Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author, columnist, and national-security analyst who has been described by the International Institute for Strategic Studies as one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict.” He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a Global Affairs Analyst for CNN.

Max Boot’s latest work of history, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (Norton/Liveright), was a New York Times bestseller...