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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Wed. 02/11/04 07:25:19 AM
   
   

George W. Bush and Grand Strategy

No, not an oxymoron.

Tony Blankley writes at the Washington Times today:

The Boston Globe — the respected, liberal newspaper owned by the New York Times — ran an article last week that Bush critics may wish to read carefully. It is a report on a new book that argues that President Bush has developed and is ably implementing only the third American grand strategy in our history.
The author of this book, "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience" (Harvard Press) to be released in March, is John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University. The Boston Globe describes Mr. Gaddis as "the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent diplomatic historians." In other words, this is not some put-up job by an obscure right-wing author. This comes from the pinnacle of the liberal Ivy League academic establishment.
If you hate George W. Bush, you will hate this Boston Globe story because it makes a strong case that Mr. 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 only three grand strategies of American foreign policy in our two-century history....

Here is the Boston Globe article, Feb. 8:

EVERY PRESIDENT makes foreign policy. Only a select few, over the sweep of history, design what scholars term grand strategy.
Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country's mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy's grandeur lies in its durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries, of policy.
Who, then, have been the great grand strategists among American statesmen? According to a slim forthcoming volume by John Lewis Gaddis, the Yale historian whom many describe as the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation's most eminent diplomatic historians, they are John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and George W. Bush....

And here is a lengthy essay by John Lewis Gaddis in Foreign Policy, Nov-Dec 2002, at LookSmart's FindArticles:

President George W. Bush's national security strategy could represent the most sweeping shift in U. S. grand strategy since the beginning of the Cold War. But its success depends on the willingness of the rest of the world to welcome U.S. power with open arms....

(Thanks, Peter.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 02/11/04 07:25:19 AM
Categorized as Political.

   

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