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The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power
Readers of The New York Times know David Sanger as one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. Now, with a historian’s sweep and an insider’s eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces.
In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office.
Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy–while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists–never before disclosed–to quietly infiltrate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
“Bush wrote a lot of checks,” one senior intelligence official told Sanger, “that the next president is going to have to cash.”
The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next administration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment.
At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create, The Inheritance is vital reading for anyone trying to understand the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead.
In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office.
Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran’s nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, in his last year, to secretly step up covert actions in a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy–while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists–never before disclosed–to quietly infiltrate Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
“Bush wrote a lot of checks,” one senior intelligence official told Sanger, “that the next president is going to have to cash.”
The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban’s return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush administration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence apparatus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asia, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington was bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next administration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment.
At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunities they create, The Inheritance is vital reading for anyone trying to understand the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead.
498 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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August 9, 2011The title is an understatement. A riveting and well-crafted page turning tour of the toxic global legacy bequethed by the Bush Administration through folly, mismanagement, indecision and neglect. This is a hugely important work not only for the Obama Administration and anyone interested in international affairs, but for concerned citizens throughout the world who, like their governments, need to heed the numerous wakeup calls throughout its pages. The critical issues explored by David Sanger are many and urgent. While they all defy easy or quick solutions, Sanger makes the case without being shrill that the challenges of nuclear proliferation in Iran, Syria and North Korea, terrorism and instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the economic rise of China - in addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East conflicts - all require a return to reasoned engagement and diplomacy. In doing so, he drives the last spike into the heart of the Bush-Cheney doctrine of unilateral intervention and preemption. While the knee-jerk and often cowboy-like response of the Bush ideologues may now rest in peace at least for the next four years, burying its legacy will not be as simple.
October 25, 2010
This book reminded me why I don't feel totally awful about not reading newspapers (I don't read newspapers or really follow current events in any depth). I read these kinds of books. This NYTimes reporter covered the biggest international conflicts and how Bush handled/mishandled things with a heavy dose of the reporter's personal opinions about what Obama ought to do. A lot of it was repeat info for me from the last several books I've read, but I found it less biased against Bush than the previous. Not in a way that was annoying, though.
I found the last section where he has the fictional "what if" scenario stories pretty scary and I think that's what struck me hardest about the book. I recommend it for a good overview of Pakistan/Iran/China/North Korea/other threats over the last 5-10 years.
I found the last section where he has the fictional "what if" scenario stories pretty scary and I think that's what struck me hardest about the book. I recommend it for a good overview of Pakistan/Iran/China/North Korea/other threats over the last 5-10 years.
April 28, 2010
Necessarily dated because it assesses the world prior to Obama's inaugeration. Good assessment of the possibilities and contingencies at the time, but events have moved on.
December 7, 2018
Deceitfully, artful title makes one think it would address Obama's foreign policy challenges. It does in the epilogue in the book's last few pages. The rest of the book is a highly detailed and depressing re-counting of the Bush administration's foreign-policy screw-ups. Admittedly, he looks better today in the age of Trump - but they're still massive screw-ups nonetheless.
January 16, 2018
NYT Reporter and a professor of mine at the Kennedy School of Government. Solid book.
December 19, 2025
It is all things you know, but nicely catalogued in one place.
March 17, 2012
The premise of The Inheritance is simple: what are the greatest foreign policy problems Obama inherited? It’s a difficult subject to address without criticizing Bush, and Sanger pulls no punches, but it’s really about what Obama will face. As such, it was an excellent primer on foreign policy when I originally read it shortly after the election. I believe it remains valuable today. Sanger, pointedly avoiding Iraq, identifies five countries as the greatest challenges to the US: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, and China (it is not by accident he avoids Iraq, Sanger sees its greatest cost as one of opportunity). Other countries remain troublesome (notably, Russia and Venezuela; more recently, Mexico), but I think these are still our five greatest threats.
