Surprise, Security, and the American Experience

by John Lewis Gaddis

Book Overview

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. The pattern began in 1814, when the British Army attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of American homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674011740
• ISBN13: 9780674011748
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Gaddis Gives Us Some Much-Needed Perspective

American foreign policy and international relations are made up of wars, treaties, doctrines, and so forth. A lot of details and sometimes a unifying perspective (e.g., Cold War and containment of USSR/Communism) gives us the sweep of history and content for many other books.This little book offers something a little different: the meta-policy of America. The even larger scale of American foreign policy. On this scale the grounding in the country's principles together with the continuity of concerns and decisions becomes clear and understandable.Three attacks surprised Americans - the burning of the capital in 1814, the attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and 9/11/2001. Based on concern for security and national principles the foreign policy (on this scale) was set, driven by three leaders.The first leader was John Quincy Adams. The meta-policy combined notions of preemptive action, unilateral authority, and hegemonic power. The scope for these was this hemisphere. The meta-policy lasted pretty well until Pearl Harbor, though in practice it was not regi;ar;y (or even at all?) applied after World War I.Second was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the policy altered the notions somewhat. For WW II and the Cold War era. The scope was world wide and the actors were nation states and alliances of nations.Third is George Walker Bush. In this era America has reverted somewhat to the Adams era approach. The scope is still world wide however the actors include transnational entities (such as al Queda).I will leave the review there. The author marshalls events, documents, and the usual historical elements to support this continuity of American meta-policy. While President Bush's doctrine of preemption has far more historical context and perspective than many give him credit for (the neocons hardly invented this), there are also deviations and expansions that the author calls into question.This book is neither a critique of Bush, nor a full fledged critique of these policies. The author does not attempt to compare President Bush to President Roosevelt for greatness.The book left me considering a much larger historical perspective for American actions, and a greater sense of continuity and even consistency than the chattering press credits. It might also be good for a few foreign correspondents to read since it seems many outside American are unaware of American foreign policy (there is none, or it is shoot-from-the-hip Cowboyism) and American perspective on security. For all who read this book tomorrow's newspaper articles on the war, Iraq, terrorism, etc. will read just a little bit different.

Puts the U.S. Response to 9-11 in Historical Perspective

After 9-11, when the Bush administration began laying out the framework for a new strategy to deal with security threats to the United States, several scholars and commentators judged elements of the nascent strategy to be without precedent in American history. John Lewis Gaddis, a scholar who has written extensively about the history of U.S. national security, argues otherwise. Rather than an unprecedented strategy, Gaddis says the Bush administration has put forward a security framework that reaches back into the nineteenth century for its central ideas.This short book, which was based on a series of lectures Gaddis presented at the New York Public Library in 2002, builds its case of an evolving U.S. security strategy around three events: the 1814 burning of the White House by the British, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and 9-11. Gaddis argues that each of these events forced the U.S. to change its strategy to fit the new circumstances of the time. Bush's recent unilateral policies after 9-11 and FDR's multilateral response to the U.S. entry into WW2 (that was also the basis of the U.S. Cold War strategy) are familiar to most readers, but it is Gaddis's description of John Quincy Adams and his nineteenth century strategy (one that was largely followed by almost all American presidents until 1941), and the comparison of Adams's strategy with Bush's, that is likely to spark the reader's interest. Gaddis makes the case that Bush's so-called "unprecedented" strategy combining preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony finds its precedents in Adams's policies. Like Bush, Adams felt it necessary to occasionally preempt neighboring states, non-state actors (Indians), and even failed states (Spain's faltering hold on its colonial possessions). Like Bush, Adams felt unilateralism was sometimes necessary to secure America's long-term interests. And finally, like Bush, Adams sought U.S. hegemony; the only difference between the two presidents was one of degree; Bush seeks to maintain U.S. global hegemony while Adams had to make due with the goal of regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere.Gaddis does not claim that the Bush administration borrowed consciously from Adams, and the scholar concedes there are differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first century security environments for the U.S. He maintains, however, the similarities are striking enough to note. He also argues that there is a common thread to American strategy passing from Adams to FDR to Bush: whenever Americans have felt threatened, their response has been to take the offense, not to play defense; to expand, not to shrink behind walls; to confront and overwhelm, not to flee.This is an excellent book, concise and strikingly persuasive. It makes the Bush case for a new U.S. strategy better than the administration itself has made it, and yet Gaddis is not a Republican supporter. By giving historical precedents to the controversial tenets of preemption, unilateralism, and h

