The renowned diplomatic historian looks back at the ideas, policies, and decisions that led from Vietnam to the Iraq War and to America's disastrous new role in the Middle East.

"What will stand out one day is not George W. Bush's uniqueness but the continuum from the Carter Doctrine of 1979 to "Shock and Awe" in 2003."—from The Long Road to Baghdad

In this stunning new narrative of the road to America's "new longest war," one of the nation's premier diplomatic historians excavates the deep historical roots of the U.S. misadventure in Iraq. Lloyd Gardner's sweeping and authoritative narrative places the Iraq War in the context of U.S. foreign policy since Vietnam, casting the conflict as a chapter in a much broader story—in sharp contrast to the host of recent accounts, which focus almost exclusively on the decisions (and deceptions) in the months leading up to the invasion.

Above all, Gardner illuminates a vital historical thread connecting Walt Whitman Rostow's defense of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, Zbigniew Brzezinski's renewed attempts to project American power into the "arc of crisis" (with Iran at its center), and, in the aftermath of the Cold War, the efforts of two Bush administrations, in separate Iraq wars, to establish a "landing zone" in that critically important region.

Far more disturbing than a reckless adventure inspired by conservative ideologues or a simple conspiracy to secure oil (though both ingredients were present in powerful doses), Gardner's account explains the Iraq War as the necessary outcome of a half-century of doomed U.S. policies. The Long Road to Baghdad is essential reading, with sobering implications for a positive resolution of the present quagmire....

As American policy makers ponder a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq, one of our preeminent diplomatic historians uncovers the largely hidden story of how the United States got into the Middle East in the first place.

A breathtaking recovery of decisions taken, brazen motives, and backroom dealings, Three Kings is the first history of America's efforts to supplant the British Empire in the Middle East, during and following World War II. From F.D.R. to L.B.J., this is the story of America's scramble for political influence, oil concessions, and a new military presence based on airpower and generous American aid to shaky regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq.

Marshaling new and revelatory evidence from the archives, Gardner deftly weaves together three decades of U.S. moves in the region, chronicling the early efforts to support and influence the Saudi regime (including the creation of Dhahran air base, the target of Osama bin Laden's first terrorist attack in 1996), the CIA-engineered coup in Iran, Nasser's Egypt, and, finally, the rise of Iraq as a major petroleum power.

Here, the tangled threads of oil, U.S. military might, Western commercial interests, and especially the Israel-Palestine question are visible from the very beginning of "The American Century"--a history with frightening relevance for the distant prospect of peace and stability in the region today....