Richard's concise account of the US intervention in Siberia fuses new and old scholarship, details historians' theories to explain US intervention, and settles upon the hypothesis that Woodrow Wilson dispatched US forces to Siberia to help the Czech Legion and Russian anti-Bolsheviks overthrow the Soviet government as prelude to recreating the Eastern front against the Central Powers. What follows is a careful detailing of Wilson's dispatch of the army in August 1918, about three months before the armistice. Richard maintains that Wilson kept US forces there to assist in toppling the Soviets and prevent Japanese hegemony in Eastern Siberia. His conclusions are noteworthy. The Siberian intervention was an example of ‘mission creep’: a US presence that continued through modifying the original goals from reestablishing the Eastern front to focusing on overthrowing the Bolsheviks and preventing Japanese control in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. Intervention was ‘a complete failure.’ It did not help reestablish an Eastern front, topple the Soviet government, or stop Japanese hegemony in Eastern Siberia or Manchuria. Lastly, it ruined the chances for accommodation with Soviet Russia as it consolidated control, a lesson that Richard posits the US did not learn in time for China and Vietnam. Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.