Max Boot

Max Boot is a prolific and sometimes controversial writer who specializes in U.S. national security. A promoter of hawkish, neoconservative views similar to those of writers like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Ledeen, Boot holds privileged perches in U.S. news media and foreign policy communities. He is a monthly columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.1

Boot has numerous connections to the neoconservative community and is described by the New York Times—where his writing has also appeared—as “an influential neoconservative author and policy expert as well as a military historian.”2 He served as an editor for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, a bastion of neoconservative opinion, and contributes to William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, a key forum for neoconservative writers. Other contributing editors at the Standard have included Krauthammer, David Frum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Frederick and Robert Kagan, P.J. O’Rourke, John Podhoretz, and Irwin Stelzer.3

Like Boot, many of these figures supported the advocacy campaigns of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC),4 a letterhead group closely connected to the American Enterprise Institute that was founded in the late 1990s to promote a “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”5 After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, PNAC vociferously promoted an expansive “war on terror,” claiming in a now-notorious sign-on letter shortly after the attacks that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”6

Boot signed several post-9/11 PNAC letters, including its March 19, 2003, “Statement on Post-War Iraq.” Published the day before the United States began its invasion, the letter made plain that PNAC and its supporters viewed Iraq as the first step in a larger reshaping of the region’s political landscape, arguing that the invasion and rebuilding of Iraq could “contribute decisively to the democratization of the wider Middle East.”7

Boot’s positions are sometimes hardline even by neoconservative standards. For example, in contrast to neocon trailblazer Irving Kristol—who has expressed caution when it comes to the United States becoming the world's sheriff 8 —Boot has unflinchingly argued that the United States should "unambiguously ... embrace its imperial role."9 He eagerly promotes broad U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and criticizes diplomatic efforts in the region. In Iran, for instance, Boot claims the United States would be fully justified in taking military action, writing, "Faced with such a flagrant casus belli [Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq], not to mention President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blood-curdling threats against our ally, Israel, the United States would be perfectly justified in hitting Iran now, before it acquires nuclear weapons."10

Similarly, in a 2003 interview for the Washington Monthly, Boot favored targeting Saudi Arabia. He said, "We need to be more assertive and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." In a worst-case scenario, he said, the United States may end up "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region.”11

Speaking as a surrogate for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) at a September 2008 retreat hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Boot argued that it would be a mistake to push Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, saying that he opposed U.S. engagement with Syria because it might jeopardize efforts to bolster democracy in Lebanon. "John McCain is not going to betray the lawfully elected government of Lebanon,” Boot told the Jewish news service JTA during the retreat.12

In a January 2005 Los Angeles Times article titled "Necessary Roughness," Boot lambasted outfits like Human Rights Watch for criticizing U.S. interrogation techniques at places like Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. He minimized the allegations of torture by arguing that such incidents were limited to a few "sickos," and he defended techniques like "waterboarding," during which detainees are submerged in water for long periods of time. "'Waterboarding' may well meet the United Nations' definition of torture: the infliction of 'severe pain and suffering, mental or physical.' Should this be permitted? I'm not sure. It's hard to know exactly where to draw the line. But I am sure that I reject the absolutist grandstanding of so many of the president's critics, who would turn international law into a suicide pact,” Boot wrote. “That such views are now espoused even by some supporters of the war on terrorism is a sign of how complacent we have become. I hope it doesn't take another 9/11 to alert us to the mortal danger we still face.”13

Boot is the author of several books, some of which have received both accolades and severe criticism. His most recent book, published in 2007, is War Made New: War, Technology, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today. Although it received praise from the likes of McCain and acclaimed historian Paul Kennedy, veteran war reporter Martin Sieff, writing in American Conservative, calls the book a "remarkably superficial" historical survey of "war and the way technological developments change the way it is fought."14 Sieff writes that the book is "filled with the most extraordinary lacunae. It ignores—by accident or design—the most important developments in modern military technology." A case in point is the chapter on Iraq, which Sieff argues is "inept, misleading, and downright wrong." Sieff writes: "The chapter's climax is May 1, 2003, the day President [George W.] Bush declared 'Mission Accomplished' aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—which is like ending an account of World War II with the Nazis' conquest of France or cutting off 'Hamlet' in the first act and claiming that the play had a happy ending. Since that day, of course, the unending violence in Iraq has confounded the [Donald] Rumsfeld-neocon contention that super-advanced technology has indeed made war new, as Boot claims in his book. Boot does add a half-hearted and vague discussion of some of the disastrous developments in Iraq since 2003. This is especially notable for its obfuscations clearly designed to get Rumsfeld, [Paul] Wolfowitz, and Boot's other neocon friends off the hook for failing to anticipate or prevent any of the developments he mentions.”15

This effort to rewrite history to salvage the dented reputations of those who orchestrated and promoted the Iraq War is perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the book, Sieff concludes; as far as the book’s contribution to military history, War Made New is “simply farcical.”16  

Boot’s other books include The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (2002) and Out of Order Arrrogance, Corruption, and Incompetence on the Bench (1998).

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