In the Tradition

In Defense of the Bush Doctrine, by Robert G. Kaufman (Kentucky, 264 pp., $35)

WHEN he was elected president in 2000, George W. Bush gave every indication that he, like his father before him, was a conventional “realist” in foreign affairs: committed to a grand strategy of selective engagement, and critical of the open-ended nature of the Clinton doctrine and its indiscriminate use of military force in instances not involving vital national interests. In his speeches, Bush stressed foreign-policy retrenchment and military “transformation” in preparation for the emergence of a future large peer competitor in the vein of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Neither Bush nor his advisers, most notably national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell, spoke of spreading democracy throughout the world.

About the Author

Mackubin Thomas Owens

Mackubin Thomas Owens is a senior national security fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute , editing its journal Orbis from 2008 to 2020. A Marine Corps infantry veteran of the Vietnam War, he was a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College from 1987 to 2015. He is the author of US Civil–Military Relations after 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain.

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In Defense of the Bush Doctrine, by Robert G. Kaufman (Kentucky, 264 pp., $35)

WHEN he was elected president in 2000, George W. Bush gave every indication that he, like his father before him, was a conventional “realist” in foreign affairs: committed to a grand strategy of selective engagement, and critical of the open-ended nature of the Clinton doctrine and its indiscriminate use of military force in instances not involving vital national interests. In his speeches, Bush stressed foreign-policy retrenchment and military “transformation” in preparation for the emergence of a future large peer competitor in the vein of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Neither Bush nor his advisers, most notably national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell, spoke of spreading democracy throughout the world.

About the Author

Mackubin Thomas Owens

Mackubin Thomas Owens is a senior national security fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute , editing its journal Orbis from 2008 to 2020. A Marine Corps infantry veteran of the Vietnam War, he was a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College from 1987 to 2015. He is the author of US Civil–Military Relations after 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain.