ampaign, came from the Roman god of fire and the forge, and was meant, Mann says, to convey a sense of "power, toughness, resilience and durability."

.

Mann's real subject in this book is the United States' evolving relationship with the world over the past three decades, as American power rose from a nadir at the end of the Vietnam War to a position of military supremacy. The prism he uses to examine this subject consists of the beliefs and experiences of six leading Vulcans: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

.

The resulting book is lucid, shrewd and blessedly level-headed. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding how and why America came to deal with the rest of the world the way it is doing under the Bush administration.

.

Mann - a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times - does an impressive job of pulling information together and connecting a multitude of dots. He explicates the complex legacy of such watershed events as Vietnam, Iran-Contra and the first Gulf war, while at the same time showing how crisscrossing alliances and rivalries among the Vulcans in earlier Republican administrations informed the debates and the decisions surrounding the war in Iraq.

.

Despite serious disagreements that emerged between Powell and Armitage at State, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, Mann argues, larger shared assumptions tie the Vulcans together. These are a belief in the importance of U.S. military power, a focus on national security issues (as opposed to, say, international economic concerns), a belief that "American power and ideals are, on the whole, a force for good in the world" and an optimism about America's abilities and its future.

.

Mann charts the permutations and flip-flops in neoconservative thinking over the years, underscoring how the cause of democracy and self-determination overseas went from being a largely liberal, Democratic idea (looked upon with suspicion by conservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick in the late 1970s) to a fiercely held axiom of the Bush administration. He similarly charts the sea change that the thinking of some Vulcans underwent over the years, although he does not always manage to explain exactly why those changes came about. For instance he points out that Rice evolved from being a pragmatist (in the tradition of Henry Kissinger and her mentor Brent Scowcroft) to being "the prime mover behind the drafting of a new National Security Strategy that laid the framework for a preventive war."

.

In addition Mann reminds us how policies, frequently presented by the Bush administration as responses to a post-Sept. 11 world, had roots in long-standing neoconservative theories and propositions: from the push by many Vulcans for a more assertive, moralistic stance toward the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, to a hawkish 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, which was drafted by Wolfowitz's office, sponsored by the defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, but turned aside by the White House of Bush's father.

.

For Mann, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "greatly accelerated" the willingness of this administration "to rethink Cold War ideas about national security" - namely, containment, deterrence and multilateral approaches to foreign policy - and persuaded the Vulcans that "America had entered a new era and needed new concepts to guide it." In the ensuing months, he observes, the administration would abandon the ABM Treaty, move away from cold war strategies of deterrence, recast the U.S. stand on nuclear weapons, turn the war on terror into a campaign against weapons of mass destruction and reshape approaches to Israel and the Palestinians. The decision to invade Iraq last year, Mann writes, "encapsulated virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans' views of the world."

.

Mann provides a coolly nonpartisan assessment of these developments. He argues that while Democratic leaders often accused the Republicans of unilateralism, "the truth was that the Clinton administration too gave far less weight to principles of collective security than had America's leaders from the 1940s through the 1980s." On the other hand, he points out that after the war in Iraq ended, "many of the forecasts of the hawks proved inaccurate," from their assertions about weapons of mass destruction to their predictions of a welcoming Iraqi nation.

.

Mann wants to treat the Vulcans as a singular and historically important group, like the Wise Men, who shaped American foreign policy at the end of World War II, or the Best and Brightest who prosecuted the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

.

Unfortunately, this premise sometimes goads him into playing down the serious schisms that developed among the Vulcans and also results in a highly dubious generalization, that "during the 35 years from 1968 through 2003, the Vulcans reflected the moods and the beliefs of America as a whole."

.

But such reductive asides are rare in this book, which not only shows how the personal experiences of individual Vulcans shaped "the choices they made after taking office in 2001 and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," but also delivers a measured and keenly analytic account of how the Vulcans as a group tried to promote their audacious and problematic vision of America as an unchallengeable behemoth, "whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries."

.

The New York Times

< < Back to Start of Article By James Mann. Nonfiction. Illustrated. 426 pages. $$25.95. Viking.

The Vulcans in James Mann's compelling new book are the Pentagon-trained pro-military foreign policy advisers who surround President George Bush. Their nickname, which they coined during the 2000 campaign, came from the Roman god of fire and the forge, and was meant, Mann says, to convey a sense of "power, toughness, resilience and durability."

.

Mann's real subject in this book is the United States' evolving relationship with the world over the past three decades, as American power rose from a nadir at the end of the Vietnam War to a position of military supremacy. The prism he uses to examine this subject consists of the beliefs and experiences of six leading Vulcans: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

.

The resulting book is lucid, shrewd and blessedly level-headed. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding how and why America came to deal with the rest of the world the way it is doing under the Bush administration.

.

Mann - a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times - does an impressive job of pulling information together and connecting a multitude of dots. He explicates the complex legacy of such watershed events as Vietnam, Iran-Contra and the first Gulf war, while at the same time showing how crisscrossing alliances and rivalries among the Vulcans in earlier Republican administrations informed the debates and the decisions surrounding the war in Iraq.

.

Despite serious disagreements that emerged between Powell and Armitage at State, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, Mann argues, larger shared assumptions tie the Vulcans together. These are a belief in the importance of U.S. military power, a focus on national security issues (as opposed to, say, international economic concerns), a belief that "American power and ideals are, on the whole, a force for good in the world" and an optimism about America's abilities and its future.

.

Mann charts the permutations and flip-flops in neoconservative thinking over the years, underscoring how the cause of democracy and self-determination overseas went from being a largely liberal, Democratic idea (looked upon with suspicion by conservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick in the late 1970s) to a fiercely held axiom of the Bush administration. He similarly charts the sea change that the thinking of some Vulcans underwent over the years, although he does not always manage to explain exactly why those changes came about. For instance he points out that Rice evolved from being a pragmatist (in the tradition of Henry Kissinger and her mentor Brent Scowcroft) to being "the prime mover behind the drafting of a new National Security Strategy that laid the framework for a preventive war."

.

In addition Mann reminds us how policies, frequently presented by the Bush administration as responses to a post-Sept. 11 world, had roots in long-standing neoconservative theories and propositions: from the push by many Vulcans for a more assertive, moralistic stance toward the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, to a hawkish 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, which was drafted by Wolfowitz's office, sponsored by the defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, but turned aside by the White House of Bush's father.

.

For Mann, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "greatly accelerated" the willingness of this administration "to rethink Cold War ideas about national security" - namely, containment, deterrence and multilateral approaches to foreign policy - and persuaded the Vulcans that "America had entered a new era and needed new concepts to guide it." In the ensuing months, he observes, the administration would abandon the ABM Treaty, move away from cold war strategies of deterrence, recast the U.S. stand on nuclear weapons, turn the war on terror into a campaign against weapons of mass destruction and reshape approaches to Israel and the Palestinians. The decision to invade Iraq last year, Mann writes, "encapsulated virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans' views of the world."

.

Mann provides a coolly nonpartisan assessment of these developments. He argues that while Democratic leaders often accused the Republicans of unilateralism, "the truth was that the Clinton administration too gave far less weight to principles of collective security than had America's leaders from the 1940s through the 1980s." On the other hand, he points out that after the war in Iraq ended, "many of the forecasts of the hawks proved inaccurate," from their assertions about weapons of mass destruction to their predictions of a welcoming Iraqi nation.

.

Mann wants to treat the Vulcans as a singular and historically important group, like the Wise Men, who shaped American foreign policy at the end of World War II, or the Best and Brightest who prosecuted the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

.

Unfortunately, this premise sometimes goads him into playing down the serious schisms that developed among the Vulcans and also results in a highly dubious generalization, that "during the 35 years from 1968 through 2003, the Vulcans reflected the moods and the beliefs of America as a whole."

.

But such reductive asides are rare in this book, which not only shows how the personal experiences of individual Vulcans shaped "the choices they made after taking office in 2001 and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," but also delivers a measured and keenly analytic account of how the Vulcans as a group tried to promote their audacious and problematic vision of America as an unchallengeable behemoth, "whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries."

.

The New York Times By James Mann. Nonfiction. Illustrated. 426 pages. $$25.95. Viking.

