Richard Haass faced a dilemma.

Having served faithfully in the administration of George H.W. Bush, the former NSA go-to guy on Near East and South Asian affairs was once again ready to leave the ambiguous world of academia and get back to the business of government. When he got the call in early 2001 from Secretary of State Colin Powell, Haass jumped at the chance.

But in the waning days of 2002, Haass quickly found himself frustrated. With an Iraq invasion imminent, the head of policy planning for the State Department believed that the administration of President George W. Bush had become myopic in its foreign policy. “The president had locked into 9/11 as a foreign policy template,” and such an outlook was “too black-and-white for a world that often required a foreign policy that was gray and nuanced.”

In his latest book, “War of Necessity, War of Choice,” Richard Haass takes us through the backroom discussions and debates behind two critical wars in American history. Using both Iraq wars as his examples, Haass makes the case for an American intervention policy based on clearly defined goals, multilateralism and national interests. Wars of necessity, when not fought for immediate self-defense, should otherwise be reserved as last resort in the face of international belligerence and defiance.

Wars of choice – those conflicts lacking a clear endgame, while often exhausting political capital at home – can push the protagonist into a rigid and inflexible corner. It was this corner that Richard Haass feared the United States would find itself in if the 2003 Iraq invasion were to proceed. Worse yet, it would leave the country’s leadership with fewer options on other critical issues, such as North Korea, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. With the White House and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon seemingly calling all of the shots, Haass came to believe the second Bush administration was indifferent to internal dissent and disinterested in scenarios that conflicted with its Iraq war strategy.

It wasn’t always this way. For Haass, the differences between the first and second Gulf wars were night and day. Unlike the sometimes unilateral policies of his son, George H.W. Bush organized a burden-sharing alliance – codified by the United Nations several times over – of the world’s powers to hold Saddam Hussein to account. Realizing the negative perception such an invasion could convey, Bush 41 and his team labored to bring regional actors on board to eject Hussein from Kuwait. This included the Arab League, Ba'athist Syria, and even the Soviet Union. Unlike the 2003 invasion, the 1991 Persian Gulf War hinged greatly on pulling public opinion to the war cause. Forced to justify American involvement in a faraway border dispute, the elder Bush relied on the UN sanctions process to demonstrate to the world that Hussein had exhausted all peaceful opportunities to withdraw from Kuwait. “We needed,” Haass explains, “to demonstrate to domestic and international audiences that we had tried lesser remedies.”

George W. Bush, by Haass’ account, showed little interest in multilateralism and deliberation. Whereas the elder Bush coddled and cajoled international and domestic policymakers into action – only to win narrow approval for the war from Congress – George W. Bush benefited from a post-9/11 security atmosphere. Standing on the sanctions and containment regime his father helped build, the 43rd president, according to Haass, proceeded to abandon t