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

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.

Stephen J. Hadley served for four years as the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Hadley was the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, serving under then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Peter D. Feaver served as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House from 2005 to 2007. He is currently a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University.

William Inboden served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council Staff and also on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He is currently the Executive Director of the Clements Center for National Security and associate professor at the LBJ Policy School, both at the University of Texas, Austin.

Meghan L. O’Sullivan was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. She is currently the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and the Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

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