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Title: Surprise, Security, and the American Experience : by John Lewis Gaddis ISBN: 0-674-01174-0 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 23 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The foreign policy debate we need
Comment: After 9/11 George W. Bush has boldly transformed American foreign policy as John Quincy Adams and Franklin D. Roosevelt did in their eras That is the basis of Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis's book. Each man reacted to an attack on America with a decisively altered foreign policy, which in the first two instances remained in force for decades. In this book, Mr. Gaddis goes into detail about Mr. Adam's foreign policy built on pre-emption subsequent to the British attack on Washington in 1814. Secretary of state Adams acted against failing colonial powers in the Western Hemisphere, unilateralism by eschewing foreign alliances, and hegemony with the Monroe Doctrine. After the start of WW II, Roosevelt and his cold war successors mounted a foreign policy encompassing multilateralism (building large coalitions), legalism (the United Nations), and deterrence of communism.
After the September 11 attacks, Bush responded as similarly as Adams had, with pre-emption and unilateralism when necessary. In Gaddis's thesis, this was a rational response to the threat of terrorism and is seriously explained in the 2002 National Security Strategy, though not always conducted flawlessly. Gaddis believes that most political leaders would find themselves obliged to carry out much the same foreign policy as Bush, despite the recent campaign rhetoric. I think there is something to that. And Bush's policy is not as unilateral as his detractors point out. The National Security Statement is filled with statements about the desirability of acting multilaterally when possible. Gaddis postulates that Muammar Qadhafi decided to give up his nuclear weapons program because he feared Bush was willing to pursue him down a spider hole in the desert. Would he have made the same decision if a more liberal person were about to take the oath of office? "Bush's determination to act against threats is not in doubt". This book is a great read and should be read by all Americans so that we can have an informed debate about the future of our foreign policy direction.
I especially recommend this book for military, political professionals and for philosophers.
Rating: 5
Summary: Continuous American policy applied to non-state actors
Comment: Gaddis attempts to walk us through two previous suprise attacks in American history, the sack of Washington in 1814 and Pearl Harbor. Both of these resulted in revolutions of foreign policy. John Quincy Adams, as Monroe's Secretary of State, articulated a strategy for maintaining American safety and values in the Western Hemisphere. Later, FDR invented a functional multilateral world order that the United States could harness to fight World War II and the Cold War.
He then observes that, contrary to chattering-class opinion, Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy is perfectly well inline with these traditions. He also relates the ideas in the National Security Strategy, which tragically few people read, to these policies, previous expressions of doctrine, and concrete changes in the world context. There is a shocking lack of discussion of this new context.
Now the threat is non-state actors beyond a couple of significant hold-overs like China, North Korea, Iran, etc. Today threats emerge from terrorist organizations (and their allies such as international organized crime, etc.) It is important to realize that multinational corporations and NGOs have also become signifcant non-state actors on the international scene. These are not participants in our multilateral world order, and they cannot be swayed, in the end, by the same tools that we use in an international order. Thus, President Bush has asserted that politics is the root cause of terrorism and threats, and has started down a, possibly too bold, path to change the political culture of the world. While his problems are radically different than Adams and FDR faced, his solutions are completely continuous and completely American. This must be grasped to think about serious policy alternatives in our new context.
Rating: 5
Summary: Puts the U.S. Response to 9-11 in Historical Perspective
Comment: After 9-11, when the Bush administration began laying out the framework for a new strategy to deal with security threats to the United States, several scholars and commentators judged elements of the nascent strategy to be without precedent in American history. John Lewis Gaddis, a scholar who has written extensively about the history of U.S. national security, argues otherwise. Rather than an unprecedented strategy, Gaddis says the Bush administration has put forward a security framework that reaches back into the nineteenth century for its central ideas.
This short book, which was based on a series of lectures Gaddis presented at the New York Public Library in 2002, builds its case of an evolving U.S. security strategy around three events: the 1814 burning of the White House by the British, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and 9-11. Gaddis argues that each of these events forced the U.S. to change its strategy to fit the new circumstances of the time. Bush's recent unilateral policies after 9-11 and FDR's multilateral response to the U.S. entry into WW2 (that was also the basis of the U.S. Cold War strategy) are familiar to most readers, but it is Gaddis's description of John Quincy Adams and his nineteenth century strategy (one that was largely followed by almost all American presidents until 1941), and the comparison of Adams's strategy with Bush's, that is likely to spark the reader's interest.
Gaddis makes the case that Bush's so-called "unprecedented" strategy combining preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony finds its precedents in Adams's policies. Like Bush, Adams felt it necessary to occasionally preempt neighboring states, non-state actors (Indians), and even failed states (Spain's faltering hold on its colonial possessions). Like Bush, Adams felt unilateralism was sometimes necessary to secure America's long-term interests. And finally, like Bush, Adams sought U.S. hegemony; the only difference between the two presidents was one of degree; Bush seeks to maintain U.S. global hegemony while Adams had to make due with the goal of regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere.
Gaddis does not claim that the Bush administration borrowed consciously from Adams, and the scholar concedes there are differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first century security environments for the U.S. He maintains, however, the similarities are striking enough to note. He also argues that there is a common thread to American strategy passing from Adams to FDR to Bush: whenever Americans have felt threatened, their response has been to take the offense, not to play defense; to expand, not to shrink behind walls; to confront and overwhelm, not to flee.
This is an excellent book, concise and strikingly persuasive. It makes the Bush case for a new U.S. strategy better than the administration itself has made it, and yet Gaddis is not a Republican supporter. By giving historical precedents to the controversial tenets of preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony, Gaddis attempts to show that Bush's new security framework is less radical than many now fear.
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Title: Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson ISBN: 1594200130 Publisher: The Penguin Press Pub. Date: 22 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Power, Terror, Peace, and War : America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk by Walter Russell Mead ISBN: 1400042372 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet by Jim Mann, James Mann ISBN: 0670032999 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 08 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History by Lee Harris ISBN: 0743257499 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 11 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by DAVID FRUM, RICHARD PERLE ISBN: 1400061946 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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