Max A. Boot (; born September 12, 1969) is a Russian-born naturalized American author, editorialist, lecturer, and military historian. He worked as a writer and editor for The Christian Science Monitor and then for The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s. Since then, he has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributor to The Washington Post. He has written for such publications as The Weekly Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and he has authored books of military history. In 2018, Boot published The Road Not Taken, a biography of Edward Lansdale, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for biography, and The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, which details Boot's "ideological journey from a 'movement' conservative to a man without a party", in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. His biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend, was a New York Times Bestseller and named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2024, as well as one of the year's best books by The Washington Post and The New Yorker.
Early and personal life
Boot was born in Moscow. His parents and grandmother, all Russian Jews, emigrated from the Soviet Union, his father in 1973 to New York, and he and his mother and grandmother in 1976 to Los Angeles, where he was raised and eventually gained naturalized U.S. citizenship. Boot attended the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1991 and Yale University with an MA in Diplomatic History in 1992. He began his career in journalism writing columns for the Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian. He later said that he believes he is the only conservative writer in that paper's history. , Boot and his family lived in the New York area.
Max Boot's spouse is Sue Mi Terry. On July 16, 2024, Terry was indicted and arrested for allegedly acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the South Korean government. Boot co-authored an opinion piece with Terry for the Washington Post in 2023. According to prosecutors, the article was written at the behest of South Korean officials and used information they provided without disclosing the involvement of the Korean government. Boot has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The indictment has been criticized by civil liberties groups as a threat to freedom of speech.
Career
Boot has been the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to other publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. He has blogged regularly for Commentary since 2007,"Author Archive: Max Boot". Commentary. Retrieved January 13, 2017. and for several years on its blog page called Contentions. He has given lectures at U.S. military institutions such as the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College.
Boot worked as a writer and as an editor for The Christian Science Monitor from 1992 to 1994. He moved to The Wall Street Journal for the next eight years. After writing an investigative column about legal issues called "Rule of Law" for four years, he was promoted to editor of the op-ed page.
Boot left the Journal in 2002 to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies. His initial writings with the CFR appeared in several publications, including The New York Post, The Times, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune.Max Boot – Publications – 2002. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009.
Boot wrote Savage Wars of Peace, a study of small wars in American history, with Basic Books in 2002. The title came from Kipling's poem "White Man's Burden". James A. Russell in Journal of Cold War Studies criticized the book, saying that "Boot did none of the critical research, and thus the inferences he draws from his uncritical rendition of history are essentially meaningless."Russell, James A. "The Savage Wars of Peace: Review". Journal of Cold War Studies 6.3 (2004) pp. 124–126 Benjamin Schwarz argued in The New York Times that Boot asked the U.S. military to do a "nearly impossible task", and he criticized the book as "unrevealing"."The Post-Powell Doctrine". By Benjamin Schwarz. The New York Times. Published July 21, 2002. Retrieved August 22, 2009. Victor Davis Hanson in History News Network gave a positive review, saying that "Boot's well-written narrative is not only fascinating reading, but didactic as well"."Books: Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace". By Victor Davis Hanson. History News Network. Published April 29, 2002. Robert M. Cassidy in Military Review labeled it "extraordinary". Boot's book also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as the best non-fiction book recently published pertaining to Marine Corps history.
Boot wrote once again for the CFR in 2003 and 2004.Max Boot – Publications – 2003. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009.Max Boot – Publications – 2004. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009.
The World Affairs Councils of America named Boot one of "the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy" in 2004. He also worked as member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2004.
Boot published the work War Made New, an analysis of revolutions in military technology since 1500, in 2006. The book's central thesis is that a military succeeds when it has the dynamic, forward-looking structures and administration in place to exploit new technologies. It concludes that the U.S. military may lose its edge if it does not become flatter, less bureaucratic, and more decentralized.War Made New . Brookings Institution. Published October 26, 2006. The book received praise from Josiah Bunting III in The New York Times, who called it "unusual and magisterial","Killing Machines". By Josiah Bunting. The New York Times. Published December 17, 2006. Retrieved August 21, 2009. and criticism from Martin Sieff in The American Conservative, who called it "remarkably superficial".Sieff, Martin. "On War It's Not" . The American Conservative. Published March 12, 2007. Retrieved August 21, 2009.
Boot wrote many more articles with the CFR in 2007,Max Boot – Publications – 2007. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009. and he received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism that year. In an April 2007 episode of Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, Boot stated that he "used to be a journalist" and that he currently views himself purely as a military historian."America, Quo Vadis?" Part 1. Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg. Originally broadcast April 12, 2007. Retrieved August 21, 2009. Boot served as a foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain in his 2008 United States presidential election bid. He stated in an editorial in World Affairs Journal that he saw strong parallels between Theodore Roosevelt and McCain.Max Boot – Publications – 2008. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009. Boot continued to write for the CFR in several publications in 2008 and 2009.. Council of Foreign Relations. Accessed August 30, 2009.
Boot wrote for the CFR through 2010 and 2011 for publications such as Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Weekly Standard. He particularly argued that President Barack Obama's health care plans made maintaining U.S. superpower status harder, that withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq occurred prematurely while making another war there more likely, and that the initial U.S. victory in Afghanistan had been undone by government complacency though forces could still pull off a victory. He also wrote op-eds criticizing planned budget austerity measures in both the U.S. and the U.K. as hurting their national security interests.Max Boot – Publications – 2010 . Council of Foreign Relations.Max Boot – Publications – 2011 . Council of Foreign Relations.
In September 2012, Boot co-wrote with Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael Doran a New York Times op-ed titled "5 Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now", advocating U.S. military force to create a countrywide no-fly zone reminiscent of NATO's role in the Kosovo War. He stated first and second that "American intervention would diminish Iran's influence in the Arab world" and that "a more muscular American policy could keep the conflict from spreading" with "sectarian strife in Lebanon and Iraq". Third, Boot argued that "training and equipping reliable partners within Syria's internal opposition" could help "create a bulwark against extremist groups like Al Qaeda". He concluded that "American leadership on Syria could improve relations with key allies like Turkey and Qatar" as well as "end a terrible human-rights disaster".
Another well received book by Boot, titled Invisible Armies (2013), is about the history of guerrilla warfare, analyzing various cases of successful and unsuccessful insurgent efforts such as the fighting during the American war of independence, the Vietnam War, and the current Syrian Civil War. He states that traditional, conventional army tactics as employed by the American military under the administrations of President Bush and President Obama against guerrilla organizations have produced strategic failures. Boot has discussed his book in various programs such as the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge series, appearing on it in January 2014.
Political beliefs Boot considers himself to be a "natural contrarian". He identifies as a conservative, once joking that "I grew up in the 1980s, when conservatism was cool". He is in favor of limited government at home and American leadership abroad, believing America should be "the world's policeman".Max Boot, "Does America Need an Empire?" Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley, March 12, 2003
Boot was one of the earliest proponents of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. In October 2001, in an article titled "The Case for American Empire", he proposed that the United States must greatly increase its military engagement against other countries and compared his proposal to invade Afghanistan and Iraq with the American role in defeating Nazi Germany. He wrote:
Once Afghanistan has been dealt with, America should turn its attention to Iraq ... Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul ... It is a matter of self-defense: [Saddam] is currently working to acquire weapons of mass destruction that he or his confederates will unleash against America ... To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East ... This could be the chance to right the scales, to establish the first Arab democracy, and to show the Arab people that America is committed to freedom for them.