Book Review: Boots and Suits: Historical Cases and Contemporary Lessons in Military Diplomacy

In his foreword, McKenzie defines “the military instrument of national power” as “a powerful tool for statecraft, one capable of bolstering diplomacy and diminishing the prospects for conflict by enhancing stability and security,” and adds that “the military contribution must be in harness, it must be subordinate, and must ultimately yield control and direction to diplomacy and policy” (xii). [...] He has further organized the book into three parts—“Historical Experience,” “Contemporary Challenges,” and “Lessons from Practitioners”—with 14 case studies on a diverse number of subjects from the diplomacy of the Confederacy to US-Chinese competition in the Pacific and the Provincial Reconstruction International Relations Boots and Suits: Philip S. [...] The authors are a mixed group of academics and government officials, and the book is uniformly well annotated and augmented with photographs, charts, maps, and tables. [...] With the exception of an excellent how-to guide on being a military attaché (284–312), there is less discussion of the more procedural and continuous aspects of military diplomacy in peacetime—for example, the daily management of a military base, the implementation of an arms control treaty, or the coordination of a press release. [...] The views and opinions expressed in Parameters book reviews are those of the reviewers and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.