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.
Winner of the 2003 Lionel Gelber Prize
A Foreign Affairs Bestseller
"The commentary is judicious, the language sober, and given that both Daalder and Lindsay served in the Clinton White House—and that Daalder was recently an advisor to Howard Dean—the measured tone invests the book with that much more credibility."
—The Washington Post
"America Unbound deserves the closest attention. The research is admirable, the arguments are well marshaled, and the absence of stridency adds considerable authority to the portrayal of Bush as a president whose worldview simply made no allowance for others' doubting the purity of American motives."
—Serge Schmemann, The New York Times Book Review
"A provocative and original thesis—and also a caution to those who have underestimated George W. Bush's decisive and historic impact on the course of American foreign policy."
—Robert Kagan, author, Of Paradise and Power
"It is doubtful that another book will come along soon that covers all the important points of the administration's foreign policy with more clarity and evenhandedness."
—Joshua Micah Marshall, Foreign Affairs
"For those seeking to understand the Bush foreign policy and not merely to denounce it, this informative book will be highly useful."
—Ronald Steel, The Nation
"A useful analysis. . . . Their emphasis is less on the shift to preventive war than on the administration's doctrinaire analysis and its moralistic arrogance."
—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The New York Review of Books
"America Unbound is refreshingly original and it makes the case for President Bush as the master of his own unilateralist revolution. Future examinations of Bush foreign policy will be measured against this authoritative book."
—Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio
A Brookings Institution Book
