"In Shots in the Dark: Myopia in Wartime Decision-Making, international relations scholar James Lebovic explores how U.S. leaders repeatedly embarked on military interventions without reconciling competing goals or considering the tradeoffs among them. Framed as a theoretical and historical prequel to the Lebovics 2019 book Planning to Fail, this book shifts the focus from the later stages of war to the decisional origins-examining how leaders privileged singular goals at the expense of broader strategy. Drawing on newly deep dives into primary sources, the book uncovers a consistent pattern: at each critical moment-whether in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq-U.S. officials fixated on one guiding objective, allowing that goal to dominate planning while ignoring its incompatibilities with other aims. Across five richly detailed chapters, the book analyzes the Korean War under Truman, the Vietnam conflict under both Kennedy and Johnson, and the post-9/11 wars under George W.

Bush. It reveals how instrumental bias and unreconciled assumptions shaped flawed military commitments-from misguided confidence in Korean unification, to ambiguous troop deployments in Southeast Asia, to the rush toward regime change in Iraq. With careful attention to the interdependencies of political, military, and strategic goals, Shots in the Dark ends by offering critical policy lessons for avoiding similar mistakes in future U.S. war planning"-- Provided by publisher.