A Grand Strategy Of Transformation

foreignpolicy.com ^ | December 1, 2002 | John Lewis Gaddis

[Luis Gonzalez]

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University, and author, most recently, of The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

[Luis Gonzalez]

Old but enlightening Op-Ed.

Well worth the read.

[ruoflaw]

Thanks Luis,it was interesting!

[Luis Gonzalez]

It's interesting on several levels.

Interesting insofar as we get the luxury of reading it this long past publication date.

Interesting in the fact that it groups the Bush Doctrine in with some of this nation's best known Grand Strategies, and finds it their equal.

Interesting in the fact that it calls the Bush Doctrine the culmination of Wilson's "making the world safe for Democracy" strategy.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"For it's becoming clear now that poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism."

[Huck]

The NSS is careful to specify a legal basis for preemption: international law recognizes "that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack."

There's that word.

[Southack]

Related Article

President Bush's Grand Strategy

[Luis Gonzalez]

Expound on that please.

[Huck]

The trouble with Agincourts—even those that happen in Afghanistan—is the arrogance they can encourage, along with the illusion that victory itself is enough and that no follow-up is required.

Very interesting article.

[Huck]

It appears as if this writer is saying that the security document references international law as a basis for preemption, specifically language that contains the word "imminent", which I am sure you know was at the center of the debate about preemption. It is interesting, especially given the article's vintage, to see the word pop up.

[Unam Sanctam]

Some money quotes:

We can set in motion a process that could undermine and ultimately remove reactionary regimes elsewhere in the Middle East, thereby eliminating the principal breeding ground for terrorism. ...

If I'm right about this, then it's a truly grand strategy. What appears at first glance to be a lack of clarity about who's deterrable and who's not turns out, upon closer examination, to be a plan for transforming the entire Muslim Middle East: for bringing it, once and for all, into the modern world.

W. needs four more years to have a chance to see this strategy through and hopefully help to make the Middle East a better place and the world safer for America.

[Luis Gonzalez]

It's a surprisingly supportive article of W's Doctrine, considering that it was written by a Yale man.

It's balanced, and in spite of the word "imminent" popping up in there, it makes the case that Saddam's regime posed a threat by its very existence as a breeding ground for terrorists.

I found the article to be very complimentary to Bush's foreign policy and vision.

[nuconvert]

President Bush hasn't veered from his course. That's very admirable considering all the venom being spit at him.
Let's hope he continues at the helm for another four years, so he can accomplish all of his goals; defending, preserving and extending the peace.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Some people define "leader" as someone who changes courses at the whim of the "base".

I call a leader someone who sets on a mission with vision, and strength of character, undaunted by the polls.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"W. needs four more years to have a chance to see this strategy through and hopefully help to make the Middle East a better place and the world safer for America."

"There is a compellingly realistic reason now to complete the idealistic task Woodrow Wilson began more than eight decades ago: the world must be made safe for democracy, because otherwise democracy will not be safe in the world."

[nuconvert]

This Tony Blankley piece is great.

[nuconvert]

"I call a leader someone who sets on a mission with vision, and strength of character,"

That's President George Bush.
Sure is a nice change, isn't it?

[Luis Gonzalez]

What's interesting about this piece, is that it identifies lack of representative institutions within the Middle Eastern Muslim world as the chief causes for religious fanaticism, because it becomes the only available outlet for political dissidence in those countries.

[edwin hubble]

Similar ideas in this is upcoming, serious book, placing George Bush's defense policy in a class with Monroe and Roosevelt.


Available soon at Amazon!

Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (The Joanna Jackson Goldman Memorial Lectures on American Civilization and gOvernment)

by John Lewis Gaddis (Hardcover - March 2004)

Not yet released.
List Price: $18.95
Buy new: $13.27

comments by Tony Blankley:

If you hate George W. Bush, you will hate this Boston Globe story, because it makes a strong case that George Bush stands in a select category with Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and James Monroe (as guided by his secretary of state, John Q. Adams) in implementing one of the only three grand strategies of American foreign policy in our two-century history.

[nuconvert]

"authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East support terrorism indirectly by continuing to produce generations of underemployed, unrepresented, and therefore radicalizable young people from whom Osama bin Laden and others like him draw their recruits."

This is exactly what's happening in Indonesia.