Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on US relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia.

• Preface


• Acknowledgments


• 1. Saddam Hussein


• 2. George W. Bush


• 3. 9/11 and the Global War on Terror


• 4. Iraq


• 5. Coercive Diplomacy


• 6. A Special Relationship


• 7. Deciding


• 8. Resolve


• 9. Mission Awry


• 10. Conclusion: Fear, Power, Hubris


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

In Confronting Saddam Hussein, Melvyn P. Leffler, analyzes why the US went to war in Iraq in 2003 and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. As the book unfolds, the centrality of Bush's role becomes more and more evident. A necessary reassessment of George W. Bush's intervention in Iraq, Confronting Saddam Hussein provides a provocative reinterpretation of the most important international event of the 21st century.