Iran: "Faced with such a flagrant casus belli [Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq], not to mention President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blood-curdling threats against our ally, Israel, the United States would be perfectly justified in hitting Iran now, before it acquires nuclear weapons ... B ut that doesn't necessarily mean that such an attack is the best strategy at the moment or the one that the administration is pursuing " (Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2007).
Boot has developed a reputation for not mincing words. In an interview with the Washington Monthly's Joshua Micah Marshall, for example, Boot said: "We need to be more assertive and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." In a worst-case scenario, he said, the United States may end up "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region" (Washington Monthly, April 2003).
Like his columnist comrade Krauthammer—but unlike some neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, who have expressed deep pessimism about the U.S. role in Iraq—Boot has repeatedly argued that George W. Bush's aggressively interventionist war on terror is the only recourse the United States has in stemming its many "enemies." In the process, Boot has rehashed arguments long abandoned by many early supporters of the Iraq War, including the idea that imposing democracy is a viable strategy for reshaping the Middle East.
In a July 2006 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Boot lamented what he termed the "down-sizing of President Bush's democracy-promotion agenda," citing a liberal dissident imprisoned in Egypt who was freed in 2002 perhaps due to White House pressure, and a similar 2006 case, in which the White House had not taken action.
In a January 2005 Los Angeles Times article titled "Necessary Roughness," Boot lambasted outfits like Human Rights Watch for criticizing U.S. interrogation techniques at places like Abu Ghraib prison. He minimized the serious allegations of torture by arguing that incidents were limited to a few "sickos," and he defended techniques like "waterboarding," during which detainees are submerged in water for long periods of time. He wrote: "'Waterboarding' may well meet the United Nations' definition of torture: the infliction of 'severe pain and suffering, mental or physical.' Should this be permitted? I'm not sure. It's hard to know exactly where to draw the line. But I am sure that I reject the absolutist grandstanding of so many of the president's critics, who would turn international law into a suicide pact. That such views are now espoused even by some supporters of the war on terrorism is a sign of how complacent we have become. I hope it doesn't take another 9/11 to alert us to the mortal danger we still face" (Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2005).
Boot is the author of a number of books, many of which have received sterling accolades from some while at the same time being severely criticized by experts for inaccuracies. His most recent book, published in 2007, is War Made New: War, Technology, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today. According to veteran war reporter Martin Sieff, the book is a "remarkably superficial" historical survey of "war and the way technological developments change the way it is fought." Although it has received praise from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Robert Kaplan, retired Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor, and acclaimed historian Paul Kennedy, according to Sieff the book is "filled with the most extraordinary lacunae. It ignores—by accident or design—the most important developments in modern military technology." A case in point is the chapter on Iraq, Sieff says, arguing that it is "inept, misleading, and downright wrong." He writes: "The chapter's climax is May 1, 2003, the day President Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished' aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—which is like ending an account of World War II with the Nazis' conquest of France or cutting off 'Hamlet' in the first act and claiming that the play had a happy ending. Since that day, of course, the unending violence in Iraq has confounded the [Donald] Rumsfeld-neocon contention that super-advanced technology has indeed made war new, as Boot claims in his book. Boot does add a half-hearted and vague discussion of some of the disastrous developments in Iraq since 2003. This is especially notable for its obfuscations clearly designed to get Rumsfeld, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and Boot's other neocon friends off the hook for failing to anticipate or prevent any of the developments he mentions" (American Conservative, March 12, 2007).
Concludes Sieff: " War Made New is significant in that it appears to represent an attempt by a prominent neoconservative to reclaim his and his friends' reputations for expertise on modern war that were so damaged by their repeated and documented incompetence in crafting U.S. policy and dominating public discourse on the Iraq War—not to mention the unfolding fiasco in Afghanistan. The enthusiastic recommendation of Sen. McCain, an acknowledged war hero and the clear Republican frontrunner for the 2008 presidential nomination, confirms that this bogus rehabilitation remains a very real possibility. The book is therefore of significance as a political and propaganda ploy. But as serious military history or any kind of useful guide to U.S. policymaking, it is simply farcical."
Similarly, Boot's 2002 book The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power was, according to Boot's bio page at the neoconservative-led promotion agency Benador Associates, "selected as one of the best books of 2002 by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor." However, while many reviewers praised the book for some of its historical analyses, they also recognized the ideological agenda behind Boot's work. In a review for the New York Review of Books, Brian Urquhart wrote that Boot "sets out a thoughtful list of lessons that should have been learned" from America's past involvement in so-called small wars. "Boot believes that the great challenges of the present time can only be met through United States leadership and action, if possible with the approval of the United Nations." However, concludes Urquhart, while "Max Boot writes that 'without a benevolent hegemon to guarantee order, the international scene can degenerate into chaos or worse.' That may well be true at this moment when international multilateral organizations and international law are still in their prolonged and often stunted adolescence, but the key word is 'benevolent.' Unfortunately, not everyone now sees the United States as benevolent, and feelings of hostility to the United States are being sedulously cultivated; hence the emergence of organizations like al-Qaida" (New York Review of Books, October 10, 2002).
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Affiliations
Los Angeles Times: Columnist
Council on Foreign Relations: Senior Fellow
Weekly Standard: Contributing Editor
Project for the New American Century: Signed various PNAC letters
Wall Street Journal: Editorial Features Editor, 1997-2002
Christian Science Monitor: Writer-Editor, 1992-1994
Education
Yale University: M.A. in Diplomatic History, 1992
University of California, Berkeley: B.A. in History, 1991
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