Advanced Praise for Provoked
“Provoked is manna from heaven for anyone who wants to know where the extreme Russophobia in the West came from, as well as the central role the United States played in causing the Ukraine war. Horton provides a detailed account of America’s foolish and dishonest behavior toward Russia in the years since the Cold War ended.” — John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago
“Scott Horton’s important new book traces America’s journey to war and intervention through a succession of presidencies and builds a case that points to a frightening, potential final destination for the United States: isolation and alienation from most of the world. Scott’s message is simple. Stop now before it’s too late.” — Col. Douglas Macgregor, U.S. Army (ret.), CEO, Our Country Our Choice
Scott Horton is a treasure. He is also the neocons’ nightmare. He knows their deceptions and lies and he is fearless in exposing the disasters they have wrought. Provoked is the most thoroughly researched, rationally grounded, and compellingly presented assault on war and defense of peace written in English in the post 9/11 era. It will become the standard against which all similar works are measured, and indispensable reading for all who need to understand how the American government has time and again brought civilization to a terrifying precipice. — Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, NY Times best-selling author and commentator, Host of Judging Freedom Podcast
“Scott Horton writes history like a thriller — leaving the reader to anxiously turn the page to see what happens next. Skeptics and fact-checkers beware, the history is meticulously researched; this volume packs in more than 6,000 footnotes leaving no doubt as to Horton’s sources and methods. If you want to know why today’s headlines are inevitable, read this post-Cold War story of the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Five stars!” — Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
“Scott Horton is perhaps the country’s most incisive and, without question, its most indefatigable, advocate for a sane U.S. foreign policy towards Russia. If you really want to know how we’ve arrived at this, the most dangerous point in relations with Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis, then read this.” — James W. Carden, former State Department adviser, senior consultant to the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord
“Scott Horton provides an incisive treatment of the multi-decade background to the Russia-Ukraine War. He demolishes the myth that Western policy bears no responsibility for the current tragedy.” — Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow, the Libertarian Institute, author of NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur
“The only excuse for those of us — and I include myself — foolish enough to think that the Ukraine War was the one that would redeem the mayhem of four decades of stupid, disastrous adventures, was ignorance. Ignorance of causes, ignorance of local and international politics, ignorance of what actually happened and above all a failure to remember that our leaders are not our friends. There’s no excuse now. Scott Horton has provided us with the one necessary, essential masterclass on how we got into this mess. Provoked limpidly clarifies that far from this being the ‘good war,’ it need never have happened and the usual suspects are to blame. The same people who brought on us all those other disasters. The Ukraine War is shaping up to the worst one of all, the only conflict which threatens all of us directly and personally, wherever we are.” — Frank Ledwidge, former Royal Navy Reserve intelligence officer, “Justice Advisor” to the UK Mission in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province and author of Investment in Blood: The True Cost of Britain’s Afghan War
“A fan of Scott Horton’s previous books on U.S. foreign policy, I expected Provoked to be the definitive work on the tragedy and folly of America’s Eastern European policy and involvement in the Ukraine war. I wasn’t disappointed. Horton again proves to be a thorough and unerring guide through all the issues and questions related to the grim story he has to tell. To those who admire Scott for his lectures, interviews, de-bates and articles, I tell them you can’t fully appreciate his brilliance unless you’ve read his books. Provoked is a good place to start.” — Gene Epstein, Director of The Soho Forum and former Economics and Books Editor of Barron’s Financial Weekly
“Scott Horton has been a voice of reason against the bipartisan War Party for as long as I can remember, but with Provoked he takes his rightful place alongside the great revisionist scholars of the past hundred years. Then as now, that noble tradition of thought pursued world peace by exposing, without mercy, the lies of those who would foment war. Nobody who relies on the American news media for information about Russia and Ukraine will know the story Horton tells in this indispensable book, but thanks to him the truth may at last overtake the lies.” — Thomas E. Woods, Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and author of Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania
