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rschmidt7's review against another edition
3.0
Wills does a decent job exploring the growth of the presidency beyond its constitutional limits and beyond the original intent of the office, but he fails to follow through on his thesis that this massive growth of executive power has been derived primarily from the president's sole authority over "the Bomb".
Instead, what Wills actually ends up doing is presenting a case in which every president since Truman has relied on real, perceived, or invented crises to enhance their power. Some of these crises were bomb-related, but not all, or even most. While he begins with a look at Truman, his later chapters examine Reagan-era and Bush, Jr.-era usurpations that have little or nothing to do with nuclear weapons or nuclear crises. By about halfway through the book, Wills is no longer talking about "bomb power," so much as he is talking about "fear power"—scaring the hell out of the American people in order to enhance the scope of the executive branch.
I had hoped for a deeper examination of the presidency's use of nuclear threats, presidents' refusals to repudiate a US first strike, and Americans' erroneous views of the Bomb as an ultimate ace in the hole.
Instead, what Wills actually ends up doing is presenting a case in which every president since Truman has relied on real, perceived, or invented crises to enhance their power. Some of these crises were bomb-related, but not all, or even most. While he begins with a look at Truman, his later chapters examine Reagan-era and Bush, Jr.-era usurpations that have little or nothing to do with nuclear weapons or nuclear crises. By about halfway through the book, Wills is no longer talking about "bomb power," so much as he is talking about "fear power"—scaring the hell out of the American people in order to enhance the scope of the executive branch.
I had hoped for a deeper examination of the presidency's use of nuclear threats, presidents' refusals to repudiate a US first strike, and Americans' erroneous views of the Bomb as an ultimate ace in the hole.
zachbrumaire's review against another edition
5.0
Essential contribution to the theorization of executive power in a post-nuclear age.
Note: C.R. Schmitt's Political Theology.
Note: C.R. Schmitt's Political Theology.
rangerpanties's review against another edition
3.0
good. mostly regurgitated from other books ive read. explains national security state well. advocates constitution.
epersonae's review against another edition
5.0
Incredibly overwhelming for such a short book. He covers the emergence of the "National Security State" in the late 40s/early 50s, starting with the massive secrecy and command-and-control nature of the Manhattan Project, then tackles particular dangers and pitfalls since then. Starting with the bomb, our politics have gone into a unconstitutional twilight zone, to the point where it's really hard to recognize it that way anymore.
This quote from Madison (his italics) stood out for me, in re the proper roles of the legislative vs the executive:
You tell me how far away that is from the world we live in now.
I got to the end, and I kept hoping for some glimmer of, well, hope. But his (necessarily brief) treatment of the Obama administration so far only shows how easy it is for even well-meaning people to be captured by the f'ed-up logic of the National Security State. Alas. (No president comes off well in this, although Truman, Nixon, & Bush II give the worst impressions IMHO.)
Read it, definitely; he's a great writer who covers a lot of ground quickly and with a crisp readable style. But be prepared to be depressed and/or furious.
This quote from Madison (his italics) stood out for me, in re the proper roles of the legislative vs the executive:
Those who are to conduct a war cannot be in the nature of things be proper or safe judges whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.
You tell me how far away that is from the world we live in now.
I got to the end, and I kept hoping for some glimmer of, well, hope. But his (necessarily brief) treatment of the Obama administration so far only shows how easy it is for even well-meaning people to be captured by the f'ed-up logic of the National Security State. Alas. (No president comes off well in this, although Truman, Nixon, & Bush II give the worst impressions IMHO.)
Read it, definitely; he's a great writer who covers a lot of ground quickly and with a crisp readable style. But be prepared to be depressed and/or furious.
gregbrown's review against another edition
3.0
I expected the strong version of Wills' thesis going in—the nuclear bomb and project to build it begat most of the post-WW II world order and government organization—and got something a bit weaker: some of the tools they used to build and deploy the bomb were useful enough that subsequent administrations started deploying it for all sorts of uses. Honestly, Wills could just as easily have written the book about secrecy as a tool in the Cold War, and it probably would have made for a clearer structure to the book as well.
Hiroshima in America does a better job of cataloguing the psychic break caused by using the bomb on a populace, along with the window of time where Truman thought the US had unstoppable power that would never be matched by its enemies. Trying to recapture and enjoy that unipolar dominance describes a lot of the efforts made during the Cold War, and in a more comprehensive fashion than Wills' secrecy-centric narrative, especially one that tends to just focus on the exceptional outbreaks like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Watergate.
The Bomb and The Doomsday Machine do a much better job of describing the giant organizing apparatus built up to justify and deploy the bomb, while Wills just occasionally refers to the web of air bases for deploying bombers before returning to his preferred subject.
Probably the most interesting part of the book was as a trip back to the mindset of 2009, when there were hopes that Obama would rollback Bush's executive overreach and unaccountable conduct in the war on terror. Since then, Obama mainly worked to set the conduct of the war on firmer legal grounds while minimally changing the actual moral atrocities being committed, turning drones into a giant regimented system of death and destruction, still with minimal accountability but some sheen of procedural justice.
Wills' bigger problem is he thinks the answers to his problems lie in the US Constitution, or a firmer adherence to its principles, when it's clear over the last decade that nobody really cares about it? We have a Federalist Society appeals judges and a Supreme Court that clearly decides whatever's convenient; a legislative branch totally inert and incapable of dealing with standard business, much less actual looming crises like climate change, homelessness, aging, and health care; and an executive branch that's arguably the most representative at the moment but still disappointing and full of careerists past their expiration date. Really, more depressing than any of the shit Wills complains about here.
Hiroshima in America does a better job of cataloguing the psychic break caused by using the bomb on a populace, along with the window of time where Truman thought the US had unstoppable power that would never be matched by its enemies. Trying to recapture and enjoy that unipolar dominance describes a lot of the efforts made during the Cold War, and in a more comprehensive fashion than Wills' secrecy-centric narrative, especially one that tends to just focus on the exceptional outbreaks like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Watergate.
The Bomb and The Doomsday Machine do a much better job of describing the giant organizing apparatus built up to justify and deploy the bomb, while Wills just occasionally refers to the web of air bases for deploying bombers before returning to his preferred subject.
Probably the most interesting part of the book was as a trip back to the mindset of 2009, when there were hopes that Obama would rollback Bush's executive overreach and unaccountable conduct in the war on terror. Since then, Obama mainly worked to set the conduct of the war on firmer legal grounds while minimally changing the actual moral atrocities being committed, turning drones into a giant regimented system of death and destruction, still with minimal accountability but some sheen of procedural justice.
Wills' bigger problem is he thinks the answers to his problems lie in the US Constitution, or a firmer adherence to its principles, when it's clear over the last decade that nobody really cares about it? We have a Federalist Society appeals judges and a Supreme Court that clearly decides whatever's convenient; a legislative branch totally inert and incapable of dealing with standard business, much less actual looming crises like climate change, homelessness, aging, and health care; and an executive branch that's arguably the most representative at the moment but still disappointing and full of careerists past their expiration date. Really, more depressing than any of the shit Wills complains about here.
zach_brumaire's review against another edition
5.0
Essential contribution to the theorization of executive power in a post-nuclear age.
Note: C.R. Schmitt's Political Theology.
Note: C.R. Schmitt's Political Theology.
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