Three years later Sanger’s work still holds. Iran continues to press forward in its nuclear ambitions while the US balks at Israel’s preference for a preemptive approach. Pakistan proved to have been the hiding place of Bin Laden. North Korea replaced its leader, but we would do well to remember it has turned the rope-a-dope into an art of strategic statecraft. Recent events threaten to undo all the good work of the past few years in Afghanistan and China marches on untrammeled by pressure from the US.
Sanger devotes considerable attention to nuclear proliferation. One might be tempted to make this a point of criticism, given its lack of political salience these days, but let there be no doubt—nuclear proliferation is the greatest threat to America. It was in 2004—when both Bush and Kerry immediately answered as such during a debate—and it remains so today. Sanger devotes considerable space to detailing our failures to prevent nuclear proliferation during Bush’s presidency. At the epicenter was a Pakistani scientist named A.Q. Khan. He was selling nuclear secrets going back to the administrations of the elder Bush and Clinton. Covert work to thwart his efforts with Libya was highly successful, less so with Iran. It was Khan who sold vital technology to the North Koreans.
At first blush China seems an odd choice for the “Big 5.” But it makes a lot of sense when you consider the implications of an autocratic dictatorship as your major economic rival. Sanger sometimes falls victim to seeing the mote in America’s eye but failing to see the plank in China’s—it’s frankly laughable to think of equating the U.S. with China in human rights or regulatory environment—and he can turn a blind eye to history—he compares U.S. reaction to China today to reaction to Japan in the 80s without drawing the connection that neither had a sustainable economic model—but Sanger’s understanding of the China problem is generally excellent. Bush’s “soft” approach to China is the rare policy to meet Sanger’s approval (I don’t know that I agree). China is pursuing a “puncture strategy” militarily— defeat America’s superior technology however possible, whether by shooting down satellites, with anti-aircraft carrier missiles, or cyberattacks. Sanger sees China’s rise to become a “peer competitor” as inevitable, so we better embrace it. But China will never become our economic equal without massive reforms that are by no means inevitable. But they may, and they will likely remain an second-tier (with America lonely on the first tier) economic superpower. There is some good news, e.g., China has shown a grudging responsiveness to international pressure.
The China section also contains a perfect example of soft power. Emergency relief can be “the single best way to make use of America’s soft power while delivering a subtle message about America’s hard power.” Admiral Keating “recalled an incident from the winter of 2007, when two American C-17 cargo planes were dispatched to Guangzhou Province in China with blankets because the area had been hit with a brutal cold spell that threatened mass deaths from exposure. It took less than seventy-two hours, he said, between the time the Chinese asked for some help and the arrival of the first American planes, which immediately offloaded pallets full of blankets.” I assume China got the message.
Three years later Sanger’s work still holds. Iran continues to press forward in its nuclear ambitions while the US balks at Israel’s preference for a preemptive approach. Pakistan proved to have been the hiding place of Bin Laden. North Korea replaced its leader, but we would do well to remember it has turned the rope-a-dope into an art of strategic statecraft. Recent events threaten to undo all the good work of the past few years in Afghanistan and China marches on untrammeled by pressure from the US.
Sanger devotes considerable attention to nuclear proliferation. One might be tempted to make this a point of criticism, given its lack of political salience these days, but let there be no doubt—nuclear proliferation is the greatest threat to America. It was in 2004—when both Bush and Kerry immediately answered as such during a debate—and it remains so today. Sanger devotes considerable space to detailing our failures to prevent nuclear proliferation during Bush’s presidency. At the epicenter was a Pakistani scientist named A.Q. Khan. He was selling nuclear secrets going back to the administrations of the elder Bush and Clinton. Covert work to thwart his efforts with Libya was highly successful, less so with Iran. It was Khan who sold vital technology to the North Koreans.
