Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Force Without Authority : America's Wars in the Middle East and South Asia - Jason Brownlee
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Force Without Authority

America's Wars in the Middle East and South Asia

By: Jason Brownlee

Hardcover | 27 February 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


$381.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $95.50 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

Force Without Authority explores why the United States' costliest military operations since Vietnam came up short and pushed Republican and Democratic leaders toward withdrawal and retrenchment. Covering the sweep of US armed interventions since the end of the Cold War, Jason Brownlee sets America's post-9/11 invasions in a thirty-five-year foreign-policy arc--from caution to bravado--and back. The al-Qaeda attacks suspended America's traditional aversion to high-risk military missions abroad. For the better part of a decade, presidents from both parties poured US troops into nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, only to return, in the 2010s, to a less hazardous and less ambitious program of eliminating enemies from a distance without reshaping politics on the ground. This same calculus pushed successive administrations toward diplomacy with America's most formidable foes. Critical and wide-sweeping, the book delivers a bracing audit of America's unipolar moment and a compelling case for statecraft over bluster.

More in International Relations

The Book of Secrets : A Personal History of Betrayal in Red China - Xinran Xue
A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict - Ilan Pappe
Nuclear War : A Scenario - Annie Jacobsen

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Goliath's Curse : The History and Future of Societal Collapse - Luke Kemp
The Causes of War : From 1700 to today - Geoffrey Blainey

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Bondi Terror : The tragedy, the courage, the aftermath - Sharri Markson
The Art of Gathering : How We Meet and Why It Matters - Priya Parker
The Curious Diplomat : A memoir from the frontlines of diplomacy - Lachlan Strahan
Covert Regime Change : America's Secret Cold War - Lindsey A. O'Rourke
The Sword of Freedom : Israel, Mossad, and the Secret War - Yossi Cohen
Red Notice : How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy - Bill Browder

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF