Dan encouraged me to mention a new book that some Duck readers might find interesting, Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), edited by William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell of Pitt’s Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies. Their chapter 1, “Preemption, Prevention, Prevarication” is available on the press website.

Disclosure: the volume includes my chapter, “Deliberate before Striking First?”

There’s a nice review in the July 20 edition of Pittsburgh’s City Paper and I’ve blogged about the book throughout its production on my own site. The group began meeting about the project in February 2004.

The City Paper piece includes interviews with editors Mitchell and Keller. Writer Chris Potter also talked to a couple of the other local contributors and to Michael Glennon of Tufts and Ivo Daalder of Brookings.

Those latter two guys are part of the American foreign policy establishment — CFR members with past and present connections to U.S. policy — Congress, the NSC, and State.

Maybe that means the book will get some traction this fall.

Notes: I’ve been filing posts about the books as “preemptive war,” even though the title uses “preventive war” and the contributors agreed that this latter term more accurately described US policy. However, I figured that potential readers would more likely find information using the misleading term.

Consider me a lackey for the Bush administration.

Dan — any chance this book could appear here?

The book’s table of contents can be found here. That’s a pdf posted by the press.

8/26/06: Post updated to provide link to chapter 1 and press table of contents pdf.

Filed as: preemptive war