Product Description

For nearly eight years, the American people have struggled to understand George W. Bush’s approach to the world. Many analysts, lacking a frame of reference, have simply dubbed it revolutionary. But in U.S. Vs. Them, J. Peter Scoblic provocatively argues that the best way to understand Bush’s foreign policy is to recognize that it is not radical, but rather the most recent expression of conservatism, an often misunderstood ideology whose national security instincts are rooted in America’s eighteenth-century view of itself and whose modern form has percolated for more than a half century, reaching full strength in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Scoblic persuasively shows that the foreign policy of the American Right has been stuck for decades on a binary setting that allows it to see the world only in terms of us versus them or good versus evil. During the Cold War, that approach fostered an unwillingness to negotiate with the Soviet Union, a distrust of apolitical intelligence, and an insistence on military dominance— even as the advent of nuclear weapons rendered the traditional notion of victory in war obsolete. Today, what conservatives often present as moral clarity is in fact nothing more than a continued failure to recognize that American security depends on our ability to think outside our borders—to stop seeing the United States in unavoidable opposition to the rest of the world.

Tracing the history of Cold War conservatism from its development by William F. Buckley to its manifestation in Barry Goldwater through its implementation by Ronald Reagan and its culmination in the Bush administration, Scoblic weaves an intellectual history that reveals how the Right’s belligerence, intransigence, and disinclination for diplomacy not only brought us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, but also failed to meet the grave post-9/11 challenges posed by Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and especially by the most serious danger that looms before us: that of nuclear terrorism. What’s more, although the Bush administration is nearing its end, conservatism is certainly not, as this year’s Republican presidential candidates clearly demonstrated.

U.S. Vs. Them is a revealing and sometimes alarming analysis, but in diagnosing the origins of Bush’s foreign policy, it illuminates the path to renewed American leadership in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104687 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This cogent first book from the executive editor of the New Republic forcefully argues that 50 years of American conservatism have undermined U.S. security and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Scoblic charts the course of American conservatism, from its development by William F. Buckley Jr. through the disastrous Cold War to Bush's failure to safeguard the United States after 9/11: in stark, often frightening detail, Scoblic examines how Bush embraced regime change as a means of fighting evil and neglected to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, failed to prevent North Korea from reprocessing plutonium, rebuffed requests for negotiations from an Iranian regime that was, in 2003, willing to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeatedly ignored U.S. intelligence and pursued the war in Iraq. Scoblic illustrates how and why conservatism shaped the current administration and explains how it guided Bush's good vs. evil morality. This is an important book, well researched and well reasoned in its assessment of conservatism and mandatory reading for anyone concerned with America's security and future. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Fred Kaplan

The shelves are already bulging with books about George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy -- where it went wrong, how to steer things right. Yet space should be made for J. Peter Scoblic's U.S. vs. Them, if only because it points out that there's nothing "neo" about the neoconservatives.

The neocons' military unilateralism, shunning of diplomacy as "appeasement," scorn of international institutions as "unwelcome checks on American power" -- all these notions, Scoblic argues, are rooted in un-prefixed American conservatism, a movement founded by William F. Buckley in the 1950s, which fused the once separate strands of libertarianism and religious traditionalism into a crusade against Roosevelt's New Deal at home and Truman's containment abroad.

Bush, Scoblic writes, "is the direct descendant -- indeed, the ultimate product -- of this movement" because, unlike other postwar Republican presidents, he has taken conservatives' foreign policy ideas seriously and brought their dreams to deadly life.

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, talked of "rolling back" the Soviet empire, but Ike and Dulles abided by the realism of their Democratic predecessors, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, who, as Scoblic puts it, valued nuclear deterrence over "moral clarity." Nixon, whom Scoblic treats as an arms-control hero, did much the same, at least in superpower politics.

Conservatives credit Reagan's ideological purity with winning the Cold War. But Scoblic notes that the Soviets folded only because, in his second term, Reagan turned liberal. It's often forgotten that many on the right lambasted their idol for sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev and still more for the accords he negotiated, especially the one eliminating medium-range missiles in Europe.

Reagan's crucial role, Scoblic says, was that "he recognized Gorbachev as a reformer and adapted quickly . . . ratcheting down the nuclear tension that he himself had helped create." Had Reagan persisted in his earlier rhetoric, as several aides and columnists urged, "Gorbachev would have lost his room to maneuver" within the Politburo; his attempts at reform, which required outreach to the West, would have wilted; and the Cold War might have rumbled on, ending at some point but perhaps not so cordially.

Scoblic, executive editor of the New Republic, isn't out to puncture GOP myths but to frame them in a historical context. He traces the conservative worldview ("us versus them," "good versus evil") to the nation's beginnings, when the colonists were "in fact surrounded by enemies" -- Native Americans on one side, European imperialists on the other -- a condition that bred a sense of moral and nationalistic exceptionalism.

By the mid-20th century, the rise of the Axis powers, the vital role that we played in winning World War II and the nuclear arms race that followed all rendered this lofty apartness untenable. "International security required reaching some sort of modus vivendi with the enemy so that the world did not suddenly end in nuclear holocaust," Scoblic writes. "Conservatives were not only ill-suited to meeting this task; they rejected its very premise."

Conservatives staged a revival under George W. Bush, in part because it seemed they could. With the Soviet Union gone, they thought the United States could flex its muscles without limit or risk. And so the "us-versus-them worldview" revived, with democratization serving as the "ideological successor to anticommunism." The goal was the same -- "to make victory permanent so that there would never again be a question of engaging with evil." Yet as Acheson noted in 1949, "good and evil have existed in this world since Adam and Eve went out of the garden of Eden."

