While the initial post-mortem of the 2004 US presidential election held that the outcome was largely decided on issues of moral and family values, a 2005 Pew Research Center survey found that foreign policy and the War on Terrorism might have been the deciding factors allowing US President George W. Bush to serve a second term. The survey concluded that foreign affairs assertiveness is the key distinguishing factor between the Republican and Democratic voters, and that attitudes regarding religion are not nearly as important in determining party affiliation. This is a sharp reversal since the previous 1999 Pew survey and underscores the profound effects that the attacks of September 11 have had on US political values that have then translated into voters action and preferences at the ballot.

It is this backdrop that Robert Jervis (Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University) provides us with his new book on American foreign policy. His latest work, American Foreign Policy in a New Era, is a slim and readable volume that helps to understand the complex international environment post-September 11, while delivering a hard-hitting, critical analysis of the Bush foreign policy.

Jervis argues his point that in foreign policy and in the War on Terrorism the Bush Administration is facing its most dire shortcomings. Jervis admits at the outset that he is very critical of most aspects of the Bush foreign policy, stating that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the broader Bush doctrine have diminished, rather than improved, US national security. He further makes the bold claim that most students of international politics, even those who argue the merits of the role of force in global action, were opposed to the war in Iraq and most other aspects of Bush’s foreign policy.

Jervis is first and foremost a political scientist (with 35 books on international relations and security issues to his credit) who likes to convince his readers by bringing forth political science models in an attempt to analyze and explain the post-Cold War political environment. His first chapter addresses theories of war in an era of leading-power peace, in which Jervis reminds us that one of the main changes in the international security environment is that the world’s major state actors no longer have to fear armed conflict with one another.

Indeed, unipolarity and US hegemony have been key factors behind peace among leading powers, a condition brought about by the size and vitality of the US economy, lack of political unity in Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This has resulted in the creation of what he labels a “Security Community,” whose members are not only great powers, but who are also the world’s most developed nations. Jervis argues for the stability in international affairs brought about through this Security Community, even while he disagrees with the specific interactions of its respective players.

Despite facing asymmetrical threats, such as trans-national terrorist groups and rogue states attempting to act in an unrestrained fashion, this Security Community provides for political stability and peace, underscored by democratic governance, liberalism, and the interdependency and interconnections of states. Central to this rise in stability is the decline of territorial disputes, a condition that is contingent upon the ability of the United States to act as the community’s principal player, ideally in a more consultative and multilateral manner.

Next, Jervis examines how the events of September 11 have changed the world and have promoted the furtherance of US hegemony and an assertive Bush foreign policy. Jervis rightly analyzes the aims of Al Qaeda and related jihadist terrorist groups as seeking to take over states in order to establish Islamic theocracies that will ultimately serve as the core of a new Caliphate. Combating the jihadists alone will not successfully eradicate the threat posed by terrorism unless the root causes of it are addressed, which he identifies as bad governance in states with large Muslim populations, the economic misery of their populations, and perceived US support for these corrupt regimes.

To the list of grievances in the Muslim world, he adds US support for Israel in general, and for the Israeli government in particular. Jervis is at odds with how the Bush Administration is fighting the War on Terrorism, posing the question: if we are at war, what are our objectives? He faults the Administration for pursuing this struggle with a unilateral strategy and blames it for not issuing a definitive statement of war aims, save for reducing fear and making Americans feel more secure. Jervis believes that the tactic of capitalizing on these sentiments of insecurity, coupled with the articulation of US policy to crush terrorism as a new totalitarian threat, was subsequently developed by the Administration as the justification to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Jervis reserves his greatest criticism for the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq. He argues that Saddam did not pose a definitive threat, since Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and Saddam had little ability to produce such weapons. Despite this, Bush systematically provided the rationale for a preventative war, the real purpose of which centered on regime change, at a time when containment might have proved a better strategy. Unfortunately, Jervis does not provide the counter-arguments that the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered WMD materials in Iraq throughout the 1990s, that Saddam Hussein provided no inventory proving that these materials had been destroyed, and that Iraq failed to respond to US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s evidence provided to the UN Security Council regarding a renewed Iraqi WMD program.

The invasion of Iraq is a manifestation of the Bush Doctrine, the four components of which Jervis describes as: the strong belief that this is a great opportunity to transform international politics; the perception that great threats can only be defeated through vigorous policies (preventative war theory); a willingness for the United States to act unilaterally; and the notion that the interest of global peace and stability can only be insured by the United States asserting its primacy in world affairs. Jervis condemns this policy for its unilateralism and the links it highlights between preventative war and hegemony.