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.

[12] His parents and grandmother, all Russian Jews, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976 to Los Angeles, where he was raised and eventually gained naturalized U.S.

On July 16, 2024, Terry was indicted and arrested for allegedly acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the South Korean government.

[4] 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.

"[23] 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".

[22] 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".

[27][28] 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.

[4] 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.

[4] 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.

[34] Boot served as a foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain in his 2008 United States presidential election bid.

[38][39] 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.

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".

He wrote:[46][47] 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 ...

And I am very much in favor of America acting as a world leader: I believe it is in our own self-interest to promote and defend freedom and free markets as we have been doing in one form or another since at least 1898.

"In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males.

[66] Mark Ames of The Nation,[67] Adam Johnson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,[68] Tucker Carlson[69] and Glenn Greenwald[70] have denounced Boot as a "warmonger".

When Elon Musk proposed to acquire Twitter, Boot said that he was "frightened by the impact on society and politics" and asserted that "[f]or democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.