Halberstam offers a fascinating look at policies foreign and domestic in the 1990s.

Depending on how one views American foreign policy in the 1990s, it was either a decade of large failures and small triumphs or an unmitigated disaster. According to David Halberstam, it was more of the former.

Halberstam, a veteran New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize Winner, offers proof of this in War In A Time Of Peace: his 543 page account of American Policy in the Bush-Clinton-tail beginning of Dubya years. The book takes us inside the Bush-Clinton White houses and offers insight on the key players in both administrations from James Baker to Madeline Albright to Colin Powell.

The book opens with the Bush Sr administration in triumph during the aftermath of Gulf War I. It shows how Bush was riding high at the moment, yet trouble was already brewing. Specifically in the economic sector. Halberstam shows how many Americans felt Bush was too concerned with foreign issues and not enough with domestic policy, a fact that Bill Clinton hammered him with during the 1992 election.

The book shifts from place to place. We begin in Washington, are taken to the Balkans just as they are on the verge of exploding and back to Washington where Bush is dealing with those re-election blues.

That approach continues throughout the book as we are taken back and forth between Washington, The Balkans, Haiti and Somalia. In that respect, the book has the epic feel of a globe trotting spy novel by Tom Clancy, even though it is nonfiction.

Halberstam has an easy-flowing prose style and that is on display throughout War In A Time Of Peace. Yet the book itself doesn't have a natural flow. Halberstam has a tendency to go off on various tangents throughout the narrative. Often he will be discussing a situation and introduce us to a person who played a role in that situation. From that point, he offers up a sort of mini biography of that person before returning to discussion of the situation. While that isn't a bad thing per se, it may be a little off-putting to some readers.

Throughout the book we are taken inside pivotal moments of this era. We are shown the disastrous attempt to capture Somali warlords in October 1993, the effect of Haitian Refugees coming into the US and how Clinton was torn between compassion and overcrowding issues and the seemingly endless war in the former Yugoslavia.

The journeys inside the various events are quite fascinating. What are also interesting are the portrayals of the people involved. Halberstam shows Bush Sr as an overall decent man who just happened to luck into the Reagan administration, become president in the face of incredibly weak competition and assume the office with no real ideas of his own, just some ones he borrowed from Reagan.

Clinton is shown to be an overall decent guy who's cursed with a quick temper and lousy judgment. Halberstam showcases bits and pieces of the Clinton comedy of errors such as the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Yet his overall belief is that Bill's greatest failure came in never fully developing a coherent foreign policy. I recall hearing a comment made about Clinton by a GOPer (can't remember exactly who), that Clinton's foreign policy briefings usually consisted of jogs to McDonald's. Halberstam shows that that comment, while simplistic, was astutely on target.

Insight is also shown into Colin Powell, Madeline Albright, Dick Morris, Reagan, Clinton Foreign Policy Advisor Tony Lake and numerous others. Of particular interest (especially with the upcoming election) is the info on General Wesley Clark, who was commander of the American forces in the Kosovo engagement.

The book concludes with the departure of Clinton and the entrance into the White House of George W Bush. Considering that this book was written in mid, pre 9/11 2001, the last line in the final chapter is chilling in its premonition of the none too distant future:

"Foreign policy was not high on the political agenda, primarily because whatever the forces that might threaten the future of this country were, they were not yet visible".

Overall Analysis

David Halberstam's War In A Time Of Piece offers a fascinating mix of info and analysis. Much of the data contained is well known, yet a large amount of it is not so easily recognizable, except perhaps to readers of the New York Times. It's not light, escapist reading fare, though it is a good read for those who love reading about politics and have a rainy weekend to kill.