At first blush China seems an odd choice for the “Big 5.” But it makes a lot of sense when you consider the implications of an autocratic dictatorship as your major economic rival. Sanger sometimes falls victim to seeing the mote in America’s eye but failing to see the plank in China’s—it’s frankly laughable to think of equating the U.S. with China in human rights or regulatory environment—and he can turn a blind eye to history—he compares U.S. reaction to China today to reaction to Japan in the 80s without drawing the connection that neither had a sustainable economic model—but Sanger’s understanding of the China problem is generally excellent. Bush’s “soft” approach to China is the rare policy to meet Sanger’s approval (I don’t know that I agree). China is pursuing a “puncture strategy” militarily— defeat America’s superior technology however possible, whether by shooting down satellites, with anti-aircraft carrier missiles, or cyberattacks. Sanger sees China’s rise to become a “peer competitor” as inevitable, so we better embrace it. But China will never become our economic equal without massive reforms that are by no means inevitable. But they may, and they will likely remain an second-tier (with America lonely on the first tier) economic superpower. There is some good news, e.g., China has shown a grudging responsiveness to international pressure.
The China section also contains a perfect example of soft power. Emergency relief can be “the single best way to make use of America’s soft power while delivering a subtle message about America’s hard power.” Admiral Keating “recalled an incident from the winter of 2007, when two American C-17 cargo planes were dispatched to Guangzhou Province in China with blankets because the area had been hit with a brutal cold spell that threatened mass deaths from exposure. It took less than seventy-two hours, he said, between the time the Chinese asked for some help and the arrival of the first American planes, which immediately offloaded pallets full of blankets.” I assume China got the message.
January 30, 2012
The Inheritance is a snapshot of the major (non-Iraq) foreign policy hot spots as they looked in early 2009, just as the Obama administration was figuring out how to work the coffee machine in the Oval Office. New York Times correspondent David Sanger runs us through the ins-and-outs of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and China with an eye toward the challenges the new president would face.
I started reading this just after it was first published, but then dropped it and only took it up against last month. It's clear that the book's sell-by date has passed and that the intervening years have re-worked the global landscape significantly. In the meantime we've seen the end of operations in Iraq and a surge in Afghanistan, the death of Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il, the Arab Spring, Tunisia, Tahrir Square, Libya, the Green uprising in Iran, and more. Still, the book works as a summation of the Bush years. One of Sanger's unifying themes is the very high opportunity cost of Bush's Iraq blunder, the way it prevented decisions on several more important policy questions.
The book is well-worth reading for the details of the nuclear arms trade. In Sanger's narrative, it's fairly hair-raising how fast and how easily nuclear weapons have spread over the last decade -- from A.Q. Khan's network in Pakistan to Iran, Libya and North Korea, and then on to Syria and God knows where else. At times it seems like Iraq was the only country who wasn't producing WMDs.
The two chapters on China are broader and less focused. Obviously China is an enormous and enormously important topic, so they're an interesting read but the Tom Friedman-level speculating seems a little inessential. He closes the book with three quick chapters on how we are (or aren't) dealing with emerging threats such as bioweapons or a cyber attack.
I started reading this just after it was first published, but then dropped it and only took it up against last month. It's clear that the book's sell-by date has passed and that the intervening years have re-worked the global landscape significantly. In the meantime we've seen the end of operations in Iraq and a surge in Afghanistan, the death of Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il, the Arab Spring, Tunisia, Tahrir Square, Libya, the Green uprising in Iran, and more. Still, the book works as a summation of the Bush years. One of Sanger's unifying themes is the very high opportunity cost of Bush's Iraq blunder, the way it prevented decisions on several more important policy questions.
The book is well-worth reading for the details of the nuclear arms trade. In Sanger's narrative, it's fairly hair-raising how fast and how easily nuclear weapons have spread over the last decade -- from A.Q. Khan's network in Pakistan to Iran, Libya and North Korea, and then on to Syria and God knows where else. At times it seems like Iraq was the only country who wasn't producing WMDs.
