Transformation is Hard

After Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush made three major changes to the grand strategy that the U.S. had pursued for a half-century. He reduced reliance on permanent alliances and institutions, broadened the traditional right of pre-emption into a new doctrine of preventive war and advocated coercive democratization as a solution to the problem of terrorism in the Middle East. His September 2002 National Security Strategy was widely seen as revolutionary.

The ultimate success or failure of Bush’s effort at transforming American grand strategy will be judged by history. Top officials believe that no matter who wins the 2008 election, the logic of the situation will compel him (or her) to follow the broad lines of Bush’s approach. As Vice President Dick Cheney has said, “Ten years from now, we’ll look back on this period of time and see that liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq really did represent a major, fundamental shift, obviously, in U.S. policy in terms of how we dealt with the emerging terrorist threat–and that we’ll have fundamentally changed circumstances in that part of the world.”

Perhaps. But it might help to look at the history of previous efforts at transformation.

Over the past century, half a dozen Presidents have tried to radically transform American strategy. At the turn of the century, Theodore Roosevelt sought to adapt U.S. foreign policy to match the nation’s new position in world politics. But while he persuaded Congress to back his efforts to bolster U.S. hegemony in the western hemisphere, he failed to overcome long-standing suspicions of balance-of-power politics in Congress and among the U.S. public. As a result, his transformation proved untenable. Woodrow Wilson came to office focused on domestic issues but ultimately intervened in World War I, leading him to envision a transformation of world politics through the spread of democracy and the creation of new international institutions. But his reach exceeded his grasp, and the succeeding decades witnessed the rejection of his policies and the return of American attitudes that favored a more traditional distancing of the country from the European balance of power.

Among Presidents with transformational ambitions, lasting success was limited to the team of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Roosevelt used the opportunity provided by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to commit the U.S. to multilateralism. In the words of Yale historian John Gaddis, Roosevelt expanded American hegemony by scrapping both isolation and unilateralism: “He never neglected, as Wilson did, the need to keep proclaimed interests from extending beyond actual capabilities.” He linked Wilsonian ideals to a realist vision, combining the attractive power of his Four Freedoms with the idea of four policemen (later five, with the addition of China) as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. And in the Bretton Woods economic institutions, he laid a basis for global economic stability.

F.D.R. initiated a strategy that lasted more than a half-century, in part because Truman, his successor, adapted his policies to the changing situation at the end of the war by adding the Marshall Plan and NATO to contain Soviet power. Subsequent cold war Presidents made incremental changes within that strategic framework.

Sept. 11, 2001, was the crisis that produced the next opportunity for a major transformation. Bush proposed a bold vision, but one must judge a vision by whether it balances ideals with capabilities. Anyone can produce a wish list, but effective visions combine inspiration with feasibility. F.D.R. was good at this; Woodrow Wilson was not. F.D.R. was much more of a public educator than Bush, talking people carefully through the challenges and choices the nation faced, cultivating public opinion, building up a sturdy foundation of support before he acted. Bush’s temperament is less patient. As a journalist put it, he likes to shake things up. That was the key to going into Iraq.

Looking back over the past century, successful major strategic transformations have been rare. Transformational leaders have not been necessary for successful foreign policy, even in periods of major change. President Bush aspires to buck that trend, but at this point it seems that the historical odds are against him.

Joseph S. Nye Jr. is distinguished service professor at Harvard and author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. This essay draws on his recent article in Foreign Affairs