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The Day After
- Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong.
We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after". The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences - many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment. This helped set the stage for an extraordinary historical moment in which America's role in the world, along with our commitment to democracy at home and abroad, have become subject to growing doubt. With the benefit of hindsight, can we discern what went wrong? Why have we had such great difficulty planning for the aftermath of war?
In The Day After, Brendan Gallagher - an Army lieutenant colonel with multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a Princeton PhD - seeks to tackle this vital question. Gallagher argues there is a tension between our desire to create a new democracy and our competing desire to pull out as soon as possible. Our leaders often strive to accomplish both to keep everyone happy. But by avoiding the tough underlying decisions, it fosters an incoherent strategy. This makes chaos more likely.
The Day After draws on new interviews with dozens of civilian and military officials, ranging from US cabinet secretaries to four-star generals. It also sheds light on how, in Kosovo, we lowered our postwar aims to quietly achieve a surprising partial success. Striking at the heart of what went wrong in our recent wars, and what we should do about it, Gallagher asks whether we will learn from our mistakes, or provoke even more disasters? Human lives, money, elections, and America's place in the world may hinge on the answer.
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Valuable historical narrative
- By Jane G. Malkin on 04-07-22
By: Philip Zelikow, and others
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The Future of War
- A History
- By: Lawrence Freedman
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Future of War - which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn't) - is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.
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A good historical review of the progression of war
- By Ian R. Graham on 06-14-18
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The Last Warrior
- Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy
- By: Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Watts
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.
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Interesting man
- By FoxMan on 04-28-17
By: Andrew Krepinevich, and others
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The Button
- The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump
- By: William J. Perry, Tom Z. Collina
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb.
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Garbage political tripe
- By Bryan Beaty on 03-15-21
By: William J. Perry, and others
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On China
- By: Henry Kissinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 20 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book length to a country he has known intimately for decades and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. On China illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and tight line modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, and Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing.
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Another History of China
- By Elton on 09-23-11
By: Henry Kissinger
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How the West Brought War to Ukraine
- Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe
- By: Benjamin Abelow
- Narrated by: Larry Wayne
- Length: 1 hr and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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According to the mainstream Western narrative, Vladimir Putin is an insatiable, Hitler-like expansionist who invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked land grab. That story is incorrect. In reality, the United States and NATO bear much of the responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.
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Russian (Soviet) Propaganda
- By John Williams on 12-11-22
By: Benjamin Abelow
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The Accidental Guerrilla
- Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
- By: David Kilcullen
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge."Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror.
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Not What I Expected
- By John on 12-12-10
By: David Kilcullen
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The Avoidable War
- The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China
- By: Kevin Rudd
- Narrated by: Kevin Rudd, Rafe Beckley
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer, and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily. Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine if a war will be fought.
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Xi and the CCP Approve this Message
- By Andrizomai on 12-04-22
By: Kevin Rudd
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How Terrorism Ends
- Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns
- By: Audrey Kurth Cronin
- Narrated by: Diana Dorman
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Amid the fear following 9/11 and other recent terror attacks, it is easy to forget the most important fact about terrorist campaigns: the always come to an end - and often far more quickly than expected. Contrary to what many assume, when it comes to dealing with terrorism it may be more important to understand how it ends than how it begins.
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Halfway through
- By John S. on 07-27-12
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Tomorrow, the World
- The Birth of US Global Supremacy
- By: Stephen Wertheim
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.
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Powerful punch to American dogma.
- By JLK on 06-30-21
By: Stephen Wertheim
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War and the Art of Governance
- Consolidating Combat Success into Political Victory
- By: Nadia Schadlow
- Narrated by: Robin Rowan
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Success in war ultimately depends on the consolidation of political order. Nadia Schadlow argues that the steps needed to consolidate a new political order are not separate from war. They are instead an essential component of war and victory.
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Exceptional Depiction of Remaining Challenges
- By Matthew D. Coburn on 03-27-18
By: Nadia Schadlow
What listeners say about The Day After
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JD
- 03-18-22
Foreign Policy Pitfalls
Though the US's inclination to become involved in a conflict may be well intentioned and even warranted its short term goals are not aligned with it's long term goals. Preparation and planning for what comes after the conflict is even more important sometimes than the battle at hand. This is another book that brings to mind that military personnel need to be versed in more than their war fighting position and hone other skills. When at all possible they should serve in positions with exposure to diplomacy, policy making, and in none military in depth planning. This book reminds me of and has undertones of "Soldier and the State" by Samual Huntington which discusses civil-military relations.
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- J. Pulton
- 03-07-21
Experience matters
This book may have a small potential audience, but I for one, am thankful to Brendan Gallagher for having written it. His combination of military and academic credentials made him uniquely qualified to produce this priceless synthesis of lessons in post-war planning and implementation. I just wish it had been available before I lived in Afghanistan.
If you are looking for a partisan book attacking the foreign policy of the G.W. Bush or Obama administrations, look elsewhere. After reading this book, I still don’t know Gallagher’s politics. He acknowledges that the officials responsible for the failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were intelligent, well-intentioned people. However, he is unsparing in dissecting their errors; the muddled strategic thought, the inappropriately organized government decision making processes, and the unwillingness to learn from the mistakes and successes of past administrations.
Reflecting on the book, it appears that presidential administrations get better at post-war planning and implementation over time. The author points out that the Bill Clinton administration learned from the 1990s school of hard knocks, finally getting it right with the 1998 Kosovo occupation. Likewise, the G.W. Bush administration finally learned from past mistakes with the successful 2007 Iraq surge.
I also note that success seems to be correlated with a president’s level of experience before taking office. Despite serving only one term, the G.H.W. Bush administration demonstrated competence in foreign policy, avoiding wars where possible, and successfully carrying out the first Iraq war. I suspect it’s no coincidence that H.W. had been Director of the CIA and Ambassador to the UN, as well as experiencing military service in his youth. Bill Clinton, whose administration achieved the book’s success story in Kosovo, entered office with over a decade of governing experience. G.W. Bush and Obama entered the presidency with significantly less governing experience. If we want to avoid foreign policy debacles, perhaps voters should once again take governing experience into consideration?
If everyone serving in foreign policy or military positions read this book, the U.S. might finally stop repeating past mistakes.
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- W. Campbell
- 08-05-21
Unrealistic Comparisons
I had a had time with comparisons made between theaters of war such as Kosovo and Iraq. There is no comparisons but the author attempts to draw conclusions from their similarities. As a veteran, I didn’t appreciate the shallow inclusion of personal experience in an attempt to give his arguments credibility.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-13-23
Some useful information.
The author's emphasis on the dangers of "magical thinking" in post war planning, while true, ignores his own "magical thinking" that more investment of time, lives, and treasure can overcome the influence of a religiously fundamentalist culture that has a thousand-year HISTORY of authoritarian/violent governance and tribalism.
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