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Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
Crown
June 2012
On Sale: June 5, 2012
496 pages ISBN: 0307718026 EAN: 9780307718020 Kindle: B006LTIS7G Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE
INHERITANCE, A REVEALING AND NEWS-BREAKING
ACCOUNT OF OBAMA’S AGGRESSIVE USE OF INNOVATIVE WEAPONS AND
NEW TOOLS OF AMERICAN POWER TO MANAGE A RAPIDLY SHIFTING
WORLD OF GLOBAL THREATS AND CHALLENGES
Inside the
White House Situation Room, the newly elected Barack Obama
immerses himself in the details of a remarkable new
American capability to launch cyberwar against Iran—and
escalates covert operations to delay the day when the
mullahs could obtain a nuclear weapon. Over the next three
years Obama accelerates drone attacks as an alternative to
putting troops on the ground in Pakistan, and becomes
increasingly reliant on the Special Forces, whose hunting of
al-Qaeda illuminates the path out of an unwinnable war in
Afghanistan. Confront and Conceal
provides readers with a picture of an administration
that came to office with the world on fire. It takes them
into the Situation Room debate over how to undermine Iran’s
program while simultaneously trying to prevent Israel from
taking military action that could plunge the region into
another war. It dissects how the bin Laden raid worsened the
dysfunctional relationship with Pakistan. And it traces how
Obama’s early idealism about fighting “a war of necessity”
in Afghanistan quickly turned to fatigue and
frustration. One of the most trusted and
acclaimed national security correspondents in the country,
David Sanger of the New York Times takes readers deep
inside the Obama administration’s most perilous decisions:
The president dispatches an emergency search team to the
Gulf when the White House briefly fears the Taliban may have
obtained the Bomb, but he rejects a plan in late 2011 to
send in Special Forces to recover a stealth drone that went
down in Iran. Obama overrules his advisers and takes the
riskiest path in killing Osama bin Laden, and ignores their
advice when he helps oust Hosni Mubarak from the presidency
of Egypt. “The surprise is his
aggressiveness,” a key ambassador who works closely with
Obama reports. Yet the president has also
pivoted American foreign policy away from the attritional
wars of the past decade, attempting to preserve America’s
influence with a lighter, defter touch—all while focusing on
a new era of diplomacy in Asia and reconfiguring America’s
role during a time of economic turmoil and austerity.
As the world seeks to understand whether there is
an Obama Doctrine, Confront and Conceal is a
fascinating, unflinching account of these complex years, in
which the president and his administration have found
themselves struggling to stay ahead in a world where power
is diffuse and America’s ability to exert control grows ever
more elusive.
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