A Peaceful Superpower

A Peaceful Superpower is well organized and has extensive endnotes and a useful bibliography. It is a tremendous contribution to our knowledge of the efforts to try to 'stop a war before it started.' (The Progressive) "Antiwar activists came up short in their efforts to avert the Gulf War of 2003. Even so, those efforts have much to teach. The place to begin learning is here, with David Cortright's concise but impressively comprehensive and insightful book." - Andrew Bacevich (co-founder and chairman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible State) "The enormous international protest against the US-UK criminal invasion of Iraq, even before the invasion was officially announced, was unprecedented. It did not stop the war, but had a major impact, examined in careful detail in this study by a leading participant-observer – a virtual handbook for activism and organizing that could not be more timely and needed." - Noam Chomsky "David Cortright offers us a timeless gift in this book. A Peaceful Superpower has a relevancy for today precisely because it demonstrates that for powerful national leaders around the world war remains the political default option which in turn requires the diligent building of both a strong web of domestic anti-war mobilization and transnational response." - John Paul Lederach (Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame) "A brilliant analysis and richly documented narrative of the international mobilization against the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq. David Cortright, a leading activist and scholar of peace movements since the Vietnam era, has written a book that anyone who wants to understand this inspiring history must read." - Michael Kazin (author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918) Cortright has written an insightful and interesting book—part history, part memoir, and part 'how-to.' It is a valuable contribution to the study of peace movements. (The Veteran)