It is a substantial set of accomplishments. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016). The best summary of these accomplishments is found in Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Allies abroad were convinced to finance all operations. 1 A vast number of countries mobilized troops to join in the coalition, even the Soviet Union supported this American-led intervention, and the United States did not have to pay a dime. That war’s 100-hour land campaign was one of the most spectacular military triumphs in American history-a triumph made the more impressive by the massive global backing the Bush team mustered to support it. The men and women who served under President Bush have a distinguished list of accomplishments to their name: they brought the Cold War to a victorious conclusion, integrated two Germanies into one whole, managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc without the outbreak of violence, shepherded South Korea and the Philippines into the democratic fold, saved South America from a regional debt crisis, enshrined human rights and neoliberal economics as the conceptual foundation stones of the new post-Cold War order, and presided over two military victories-first in the now largely forgotten Panama intervention, second in the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Bush as the most accomplished of the modern era. What might they say? My wager: the majority would pinpoint the administration of George H.W. Īsk 100 historians to rank the foreign policy teams of the post Truman presidencies. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era.” -Kenneth Adleman, 2006. “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent.
“, longtime bureaucrats frequently would tell me… “it’s good to have adults in charge again.” -Dov Zakheim, 2013. An introduction to the project can be found here.
This review essay is part of the “Learning From Defeat” project.
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