Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11

Extract

Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11. By Robert S. Litwak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 424p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Robert Litwak focuses his book on how the United States should respond to the potential post–Cold War proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—especially nuclear weapons—to so-called rogue states and nonstate actors like Al Qaeda. Litwak makes three central arguments: 9/11 transformed America's conception of national security; U.S. policy toward rogue states oscillates between the contradictory objectives of regime change versus behavior change; and in the post–9/11 world, the main security threat to the United States is the nexus of nonstate actors like Al Qaeda that want to acquire WMDs and states that might—either passively or actively—facilitate their acquisition by such organizations.