Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century

With Wilson's Ghost, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight deliver an impassioned plea and a decisive and multi-faceted program for making the 21st century a more peaceful century than the last. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war that has followed, have made their argument even more imperative. In a provocative synthesis of the pragmatic, historical, and philosophical arguments for avoiding war and achieving a sustainable peace, McNamara and Blight put forth a plan for realizing Woodrow Wilson's dream. The plan begins with a moral imperative that establishes the reduction of human carnage as a major goal of foreign policy across the globe, and details the necessity of adopting new policies to support that goal.

McNamara and Blight argue that now is the time for a radical approach to reducing the risk of human carnage, and they demonstrate why we cannot afford to fail in this effort.

Robert S. McNamara served as secretary of defense to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and is the author of In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, and co-author of Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy.James G. Blight is professor of international relations (research) at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, and the author or editor of many books on U.S. foreign policy, including Argument Without End.