The Vulcans in James Mann's compelling new book are the Pentagon-trained pro-military foreign policy advisers who surround President George Bush. Their nickname, which they coined during the 2000 campaign, came from the Roman god of fire and the forge, and was meant, Mann says, to convey a sense of "power, toughness, resilience and durability."

.

Mann's real subject in this book is the United States' evolving relationship with the world over the past three decades, as American power rose from a nadir at the end of the Vietnam War to a position of military supremacy. The prism he uses to examine this subject consists of the beliefs and experiences of six leading Vulcans: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

.

The resulting book is lucid, shrewd and blessedly level-headed. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding how and why America came to deal with the rest of the world the way it is doing under the Bush administration.

.

Mann - a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times - does an impressive job of pulling information together and connecting a multitude of dots. He explicates the complex legacy of such watershed events as Vietnam, Iran-Contra and the first Gulf war, while at the same time showing how crisscrossing alliances and rivalries among the Vulcans in earlier Republican administrations informed the debates and the decisions surrounding the war in Iraq.

.

Despite serious disagreements that emerged between Powell and Armitage at State, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, Mann argues, larger shared assumptions tie the Vulcans together. These are a belief in the importance of U.S. military power, a focus on national security issues (as opposed to, say, international economic concerns), a belief that "American power and ideals are, on the whole, a force for good in the world" and an optimism about America's abilities and its future.

.

Mann charts the permutations and flip-flops in neoconservative thinking over the years, underscoring how the cause of democracy and self-determination overseas went from being a largely liberal, Democratic idea (looked upon with suspicion by conservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick in the late 1970s) to a fiercely held axiom of the Bush administration. He similarly charts the sea change that the thinking of some Vulcans underwent over the years, although he does not always manage to explain exactly why those changes came about. For instance he points out that Rice evolved from being a pragmatist (in the tradition of Henry Kissinger and her mentor Brent Scowcroft) to being "the prime mover behind the drafting of a new National Security Strategy that laid the framework for a preventive war."

.

In addition Mann reminds us how policies, frequently presented by the Bush administration as responses to a post-Sept. 11 world, had roots in long-standing neoconservative theories and propositions: from the push by many Vulcans for a more assertive, moralistic stance toward the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, to a hawkish 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, which was drafted by Wolfowitz's office, sponsored by the defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, but turned aside by the White House of Bush's father.

.

For Mann, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "greatly accelerated" the willingness of this administration "to rethink Cold War ideas about national security" - namely, containment, deterrence and multilateral approaches to foreign policy - and persuaded the Vulcans that "America had entered a new era and needed new concepts to guide it." In the ensuing months, he observes, the administration would abandon the ABM Treaty, move away from cold war strategies of deterrence, recast the U.S. stand on nuclear weapons, turn the war on terror into a campaign against weapons of mass destruction and reshape approaches to Israel and the Palestinians. The decision to invade Iraq last year, Mann writes, "encapsulated virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans' views of the world."

.

Mann provides a coolly nonpartisan assessment of these developments. He argues that while Democratic leaders often accused the Republicans of unilateralism, "the truth was that the Clinton administration too gave far less weight to principles of collective security than had America's leaders from the 1940s through the 1980s." On the other hand, he points out that after the war in Iraq ended, "many of the forecasts of the hawks proved inaccurate," from their assertions about weapons of mass destruction to their predictions of a welcoming Iraqi nation.

.

Mann wants to treat the Vulcans as a singular and historically important group, like the Wise Men, who shaped American foreign policy at the end of World War II, or the Best and Brightest who prosecuted the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

.

Unfortunately, this premise sometimes goads him into playing down the serious schisms that developed among the Vulcans and also results in a highly dubious generalization, that "during the 35 years from 1968 through 2003, the Vulcans reflected the moods and the beliefs of America as a whole."

.

But such reductive asides are rare in this book, which not only shows how the personal experiences of individual Vulcans shaped "the choices they made after taking office in 2001 and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," but also delivers a measured and keenly analytic account of how the Vulcans as a group tried to promote their audacious and problematic vision of America as an unchallengeable behemoth, "whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries."

.

The New York Times By James Mann. Nonfiction. Illustrated. 426 pages. $$25.95. Viking.

