Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama

by Stephen J. Hadley (Editor), President George W. Bush (Foreword), Peter D. Feaver (Editor)

Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama. In a postscript to each memorandum, these same experts now in hindsight take a remarkably self- critical look at that Bush foreign policy legacy after more than a dozen years of watching subsequent administrations attempt to deal with the same vexing agenda of threats and opportunities-- China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, proliferation, cyber, pandemics, and climate change—an agenda that still dominates America’s national security and foreign policy.

Hand-Off will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, policy analysts, and general readers seeking to understand afresh the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly in view of the records of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

756 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 15, 2023

Reviews

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Transitions from one US presidential administration to another have been a mixed bag of both smooth and difficult, yet the one from Bush #43 to Obama is arguably the smoothest ever. Why? Because both endeavored to make it so. Bush’s legacy is often tarnished by the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 on grounds of WMD that never materialized. Despite that, the rest of his presidency and how his team smoothly handed off to the Obama team left our country in a great position. This newly-released volume containing many declassified memos details the policies and memoranda from myriad foreign policy and national security topics ranging from China, Russia, the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, climate, economy, pandemics and the like. The key cabinet players and their decisions from presidential guidance show how these issues were handled and use the benefit of hindsight to grade how they performed in a critical way now that a dozen or so years have passed. The Bush Administration codified many of the transitional practices for future Administrations as a way of strengthening American democracy for successive administrations. Very comprehensive in its review and scope, containing the original memos and documents, this volume will be studied for years by historians and presidential scholars alike.