Scoblic is among a growing number of liberals who, repulsed by Bush's kind of "moral clarity," have embraced a return to realism in foreign policy -- not quite Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik but at least a modest view of the world as it really works. He writes, for instance, that presidents should be elected for their "empiricism, pragmatism, and leadership." (He stays mum on which of the present candidates best fits the bill.)

Yet Scoblic sometimes falls prey to his own us-versus-them thinking. In drawing contrasts with Bush, he gives the impression that Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Brent Scowcroft are of the same ilk -- which brushes over significant differences. He waves away Truman's conservative tendencies as politically expedient rhetoric, when Truman probably believed in them. He sees John F. Kennedy as confused, but the confusion is partly Scoblic's; JFK doesn't neatly fit into his liberal/conservative matrix.

Scoblic doesn't address the age-old, now-vital question of whether and how moral factors should enter into foreign policy. He draws a distinction between policies that are "moral" (good) and "moralist" (bad), but he never clearly defines the terms. Instead, he devotes his final chapter to the danger of nuclear proliferation -- an issue both narrower and broader than the rest of the book's scope -- and then fails to offer a solution, except to say that negotiating to prevent nuclear war should take precedence over violent regime change. I closed this otherwise satisfying book, thinking, "OK, but then what?"

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
The threat of nuclear attack is too critical and present to be held prisoner to political ideology, asserts Scoblic, executive editor of the New Republic. Yet the Bush administration’s belief in the moral virtue of the U.S. and the contrasting evil of its geopolitical enemies has distorted foreign policy, leading to a unilateral war on Iraq and shunning diplomatic approaches to the nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea. Scoblic traces the administration’s foreign policy to a long tradition of an “us versus them” perspective on the world, based on American exceptionalism rooted in the founding of the nation. In the first half of his book, Scoblic analyzes that history, tracing conservative ideology espoused by William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan and how it has evolved into the Bush administration. In the second half, Scoblic explores the consequences of the unilateral worldview that has heightened the need for diplomacy in the post-9/11 world. Scoblic’s analysis is sweeping in scope and is both detailed and accessible in explaining the complexities of the nuclear threat and foreign policy. --Vanessa Bush

Customer Reviews

A National Treasure
Peter Scoblic, foreign policy expert, historian, journalist and editor, reveals the mystery of the thinking that has driven U.S. foreign policy. This book is at once highly intellectual and thoroughly entertaining, regardless of where, if anywhere, one falls along the spectrum of liberal to conservative leanings.

Scoblic shows us how human nature causes even the political elite to gravitate to a state of moral clarity. Everything is easier once you achieve moral clarity and it provides a very saleable message, getting results in elections. It divides the world into "us" and "them", which would be fine if we didn't have to deal with "them".

The problem is that more than ever, the U.S. has to deal with other countries all over the world, especially because of economic interdependence and the fact that some of them have weapons of mass destruction. In this sense, the human nature to define what is not well understood into clear issues of good and evil is a liability. Thus, there is a need for professional diplomacy and politicians that work well with this function.

Scoblic traces American diplomacy's tug of war between the intellect and the hardwired brain from the beginning of what he calls the conservative movement to what he calls it's culmination in the Bush administration. What is so amazing about Scoblic is his ability to understand America as both an insider and also as an observer. And this is the gift that he gives us in U.S. vs THEM.

After reading Scoblic, you will be able to understand why apolitical intelligence has been distrusted at the highest levels of U.S. government. This is one of the biggest mysteries of our time.

More than that, I think readers will be able to apply some of these principles to our own lives. That is what great scholars can do for us, and I count Scoblic as one of the best. Hopefully, he will one day come out with a documentary.

Brilliant
Scoblic's book is exactly the sort of well researched, intelligent exploration of the Bush administration's foreign policy that I have been looking for. I have always known that there is something seriously flawed about Bush's foreign policy, and the conservative approach in general (it was Reagan's talking with the Soviets as much as his spending the ended the Cold War)- but didn't have the facts to back it up. Now I do.

Not only does the overall concept of this book original and insightful, but Scoblic manages to avoid the trap of too many politically oriented books- he does not veer randomly into tabloid style right wing bashing while simply sprinkling his book with facts. The book sticks coherently to it's main message and backs up its ideas strongly.

Finally- the book is written with a slight fictional flare- the opening line in: "This book is about a mystery." This style, applied delicately as it is, helps to move the reader through the detailed and at times complex themes and arguments, making US VS THEM, a seriously important book, not only informative, but entertaining and engaging.

I read in one review something along the lines of "if you have to read on book before the upcoming elections, make it this one." I couldn't agree more. No matter what happens in November, the Republicans have tapped into something in the American Psyche so that, no matter how badly they screw things up and are caught in scandals, they are still never far from power. Their overall policies and strategies aren't going to change dramatically. US VS THEM gives invaluable insight into why, whether you are on the left or right, the Republicans have to change their foreign policy or American will be in even more trouble than it is now.

Outstanding work!
This book is a must read for anyone under fifty who wants to understand the conservative movement better. Don't be misled by the reviews. This is a book written from a liberal perspective so liberals will love it and conservatives will rate it without reading it.

I recommend it particularly for readers under fifty - those of us who came of age after the Sixties -- because the book filled in a lot of gaps for me. It explained the significance of conservatives such as William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. These personalities were already conservative icons by the time that I started following politics.

The book also explained the rise of the neo-conservative movement. The author takes a sobering look at how dangerous the conservative world-view can be.

Any book that reminds readers that conservatives such as George Will once accused Ronald Reagan of appeasement for negotiating with the Soviet Union will not appeal to the Right. However, the book is a good read for the times when the Left has an opportunity to make the world a safer place through diplomacy.