The Vulcans in James Mann's compelling new book are the Pentagon-trained pro-military foreign policy advisers who surround President George Bush. Their nickname, which they coined during the 2000 campaign, came from the Roman god of fire and the forge, and was meant, Mann says, to convey a sense of "power, toughness, resilience and durability."

.

Mann's real subject in this book is the United States' evolving relationship with the world over the past three decades, as American power rose from a nadir at the end of the Vietnam War to a position of military supremacy. The prism he uses to examine this subject consists of the beliefs and experiences of six leading Vulcans: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

.

The resulting book is lucid, shrewd and blessedly level-headed. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding how and why America came to deal with the rest of the world the way it is doing under the Bush administration.

.

Mann - a former correspondent for The Los Angeles Times - does an impressive job of pulling information together and connecting a multitude of dots. He explicates the complex legacy of such watershed events as Vietnam, Iran-Contra and the first Gulf war, while at the same time showing how crisscrossing alliances and rivalries among the Vulcans in earlier Republican administrations informed the debates and the decisions surrounding the war in Iraq.

.

Despite serious disagreements that emerged between Powell and Armitage at State, and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, Mann argues, larger shared assumptions tie the Vulcans together. These are a belief in the importance of U.S. military power, a focus on national security issues (as opposed to, say, international economic concerns), a belief that "American power and ideals are, on the whole, a force for good in the world" and an optimism about America's abilities and its future.

.

Mann charts the permutations and flip-flops in neoconservative thinking over the years, underscoring how the cause of democracy and self-determination overseas went from being a largely liberal, Democratic idea (looked upon with suspicion by conservatives like Jeane Kirkpatrick in the late 1970s) to a fiercely held axiom of the Bush administration. He similarly charts the sea change that the thinking of some Vulcans underwent over the years, although he does not always manage to explain exactly why those changes came about. For instance he points out that Rice evolved from being a pragmatist (in the tradition of Henry Kissinger and her mentor Brent Scowcroft) to being "the prime mover behind the drafting of a new National Security Strategy that laid the framework for a preventive war."

.

In addition Mann reminds us how policies, frequently presented by the Bush administration as responses to a post-Sept. 11 world, had roots in long-standing neoconservative theories and propositions: from the push by many Vulcans for a more assertive, moralistic stance toward the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s, to a hawkish 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, which was drafted by Wolfowitz's office, sponsored by the defense secretary at the time, Dick Cheney, but turned aside by the White House of Bush's father.

.

For Mann, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "greatly accelerated" the willingness of this administration "to rethink Cold War ideas about national security" - namely, containment, deterrence and multilateral approaches to foreign policy - and persuaded the Vulcans that "America had entered a new era and needed new concepts to guide it." In the ensuing months, he observes, the administration would abandon the ABM Treaty, move away from cold war strategies of deterrence, recast the U.S. stand on nuclear weapons, turn the war on terror into a campaign against weapons of mass destruction and reshape approaches to Israel and the Palestinians. The decision to invade Iraq last year, Mann writes, "encapsulated virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans' views of the world."

.

Mann provides a coolly nonpartisan assessment of these developments. He argues that while Democratic leaders often accused the Republicans of unilateralism, "the truth was that the Clinton administration too gave far less weight to principles of collective security than had America's leaders from the 1940s through the 1980s." On the other hand, he points out that after the war in Iraq ended, "many of the forecasts of the hawks proved inaccurate," from their assertions about weapons of mass destruction to their predictions of a welcoming Iraqi nation.

.

Mann wants to treat the Vulcans as a singular and historically important group, like the Wise Men, who shaped American foreign policy at the end of World War II, or the Best and Brightest who prosecuted the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

.

Unfortunately, this premise sometimes goads him into playing down the serious schisms that developed among the Vulcans and also results in a highly dubious generalization, that "during the 35 years from 1968 through 2003, the Vulcans reflected the moods and the beliefs of America as a whole."

.

But such reductive asides are rare in this book, which not only shows how the personal experiences of individual Vulcans shaped "the choices they made after taking office in 2001 and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," but also delivers a measured and keenly analytic account of how the Vulcans as a group tried to promote their audacious and problematic vision of America as an unchallengeable behemoth, "whose military power was so awesome that it no longer needed to make compromises or accommodations (unless it chose to do so) with any other nation or groups of countries."

The New York Times

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