Surprise, Security, and the American Experience

I am so grateful this book was recommended to me and that I read it at this particular juncture in American history. Gaddis published this in 2004. Only 3 years after the 9/11 attacks, he tasked himself with the challenge of writing a form of “history in the present” — contextualizing, while the attacks were still a main fixture in everyone’s mind, the position of the United States in the world. Reading it now gives the dual headed impression that A) Gaddis was incredibly prescient and the guy is incredibly smart, and B) the United States has continued to embark on the “very grand” strategy this book chronicles, a strategy not really partisan in nature, understandable when viewed in context of the attacks, but with significant flaws.

This book hits quite a lot of subject matter in only ~150 pages. But two areas of particular focus are America’s relationship with unilateral foreign policy and America’s changing attitude about the spread of democratic ideals globally. Often, the 21st century’s drastic changes in speed of change make us assume that we are in unprecedented territory when it comes to the country’s geopolitical posture. Of any recent book I’ve read, this provides the right level of nuance to show where we are *actually* without precedent, and where we are forgetting that mirror-image decisions of John Quincy Adams, FDR and others are being emulated. I highly recommend this.