The two chapters on China are broader and less focused. Obviously China is an enormous and enormously important topic, so they're an interesting read but the Tom Friedman-level speculating seems a little inessential. He closes the book with three quick chapters on how we are (or aren't) dealing with emerging threats such as bioweapons or a cyber attack.
September 25, 2013
This book has been on my "reading pile" for awhile now, but every time I sat down with it I found my attention wandering. At some point I decided just to read a bit of it every day and make my way through it. Why? It had been recommended to me by people whose opinion I value, and is a topic that is of interest. In the end, thought it was slow slogging, I found it to be informative and well researched. There's a bit too much of what, as I read it, seems to be conjecture and assumption about motives and things going on behind the scenes, with no reasons given. That left me with the feeling that much of that was based on an already existing bias about what the book would present. Some of that ended up being covered in the acknowledgements and notes at the end where the author talks about the difficulties of trying to balance national security interests and source anonymity with wanting to present his case. And it may be that that indeed is all true, the problem is, I, and any other reader, am left with a sort of "you'll just have to trust me on this" with no evidence to back things up.
May 19, 2009
Extremely thought provoking. The title is somewhat misleading though, because the book was written before the election and would have applied equally to McCain had he won.
Author is a NYT reporter and is extremely critical of the Bush administration; that said, his analysis of the results of achieved over the past 8 years is objective and well defended. His overall argument that this administration inherits a far messier world with a more limited range of options than President Bush did is hard to dispute. The most valuable contribution he makes though is to clearly illustrate the dangers posed by proliferators in North Korea and Pakistan, and the vulnerabilities in our own systems that we have allowed to persist.
Worth the time to read, even if you don't agree with the author's politics.
Author is a NYT reporter and is extremely critical of the Bush administration; that said, his analysis of the results of achieved over the past 8 years is objective and well defended. His overall argument that this administration inherits a far messier world with a more limited range of options than President Bush did is hard to dispute. The most valuable contribution he makes though is to clearly illustrate the dangers posed by proliferators in North Korea and Pakistan, and the vulnerabilities in our own systems that we have allowed to persist.
Worth the time to read, even if you don't agree with the author's politics.
February 13, 2009
The Inheritance is subtitled The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.Therefore, my issue with this book is that the only part of the world covered is The Middle East & Asia. Granted, the research and conclusions reached by Sanger in these hot spots are excellent, but if you take into consideration the vital role the minority vote in this country played in getting Obama elected,then in my mind, completely ignoring issues facing Africa and Latin America is a glaring omission.
April 1, 2009
The advertising for this book talks about a "riveting narrative", but that is a little hopeful for this book. The book does clearly lay out the many foreign policy challenges facing President Obama as he takes office, focusing on how conditions have worsened over the past several years in troubled Countries around the world, focusing chiefly on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, China, etc. Dealing with these nations will be especially challenging given the domestic problems to be faced during a developing economic recession / depression.
May 15, 2009
Can be hard going sometimes but other areas you race through. Later chapters with NBC scenarios get your attention. Tells it like it is and was. Bush's report card as I extrapolate it from this book:
Iraq F; Pakistan F; North Korea F; Afghanistan F; China B-. Amazingly in the discussion on China author never mentions the Navy P-3 incident on Hainan Island. Author fairly cites praise and blame on Bush's accomplishments or lack therof. Some of these journalists should be in office as they seem to know more than the politicians and can also explain things better.
Iraq F; Pakistan F; North Korea F; Afghanistan F; China B-. Amazingly in the discussion on China author never mentions the Navy P-3 incident on Hainan Island. Author fairly cites praise and blame on Bush's accomplishments or lack therof. Some of these journalists should be in office as they seem to know more than the politicians and can also explain things better.
September 27, 2015
"The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power" by David E. Sanger is a really good read book. Keeper for sure. What I got out of it is that nuclear proliferation is a huge threat to the human race, and the lack of political stability in Pakistan will result in a nuclear threat from there, how Syria benefited from North Korea's nuclear development and how the US government's focus on Iraq allowed other governments to rise and become a more powerful player. A book that I will re-read in five years to see how the next president approaches these issues.
