Surprise, Security, and the American Experience by John Lewis Gaddis, Gaddis

From the Publisher

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 andinternational relations to provide an answer.

The New York Times

When he looks to the future, Gaddis raises more questions than he answers, but he raises the right ones. One of these is whether the administration's domestic policy is consistent with its grand strategy. Gaddis notes the contrast between Roosevelt's call for national sacrifice to win World War II and Bush's decision to place the burden of today's wars only on those who do the fighting -- and on future generations that must pay the bills. One has to wonder whether the administration's fiscal and energy policies are consistent with the goal of maintaining American global predominance. — Jack F. Matlock Jr.

Publishers Weekly

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. Gaddis resurrects the 18th-century idea of an "empire of liberty": whether as a universal principle or in an American context, liberty could flourish only in an empire that provided safety. The British burning of Washington in 1814 highlighted American vulnerability to certain forms of surprise attack. In consequence, Gaddis recounts, John Quincy Adams developed a strategy of seeking control over the North American continent with minimal coercion, but through preemptive action where necessary. The attack on Pearl Harbor extended the concept to global dimensions, eventually expanding the U.S. sphere of influence exponentially. 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, and he has no qualms about calling America the best hope of liberty in the eyes of most of the earth's inhabitants. The ability to question all values that is liberty's essence depends, he finds, on defending certain values-unilaterally and preemptively when necessary, but not randomly. This compact, provocative history of an idea-in-action has the potential to alter the U.S.'s collective self-image. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

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. Most accounts of grand strategy draw on the abstractions of political science or the history of the post-Westphalian state system in Europe. 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. Vulnerability is the key to all three strategies, Gaddis argues. The 1814 burning of Washington, D.C., by British forces, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and al Qaeda's attacks on September 11 jolted Americans to reexamine their place in the world and, in each case, to expand their security frontiers and embrace a more ambitious foreign policy to deal with new threats. 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. How the United States can win international support (or at least consent) for a vigorous foreign policy in response to new and nontraditional threats is the question that troubles him most. He hints that a return to the principles of "federalism" may provide the answer. Perhaps. In any case, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience is a substantive accomplishment and a valuable contribution to the most important debates of our time.

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Table of Contents