George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions impose on its freedom of action. He has insisted that an America unbound is a more secure America. How did a man once mocked for knowing little about the world come to be a foreign policy revolutionary? In America Unbound, Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay dismiss claims that neoconservatives have captured the heart and mind of the president. They show that George W. Bush has been no one's puppet. He has been a strong and decisive leader with a coherent worldview that was evident even during the 2000 presidential campaign. Daalder and Lindsay caution that the Bush revolution comes with significant risks. Raw power alone is not enough to preserve and extend America's security and prosperity in the modern world. The United States often needs the help of others to meet the challenges it faces overseas. But Bush's revolutionary impulse has stirred great resentment abroad. At some point, Daalder and Lindsay warn, Bush could find that America's friends and allies refuse to follow his lead. America will then stand alone—a great power unable to achieve its most important goals....

America's recent wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have raised profound questions about military force: When is its use justifiable? For what purpose? Who should make the decision on whether to go to war? Beyond Preemption moves this debate forward with thoughtful discussion of what these guidelines should be and how they apply in the face of today's most pressing geopolitical challenges: terrorism, WMD proliferation, and humanitarian emergencies. Ivo H. Daalder and his colleagues draw on three years of crossnational dialogue with politicians, military officials and strategists, and international lawyers in presenting specific proposals on forging a new international consensus regarding preemption and the proper use of force in today's world.

Highlights from Beyond Preemption

"When it comes to the use of force, the American and global debate often narrows the choice to doing it within the framework of the United Nations or going it alone. This is a false choice. An effective and viable alternative to multilateral paralysis and unilateral action is for the United States to work with its democratic partners around the world to meet and defeat the global challenges of our age." Ivo H. Daalder

"Even many critics of the policies pursued by the Bush administration are pushing for different rather than no U.S. leadership. But right or wrong, fair or unfair, the U.S. intervention in Iraq has generated so much distrust of the United States that it has obscured shared interests and made collective action very difficult." Bruce W. Jentleson

"The newly established norm of the responsibility to protect will likely die in its crib if the international community fails to act effectively in Darfur." Susan E. Rice and Andrew J. Loomis

Contributors: Ivo H. Daalder, Brookings; Bruce W. Jentleson, Duke University; Anne E. Kramer, Office of Congressman Stephen Lynch; Andrew J. Loomis, Georgetown University; Susan E. Rice, Brookings; James B. Steinberg, University of Texas at Austin

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The most solemn obligation of any president is to safeguard the nation's security. But the president cannot do this alone. He needs help. In the past half century, presidents have relied on their national security advisers to provide that help.

Who are these people, the powerful officials who operate in the shadow of the Oval Office, often out of public view and accountable only to the presidents who put them there? Some remain obscure even to this day. But quite a number have names that resonate far beyond the foreign policy elite: McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice.

Ivo Daalder and Mac Destler provide the first inside look at how presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have used their national security advisers to manage America's engagements with the outside world. They paint vivid portraits of the fourteen men and one woman who have occupied the coveted office in the West Wing, detailing their very different personalities, their relations with their presidents, and their policy successes and failures.

It all started with Kennedy and Bundy, the brilliant young Harvard dean who became the nation's first modern national security adviser. While Bundy served Kennedy well, he had difficulty with his successor. Lyndon Johnson needed reassurance more than advice, and Bundy wasn't always willing to give him that. Thus the basic lesson -- the president sets the tone and his aides must respond to that reality.

The man who learned the lesson best was someone who operated mainly in the shadows. Brent Scowcroft was the only adviser to serve two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Learning from others' failures, he found the winning formula: gain the trust of colleagues, build a collaborative policy process, and stay close to the president. This formula became the gold standard -- all four national security advisers who came after him aspired to be "like Brent."

The next president and national security adviser can learn not only from success, but also from failure. Rice stayed close to George W. Bush -- closer perhaps than any adviser before or since. But her closeness did not translate into running an effective policy process, as the disastrous decision to invade Iraq without a plan underscored. It would take years, and another national security aide, to persuade Bush that his Iraq policy was failing and to engineer a policy review that produced the "surge."

The national security adviser has one tough job. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. Daalder and Destler provide plenty of examples of both. This book is a fascinating look at the personalities and processes that shape policy and an indispensable guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully in the shadow of the Oval Office....