"This important book addresses the crucial question that advocates of extensive human rights missions wish to ignore: Does it work? The impressively researched case studies highlight the growing gap between declarations of policy 'success' and reality on the ground, challenging the assumption that, with enough military firepower and neocolonial administrators, peace and democracy can be externally imposed across the globe."
—David Chandler, Author, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton
"America's liberal imperialists will not like Fool's Errands at all because this excellent book shows that their four main attempts at nation building during the 1990s -- Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Somalia—were all dismal failures."
—John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago
"Fool's Errands demonstrates the pure folly of trying to impose governments on people who reject them, as well as the hypocrisy involved in calling such impositions building 'democracy.' Dempsey provides the best analysis available of the self-defeating 'victories' of the Clinton administration in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Somalia."
—Robert M. Hayden, Director, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh
