Daydream Believers

November 12, 2007
America’s leaders have gone from hubris to waking fantasy, according to this caustic critique of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Kaplan (The Wizards of Armageddon
) argues that the Cold War’s end and 9/11 persuaded President Bush and his advisers to unilaterally impose America’s political will on the world, while remaining blind to the military and diplomatic fiascoes that followed. Rumsfeld’s “Revolution in Military Affairs,” a doctrine touting supposedly omnipotent mobile forces and high-tech smart weapons, convinced Pentagon officials that Iraq could be pacified without a large force or a reconstruction plan. Bush abandoned Clinton’s diplomatic rapprochement with North Korea, then stood by as Kim Jong-Il built nuclear weapons. And imbued with a “mix of neo-conservatism and evangelism” that was peddled most flamboyantly by Israeli ideologue Natan Sharansky, Bush backed clumsy pro democracy initiatives that backfired by bringing anti-American and sectarian groups to power in the Middle East. Eschewing Kaplan’s favored approach of fostering international security through alliances and consensus building, Bush assumed that “by virtue of American power, saying something was tantamount to making it so.” The particulars of Kaplan’s indictment aren’t new, but his detailed, illuminating (if occasionally disjointed) accounts of the evolution of the Bush administration’s strategic doctrines add up to a cogent brief for soft realism over truculent idealism.

February 4, 2008
The Bush administration's military and foreign policy stems from the concept that the world fundamentally changed on September 11, 2001. Kaplan's critical assessment argues that it didn't and that the growing disdain, discord and destruction of foreign relations is in large part due to the administration's failure to adopt a more realistic approach to the post-Cold-War era. Tracing the different debacles over the years from Israeli-Palestinian relations to North Korea's attainment of nuclear power and the continual mess in Iraq, Kaplan reveals how the Bush administrations' idle fantasies have put the U.S. in a more vulnerable position. Rudnicki's deep, foreboding voice perfectly matches the tone of this book, giving the true gravitas of the situation. With such a stern and commanding presence, Rudnicki emulates the military atmosphere that much of this book entails. His voice adds a level of immanency that a reader might not deduce from reading it alone. A John Wiley hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 12, 2007).