Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- THE AMERICAN ERA
- Introduction
- 1 Caveat Empire: How to Think about American Power
- 2 New (and Old) Grand Strategy
- 3 Europe: Symbolic Reactions and Common Threats
- 4 Globalization, Culture, and Identities in Crisis
- 5 Iraq and the Middle East: Dilemmas of U.S. Power
- 6 Asia's American Pacifier
- 7 Why They Hate Us and Why They Love Us
- Notes
- Index
2 - New (and Old) Grand Strategy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- THE AMERICAN ERA
- Introduction
- 1 Caveat Empire: How to Think about American Power
- 2 New (and Old) Grand Strategy
- 3 Europe: Symbolic Reactions and Common Threats
- 4 Globalization, Culture, and Identities in Crisis
- 5 Iraq and the Middle East: Dilemmas of U.S. Power
- 6 Asia's American Pacifier
- 7 Why They Hate Us and Why They Love Us
- Notes
- Index
Summary
… [W]hen President George W. Bush warned, at West Point in June 2002, that Americans must be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives, he was echoing an old tradition rather than establishing a new one. Adams, Jackson, Polk, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson would all have understood it perfectly well.
– John Lewis Gaddis[W]hen you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
– President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 1941[D]eterrence cannot work against an adversary with no territory to defend; and diplomacy does not work when the adversary rejects any limitation of objective and seeks the overthrow of societies…. In the world of privatized terror and proliferating weapons of mass destruction … survival [can be] threatened by deployments entirely within the borders of a sovereign state.
– Henry A. KissingerThe post–September 11 world brought America face to face with a grave and long-term peril. This new and unprecedented threat forced a recasting of grand strategy, but the elements of that strategy have become embroiled in acrimonious debate at home and abroad. In this chapter I note the historical precedents of this strategy and find it a logical response to a deadly menace. I argue that, especially in a polarized climate of foreign policy debate, it is essential to accord an overriding priority to what the 9/11 Commission has termed “the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The American EraPower and Strategy for the 21st Century, pp. 39 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005