Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation

by David Edelstein

Few would contest that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a clear example of just how fraught a military occupation can become. In Occupational Hazards, David M. Edelstein elucidates the occasional successes of military occupations and their more frequent failures. Edelstein has identified twenty-six cases since 1815 in which an outside power seized control of a territory where the occupying party had no long-term claim on sovereignty. In a book that has implications for present-day policy, he draws evidence from such historical cases as well as from four current occupations-Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq-where the outcome is not yet known. Occupation is difficult, in Edelstein's view, because ambitious goals require considerable time and resources, yet both the occupied population and the occupying power want occupation to end quickly and inexpensively; in drawn-out occupations, impatience grows and resources dwindle. This combination sabotages the occupying power's ability to accomplish two tasks: convince an occupied population to suppress its nationalist desires and sustain its own commitment to the occupation. Structural conditions and strategic choices play crucial roles in the success or failure of an occupation. In describing those factors, Edelstein prescribes a course of action for the future.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

David Edelstein (born 1959) is the chief film critic for New York Magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Edelstein became a journalist after graduating from Harvard in 1981. He is often associated with friend, fellow film critic, and iconoclast Pauline Kael, to whom he was close. He is also credited with coining the term "torture porn," a genre to describe such movies as Hostel and Saw.

He has previously been a film critic for Slate (1996-2005), the New York Post, the Village Voice, and the Boston Phoenix. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, Variety, Esquire, and elsewhere. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics.

He is the author, with independent film producer Christine Vachon of Killer Films, of Shooting to Kill (Avon Books, 1998). He is also the author of two plays, Feed the Monkey (Loeb Experimental Theater, Harvard College, 1993) and Blaming Mom (Watermark Theater, New York City, 1994).