Forgetting How to Win

By examining how three American national security institutions (the U.S. Army, Department of State, and U.S. Agency for International Development) adapted to address unexpected and unfamiliar post-combat crises, this book reveals the four shared techniques which led to their success.

Focusing on topics such as crisis response, adaptation, pragmatic policy solutions, and personal relationships, Jeremy Kasper introduces four pivotal case studies which examine how national security institutions responded to post-combat operations in Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, and Afghanistan between 1983-2008.

This book gives a key account of the soldiers, diplomats, and foreign aid practitioners who responded to unexpected crises during post-conflict reconstruction – a dynamic, unfamiliar, and complex mission far outside their respective organization’s core mission. Focusing on how bureaucracies struggled to apply the diplomatic, military, and economic dimensions of national power in pursuit of U.S. policy goals, this book ultimately exposes institutional forgetfulness, such that hard-won lessons did little to shape subsequent crises.