Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy

Bibliographic Data

ID7776151
AuthorsJoseph S Nye (corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume85
Issue4
Pages139
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20032047
OpenAlexW2540443794
LanguageEN
Citations received7

GEORGE W. BUSH likes to boast that he does not play small ball. TheEconomistdescribes him as obsessed by the idea of being a 'trans formational' president: not just a status-quo operator like Bill Clinton but a man who changes the direction of history. But will he become that man? Bush's bid for a legacy of transformation rests on the three major changes he made to U.S. grand strategy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2ooi: reducing Washington's reliance on permanent alliances and international institutions, expanding the traditional right of preemption into a new doctrine of preventive war, and advocating coercive democratization as a solution to Middle Eastern terrorism. Those changes, codified in the 2002 National Security Strategy, were widely understood as revolutionary at the time. The British journalist Philip Stephens, for example, wrote in March 2003 that he felt as if he were present at the destruction of the international order the Truman administration had created half a century earlier. Transformation in this regard is more than ordinary adaptation; it implies a major alteration of U.S. grand strategy. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the failure to find either weapons of mass destruc tion (WMD) or evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, two of the three pillars of Bush's effort at transformation

Grand Challenges · Grand strategy · Political science · Public relations · Transformational leadership · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law

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