BOOK REVIEWS | 531

especially, had a host of troubles with the ultra right. Bush called them nuts
(p. 30). From Howard Phillips of Conservative Cause, to Richard Viguerie, to
Paul Weyrich, to Bob Jones and Jerry Falwell in the religious right, and to Jack
Kemp, the antitax crusader in the Republican Party itself, a stream of verbal
attacks targeted the administration, and Bush especially. Untermeyer observes
with amusement how Reagans later proposal for a tax increase goes unnoticed
by soidisant conservatives today.
In the books Afterword, Untermeyer tells us why things went right. He
simply assumes that they did go right. We hear nothing from Untermeyer about
massive federal deficits under Reagan or of IranContra, no more than we hear
today about them from zealous conservatives. The factors that the author posits
as the ingredients of success amount to this tidy list; optimism; clarity of
purpose; boldness; humor; willingness to work across the aisle; willingness to compromise; a belief in competence; and modesty. It more approximates the Boy Scout Code than it does a policy guideline. But even though
the book in its conclusion elides politics and policy, it leaves us with a useful
lesson. Untermeyer at the beginning of his journalistic record describes himself
as a conservative Republican politician from Texas. He has nonetheless a
profound appreciation for public service and finds a joy in doing the good
work of government. Throughout, he conveys the sense of awe and privilege
(p. 10) that he finds in the routines of his office. How welcome are these
thoughts amid the incessant antistatist screeds that propel todays Republican
Party. And Untermeyer knows that government is the art of the possible. He
has no truck for the uncompromising, ideological purists he sees in both parties
today.
J. DAVID HOEVELER
University of WisconsinMilwaukee

US Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era: Restraint versus

Assertiveness from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama by Tudor
Onea. New York, Palgrave, 2013. 251 pp. $100.00.
For students of American foreign policy, the Cold War provides a pretty big
conundrum. For one thing, it was the first time the United States committed to
playing a permanent global leadership role. For another, Americas Cold War
strategy was grounded in a conceptually sound doctrine: containment. And
even though containment was never as accepted (by the public or policymakers)
or unified (as a coherent strategy) as it appears in retrospect, at least it was
something. Indeed, for 45 years, containment offered an intellectual blueprint
though which the broad strokes of Americas military, economic, and cultural

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(soft power) strategies could be developedthrough the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization, Bretton Woods, and the spread of liberaldemocratic ideas.
Then the Cold War ended. And ever sincebrief euphoria over Francis
Fukuyamas End of History notwithstandingthe United States has been left
wandering in search of a grand (or, really, any) strategy.
In US Foreign Policy in the PostCold War Era: Restraint versus Assertiveness from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama, Tudor Onea does not seek to
explain Americas lack of a postCold War grand strategy. Nor, thankfully, does
he endeavor to create one. Instead, the puzzle Onea sets up is far more limited:
why America has been so assertive in the postCold War world, rather than
just kicking back and enjoying the fruits of its dominant, unipolar global
position. Oneas cases of assertiveness are the familiar ones from the late
1990s and 2000sKosovo, Iraq (under both Bill Clinton and George Bush,
Jr.), and general unilateralismwhich, he says, followed Americas brief (and
unsuccessful) fling with restraint in the early to mid 1990s.
Onea posits that Americas apparently unusual behavior (I will get back to
that) can be explained by looking at Washingtons reaction to real and symbolic
threats to its global prestige, with prestige defined as deference that the
United States demands from other states because of its systemic dominance
(p. 3). This, he argues, supplies a stronger explanation for Americas assertiveness than alternatives like structural realism, domestic ideology (American
exceptionalism), and open door economic revisionism.
Setting the book up this way is interesting, and effective. And I particularly
liked Oneas discussion of the continuum of Americas strategic options from
isolation (pure restraint) to hegemony (pure assertiveness) (pp. 78). His cases,
and his analysis of the Barack Obama administration, are well informed.
The problem, though, is that the concept of prestige does not do well as an
allencompassing explanation for Americas behavior in the 1990s (or elsewhere). One does not need to be a hardcore structural realist to recognize that
the United States had the greatest stake in the postCold War unipolar system;
and that the United States would probably respond to challenges (big and
small, real and symbolic) to the postCold War status quo. As Onea himself
asserts, the restraint of the early to mid 1990s was met with increasing
challenges to American power and authority. While concern over prestige
may have played a role in its responses, it remains unclear how this would not be
mostly epiphenomenal to Americas general sense of need to get its bearings
back as the sole superpower in the global system. And whether the narrow
concept prestige accounts for the precise nature of U.S. responses is simply too
thin a slice to confidently test.
I should also note that Oneas policy prescriptiona smarter policy of
prestige, to avoid counterproductive overreactionswould probably sell well to

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the Obama administration (they like putting the word smart in front of their
initiatives), but does little to practically solve the challenge of knowing the
precise metric of response (as if there is one) in uncertain moments of challenge,
large and small.
Oneas book is in keeping with a growing trend of explanations for Americas
cycles of global engagement and retrenchment, including Stephen Sestanovichs Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama. Though
prestige is not the mostconvincing explanation for these cycles, or even for
the morefocused question of why America developed an assertive foreign
policy in the postCold War era, it is no doubt part of the mix.
STUART GOTTLIEB
Columbia University

Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence

after 9/11 by Michael Allen. Washington, DC, Potomac Books,
2013. 256 pp. $29.95.
Three different narratives have emerged in the literature on the reform and
operation of the American intelligence community after September 11. One
approaches the subject from a civic education perspective in which the dominant concern is the extent to which policymakers responses and the reforms
put forward succeeded in raising the awareness of Americans to the terrorist
threat and reassuring them that the system was responding effectively. The
second approaches the reforms put forward and those implemented from
organization theory and bureaucratic perspectives that seek to assess the merits
of these proposals. The third takes as its point of departure the politics of the
response. Michael Allens book falls squarely into this third narrative, although
as part of his account of the politics of September 11 intelligence reform, he does
present the outlines of the core issues raised in the second narrative.
Allens stated purpose is to provide readers with a definitive history of the
legislative process by which the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act (IRTPA) became law (p. xvi). He is well positioned to do so.
having served as a majority staff director of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence and as the legislative affairs officer for the Homeland Security Council in the White House in 2004. In this latter capacity, he
was the legislative representative for the workinglevel team that put together
the George W. Bush administrations response to the recommendations made
in the 9/11 Commission Report.
While Allen is not the first to have delved into Congressintelligence community relations, his detailed analysis provides us with insights into this
relationship that are absent or underdeveloped in other accounts. For example,

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