A masterpiece of American foreign policy

For all that has been written about the American reaction to September 11, who could have thought that a mere 128 pages could offer a sweeping and refreshing look into America's historic quest for security-and to do so while demonstrating the relevance of that historical exercise for the present. John Lewis Gaddis, a historian at Yale University, aims at "an admittedly premature effort to treat, as history, an event that remains inescapably part of our present": the September 11 attacks on America and the Bush Administration's response to them. The product is an intellectual and historical tour de force, which dissects the American desire for security by looking at what its government did the last two times it was faced with a similar predicament: after the British burned the White House and Capitol Hill in 1814, and after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.The three dominant themes employed (or conceived) by John Quincy Adams were unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony. Roosevelt's reaction to Pearl Harbor, on the other hand, rested on multilateralism and a rejection of preemption; ironically, he still achieved the third: hegemony. The book then proceeds to carefully craft an analysis (and critique) between those two historical precedents and President Bush's reaction after September 11.It is hard to imagine another book that can look so clearly and refreshingly at the major security issues confronting American foreign policy at the time; and to do so in so few pages. Nor is it imaginable that anyone could have summarized in a single paragraph his or her suggestion about what America foreign policy should be aimed at (no spoilers here: read the book). Yet, this is precisely what one will encounter reading "Surprise, Security, and the American Experience."

Continuous American policy applied to non-state actors

Gaddis attempts to walk us through two previous suprise attacks in American history, the sack of Washington in 1814 and Pearl Harbor. Both of these resulted in revolutions of foreign policy. John Quincy Adams, as Monroe's Secretary of State, articulated a strategy for maintaining American safety and values in the Western Hemisphere. Later, FDR invented a functional multilateral world order that the United States could harness to fight World War II and the Cold War. He then observes that, contrary to chattering-class opinion, Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy is perfectly well inline with these traditions. He also relates the ideas in the National Security Strategy, which tragically few people read, to these policies, previous expressions of doctrine, and concrete changes in the world context. There is a shocking lack of discussion of this new context.Now the threat is non-state actors beyond a couple of significant hold-overs like China, North Korea, Iran, etc. Today threats emerge from terrorist organizations (and their allies such as international organized crime, etc.) It is important to realize that multinational corporations and NGOs have also become signifcant non-state actors on the international scene. These are not participants in our multilateral world order, and they cannot be swayed, in the end, by the same tools that we use in an international order. Thus, President Bush has asserted that politics is the root cause of terrorism and threats, and has started down a, possibly too bold, path to change the political culture of the world. While his problems are radically different than Adams and FDR faced, his solutions are completely continuous and completely American. This must be grasped to think about serious policy alternatives in our new context.

The Vision Thing

Mr. Gaddis has written one of the best books on current US foreign policy available. His grasp of history provides a strong context for analyzing the Bush administration's policy in a way many commentators, particularly from the left, overlook. Gaddis clearly sees the grand strategy (the Vision Thing) that animates Bush and his foreign policy team. Gaddis connects this vision to similar events in American history, then provides an analysis that compares and contrasts our times with those earlier "suprises" of 1814 and 1941. This brief book (you can read it in a couple of hours) operates at a wide scope of time, yet provides a clear structure that links the past with the present in a rational and empirical way. Regardless of your political philosophy, this is a book you should read if you want to form a thoughtful opinion.There are not many people who could write a book that is this wide, deep, and clear (the Vision Thing again, but it belongs to Mr. Gaddis - what kind of seminar this guy must run); I am moved to a great deal of respect for Mr. Gaddis and his skill as a thinker and writer. I also appreciate that he considers in his analysis other strong writers like Francis Fukuyama (End of History and the Last Man), Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations), Fouad Ajami (Dream Palace of the Arabs), and Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong).This is a very strong book.