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person1969–

Max Boot

Disciplines:
military history
documentary/commentary
never trump
geopolitics/foreign policy

Summary

Russian-American military historian and foreign policy analyst — Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow — Washington Post columnist — former Wall Street Journal editor — author of The Savage Wars of Peace and The Corrosion of Conservatism — who left the Republican Party over Trump.

Core Contribution

Creates the neo-Wilsonian interventionist case for small wars and nation-building — Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace argued that America has a long history of successful small wars and counterinsurgency that was being wrongly ignored in post-Cold War strategic debates.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Changed his registration from Republican to Independent to oppose Trump — then wrote a book (The Corrosion of Conservatism) arguing that the Republican Party had been fundamentally corrupted; the self-critical element (he had supported Iraq War and other positions that contributed to the party's dysfunction) makes the book more honest than most political memoirs

Notable Works & Achievements

The Savage Wars of Peace

War Made New

The Road Not Taken

The Corrosion of Conservatism

Historical Influences

Kipling Theodore Roosevelt

Intellectual Lineage

Moscow UC Berkeley Yale Wall Street Journal CFRWashington Post

Contemporaries & Peers

Robert Kagan Bill Kristol David Frum

Minds Influenced

Neoconservative military thinking

Intellectual Posterity

The Savage Wars of Peace The Corrosion of Conservatism Never Trump movement

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