Vicarious Warfare

Thomas Waldman examines how the United States has come to fight its wars in an increasingly vicarious way. America has been at war for much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Over that time, he argues, it has moved toward a model in which key tasks are handed to proxies, the military's own exposure to danger is kept low, and special forces and covert tools are used more and more.

A consequence of this approach is that major strategic decisions are made with little scrutiny or public engagement. The book traces how this distinctive tradition of war emerged historically and explains the factors that keep it prominent today. It weighs the tactical advantages of vicarious warfare against its hidden costs and its potential to do serious strategic harm.