August 7, 2009
A timely book but its mainly an overwordy survey of our problems in the world, that were inherited by Barack Obama - each subject gets a treatment much like an expanded newspaper article and each finishes with a summary of how Bush screwed it up even worse. Much too long to keep the reader's interest. I bought it because I listened to the author on C-Span and thought him very concise and informative.
November 18, 2012
Good discussion on the weaknesses and distractions the Bush Administration and the challenges for the first Obama Administration. The epilogue seemed a bit too optimistic and hopeful. Chapters on China and Russia seemed incomplete and left me wanting more detail. Pakistan chapter leaves you will a sense of hopelessness in our foreign policy circles...perhaps too true to actually believe that we keep hitting our head with the hammer although we know it hurts. Overall - quick enjoyable read.
June 4, 2010
I can summarize the entire book with one, fill-in the blank senetence: "By the time the Bush administration realized the importance of" ___ "it was too late". Hah.
It is interesting to observe the continued unspooling of some of the issues (North Korea, Hamid Karzai/Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ahmadinejad/Iran, and China-nomics) highlighted here.
It is interesting to observe the continued unspooling of some of the issues (North Korea, Hamid Karzai/Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ahmadinejad/Iran, and China-nomics) highlighted here.
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January 15, 2010This is a nicely written synopsis of the problems the incoming Obama administration faced in 2009 when it entered office. I think it underestimated economic issues (especially in light of the financial crisis) and did not emphasize enough areas of progress during the Bush administration but it reads well and is engaging.
July 7, 2010
Jon Stewart wrote a review saying that this book is for any one who wants insomnia at night. This is a very accurate description of the feelings this book evokes. When I first picked it up, Sanger's enthralling account of Obama's "inheritance" from Bush left me dumbfounded. It is extremely thought-provoking and at the same time, disturbing.
September 2, 2010
Sanger appears to be a progressive type political writer so he has little good to say about Bush-II. This book feeds my pension for historical type things. I think he provides interesting additional ditail to what we all read in the newspaper.
Ineresting to read it this late in the next administration.
Ineresting to read it this late in the next administration.
February 25, 2009
Don't read this late at night. You won't sleep well. This book is based on extensive research and personal interviews with all the "power brokers" in the world. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand what extremely dangerous time we live in.
April 10, 2009
Comprehensive, aggressive reporting on the messes Bush left us in China, Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the Middle East. Some fresh reporting, lots of intrigue and a full agenda for President Obama. I could not put this down.
August 2, 2010
The book feels a bit scattered, but paints a pretty powerful picture of what was handed to Obama. The Bush Administration's mistakes on Afghanistan are astounding, and the preoccupation with Iraq so consuming that it explains a lot of what is still happening today. An engaging read, overall.
April 26, 2016
A 360 view of January 2009. This book went into the realities of following eight years of Republican leadership. This work is probably one of the major reasons Obama supporters still have a positive view of him in October of 2009.
July 18, 2013
I often doubt reporters judgements but Sanger was extremely accurate in his assessment of the world Barak Obama inherited and how he would have to go about governing. I am encouraged to read Sanger more often.
March 10, 2016
This is a well-written, thought-provoking scary book about the realties of the complicated, vulnerable world we live in today. I had not realized how much of the politics of the world I had missed out on for the last twenty years; now, I'm caught up.
June 27, 2012
I learned a lot about the world's trouble spots. Terrorists, nuclear capabilities, international jerks, threats, and geography. This is not an easy read, but it's important.
March 26, 2009
This book was well researched, well written, very informative, and very chilling.
May 6, 2009
absolutely fascinating, continually frightening...
only slight relief is having a true statesman in office, but it may be too late...
only slight relief is having a true statesman in office, but it may be too late...
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March 14, 2009one chapter for the dreaded thesis...which was absolutely no help whatsoever
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews