2005/01/01 by John Lewis Gaddis · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Intelligence, Security, War Strategy #Grand strategy #Term (time) #Political science #Economics #Law #Physics
paper · doi:10.2307/20034202
openalex publication_date 2005/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
RECONSIDERATIONS SECOND TERMS in the White House open the way for second thoughts. They provide the least awkward moment at which to re place or reshuffle key advisers. They lessen, although nothing can remove, the influence of domestic political considerations, since re-elected presidents have no next election to worry about. They enhance authority, as allies and adversaries learn-whether with hope or despair-with whom they will have to deal for the next four years. If there is ever a time for an administration to evaluate its own performance, this is it. George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The basis for Bush's grand strategy, like Roosevelt's, comes from the shock of surprise attack and will not change. None of F.D.R.'s successors, Democrat or Republican, could escape the lesson he drew from the events of December 7, 1941: that distance alone no longer protected Americans from assaults at the hands of hostile states. Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can ignore what the events of September ii, 2001, made clear: that deterrence against states affords insufficient protection from attacks by gangs, which can now inflict the kind of damage only states fighting wars used to be able to achieve. In that sense, the course for Bush's second term remains that of his first one: the restoration of security in a suddenly more dangerous world.