Surprise, Security, and the American Experience - Hardcover

Gaddis, John Lewis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674011740 ISBN 13: 9780674011748

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2004

Synopsis

September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis argues, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy. We've been there before, and have responded each time by dramatically expanding our security responsibilities.

The pattern began in 1814, when the British attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, aimed at maintaining strength beyond challenge throughout the North American continent. It remained in place for over a century. Only when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 did the inadequacies of this strategy become evident: as a consequence, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a new grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale to defeat authoritarianism. That strategy defined the American approach throughout World War II and the Cold War.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, Gaddis writes, made it clear that this strategy was now insufficient to ensure American security. The Bush administration has, therefore, devised a new grand strategy whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony, projected this time on a global scale. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us. This provocative book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of grand strategy and international relations to provide an answer.

About this title

About the Author

John Lewis Gaddis is Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science at Yale University.

Review

Gaddis presents an important discussion on America's response to September 11 in this extraordinarily thoughtful and challenging new book.
--Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, 1973-1977

Many academics disgraced themselves in the 1980s, predicting that Ronald Reagan's foreign policy would lead to nuclear confrontation, when in fact it led to the destruction of world communism. Academics may be committing the same blunder regarding President Bush. Prof. Gaddis is too smart to fall into that trap. He judges the current president from the standpoint of America's own foreign policy history, and the results are surprising, indeed. Whatever the fates hold in store for President Bush, this little nugget of a book is destined for a long shelf life.
--Robert D. Kaplan, author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

John Gaddis brings light to issues now generating heat. He scores the historic ignorance of those who claim that the Bush Administration's 'grand 'strategy' is without precedent in our past. He links current national security with long-standing themes. At the same time, he demonstrates just how unprecedented is the current moment. Surprise, Security, and the American Experience is a small gem of clarity and coherence.
--Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World

The post-September 11 strategy of the Bush administration is often described as a radical departure from U.S. policy. Gaddis, one of America's leading scholars of foreign policy and international relations, provocatively demonstrates that, to the contrary, the principles of preemption, unilateralism and hegemony go back to the earliest days of the republic...The events of September 11 extended the concept of preemptive action even at the expense of sovereignty when terrorism is involved. Gaddis describes this latest expansion of American power in response to surprise attack as a volatile mixture of prudence and arrogance. But instead of the usual caveats, he recommends the U.S. continue on an interventionist course...This compact, provocative history of an idea-in-action has the potential to alter the U.S.'s collective self-image. (Publishers Weekly 2004-01-26)

Gaddis argues that George W. Bush in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq attempted FDR's exploitation of multilateralism but ultimately elected preemption ('shock and awe') in the service of global hegemony. Even Bush's staunchest opponents stand to be edified by Gaddis' impressive presentation.
--Ray Olson (Booklist 2004-02-15)

Gaddis...points out that three salient elements of the Bush security strategy--pre-emption, unilateralism and hegemony--have deep roots in the country's history. When threatened, Americans have typically taken the offensive rather than hide behind a static defense...Throughout his essays, Gaddis employs a judicious tone and avoids categorical or simplistic answers. He recognizes that the United States faces a different sort of threat from those of the cold war and earlier. Traditional deterrence and balance-of-power policies are inadequate to confront the devil's brew of failed states, rogue regimes, suicidal terrorists and proliferating weapons of mass destruction.
--Jack F. Matlock Jr. (New York Times Book Review 2004-03-21)

The clarity of Mr. Gaddis's writing matching the clarity of his arguments. Each chapter of Surprise, Security, and the American Experience is itself a well-rounded essay, perhaps reflecting the fact that they were public lectures, and their simplicity underscores their depth. Though this is a small book, it is a book of big ideas; in these times, those are of surpassing value.
--Thomas Donnelly (New York Sun 2004-03-22)

This book is a persuasive account of the Bush administration's grand strategy and demonstrates the power of strategic analysis drawn from the American national experience...Gaddis' focus on U.S. foreign policy and history gives him powerful tools that he exploits to the fullest, elucidating the similarities between the strategies of John Quincy Adams and Franklin Roosevelt, which have shaped the evolution of U.S. power, and contrasting both with the emerging grand strategy of the Bush administration...A strategy, Gaddis notes, may be grand without being successful, and he asks some tough questions about the validity of the assumptions on which the Bush strategy rests...Surprise, Security, and the American Experience is a substantive accomplishment and a valuable contribution to the most important debates of our time.
--Walter Russell Mead (Foreign Affairs 2004-05-01)

Surprise, Security, and the American Experience has the virtue of being genuinely original, rather than merely clever, and is at once dispassionate and public spirited. Anyone wanting to understand the deepest intellectual and historical sources behind Bush's foreign policy, as opposed to all the blather about 'neocon cabals,' should pick up Gaddis's book.
--Adam Wolfson (The Weekly Standard 2004-04-26)

John Lewis Gaddis's excellent Surprise, Security, and the American Experience is a short book with a long view. Gaddis compares foreign policy reactions to three attacks on America--the British burning of Washington in 1814, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. This is no humdrum recounting of familiar events. In addition to giving a brilliant short course in American diplomatic history, Gaddis offers a big surprise: George W. Bush's foreign policy post-Sept. 11, which Gaddis calls pre-emptive, unilateral and hegemonic, is as American as apple pie.
--John Lehman (Washington Post 2004-04-18)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0674011740
• ISBN 13: 9780674011748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150