Despite its title, this book focuses more on the philosophy and personalities that shaped the Bush administration's foreign policy than on the consequences of those policies for future administrations. Labeling Bush's foreign policy “revolutionary” in its neoconservative aspirations, Peleg (Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza
) sees the administration as breaking decisively from the philosophical orientation of previous post–cold war presidents. The author argues that the ascendancy of an “inexperienced and unknowledgeable” Bush, with the influential neoconservative Cheney at his side, led to this ideological turn, encapsulated in the strategic vision of the Bush Doctrine. Approaching Bush's foreign policy through the frame of the buildup to and aftermath of the Iraq War, Peleg draws on secondary sources to condemn Bush personally and explicitly for many of the failures of his administration, arguing the president lacked basic knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs, and labeling him arrogant and inflexible. Though the book has a straightforward structure, it sometimes feels like a repetitive retread before Peleg offers constructive strategic recommendations in its closing pages. (Mar.)
