In the tradition.

In Defense of the Bush Doctrine, by Robert G. Kaufman (Kentucky, 264 pp., $35)

WHEN he was elected president in 2000, George W. Bush gave every indication that he, like his father before him, was a conventional "realist" in foreign affairs: committed to a grand strategy of selective engagement, and critical of the open-ended nature of the Clinton doctrine and its indiscriminate use of military force in instances not involving vital national interests. In his speeches, Bush stressed foreign-policy retrenchment and military "transformation" in preparation for the emergence of a future large peer competitor in the vein of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Neither Bush nor his advisers, most notably national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell, spoke of spreading democracy throughout the world.

Then came 9/11. To the surprise of almost everyone, the president abandoned his realism and embraced an approach to foreign affairs that seems to be nothing short of revolutionary. The seeds of the "Bush Doctrine" were sown in a speech he delivered on September 20, 2001, only nine days after the attacks; the ideas were then refined and elaborated in subsequent speeches.

To say that the Bush Doctrine has been criticized is an understatement. It has been an object of scorn across the political spectrum, blamed for everything from the Iraq War to anti-Americanism in Europe. But now Robert Kaufman, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, has stepped into the breach to defend the Bush Doctrine--and to defend it quite ably. In this excellent new book, Kaufman describes the Bush approach to foreign policy as the latest example of what he calls "moral democratic realism," an approach he attributes to FDR, Truman, and Reagan as well.

According to Kaufman, the Bush Doctrine is based on two main pillars. The first is that the events of 9/11 demonstrate that the traditional approaches to threats--deterrence, containment, and ex post facto responses--are inadequate when dealing with terrorists and rogue regimes seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This means that it is prudent to reserve the right to use force preemptively rather than reactively.

The second pillar is the judgment that the "root cause" of 9/11 and similar aggression is (in Kaufman's paraphrase of Bush) "the culture of tyranny in the Middle East, which spawns fanatical, aggressive, secular and religious despotisms." The remedy for this is democratic regime change.

The first part of the book is devoted to thoughtful and detailed critiques of the foreign-policy approaches of Bush's critics: isolationism, classical realism, neorealism or "structural" realism, and liberal multilateralism. Kaufman argues that the isolationists largely misunderstand the intentions of the Founders--and that they are just plain wrong in claiming that isolationism is the default position of the U.S. when it comes to foreign affairs.

He is supported in this contention by a number of recent books. For instance, Max Boot has shown in The Savage Wars of Peace that, from the beginning of the Republic, Americans never shied away from the use of military power. In Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, John Lewis Gaddis showed that the statesmen of the early Republic, usually portrayed as desirous of avoiding foreign entanglements, were more than willing to engage in preventive war to defeat a threat before it became imminent. In his indispensable Special Providence, Walter Russell Mead identified four American "schools of foreign policy," some more interventionist than others, that have vied for dominance. And finally, in Dangerous Nation, Robert Kagan has driven a stake through the heart of the "pervasive myth of America as isolationist and passive until provoked."

Kaufman's critiques of classical and structural realism are also on the mark. For the realist, the state is the only important actor in the international arena and relative power the only meaningful goal. Classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger, and Brent Scowcroft hold stability and order in the international arena to be the highest value. Kaufman contends--persuasively--that this leads them toward a moral relativism that, as in the case of E. H. Carr before World War II, makes them "obtuse to the malignity and gravity of threats" to liberal democracies. Classical realists were at the forefront of those who criticized Reagan's reference to the Soviet Union as the "evil empire." For classical realists, such ideological language is an example of the "crusading spirit" that must be avoided at all times in the interest of peace and stability. Fortunately, Reagan ignored the advice of Scowcroft et al., and won the Cold War.

Most "structural realists"--also called neorealists--are to be found in the academy. They believe that the competitive character of international politics arises from the structure of the international political system (IPS)--which is to say, international anarchy. For the neorealists, the type of regime is unimportant: In the IPS, the actions of the United States are no different from those of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. This means, of course, that neorealists also reject the idea of the "democratic peace," which holds that stable liberal democracies do not fight one another.

In addition to illustrating the problems for neorealists arising from the same sort of moral equivalence that afflicts the classical realists, Kaufman demonstrates that the track record of neorealists when it comes to predicting outcomes is pretty dismal. Indeed, "the actual historical record demonstrates the opposite of what neorealism claims": Neorealists were caught flat-footed when the Soviet Union collapsed, their predictions about the post-Cold War future of Europe were wrong, and the dire consequences of the Bush Doctrine that realists have predicted have not come to pass (e.g., there has been no anti-hegemonic balancing, even of the "soft" variety). This suggests a serious intellectual weakness in the realist practice of dismissing the "regime question." In fact, not all states and statesmen behave essentially alike. As Kaufman observes, "regime type, ideology, and the propensities of individual leaders account for substantial variations in how states not only define their interests but pursue them."

Neorealism's main academic challenger is what Kaufman calls liberal multilateralism. Liberal multilateralists believe that the actors in the IPS can cooperate as well as compete. They contend that the goals of actors within the IPS transcend power and security; they also see an important role for actors in the IPS other than states, including international institutions such as the U.N. But, according to Kaufman, "liberal internationalists make the opposite mistake of realists by overestimating the influence of soft power, the effectiveness of international institutions, and the likelihood of even stable, liberal democracies generating a consensus on the need for undertaking strong, effective action against major threats."

According to Kaufman, the Bush Doctrine is well within the mainstream of a rich, deep tradition of American foreign policy. This "moral democratic realism" is based on two fundamental premises. The first is that the goal of U.S. foreign policy, a purpose that has remained fixed since the Founding, is "to assure the integrity and vitality of a free society"--a society founded on the dignity of the individual.

The second premise is the cardinal virtue of prudence. Aristotle described prudence as deliberating well about those things that can be other than they are (i.e., means, as opposed to ends). According to Aristotle, prudence is the virtue most characteristic of the statesman. In foreign affairs, prudence requires the statesman to adapt universal principles to particular circumstances in order to arrive at the means that are best.

Is In Defense of the Bush Doctrine a "neoconservative" manifesto? Critics of Kaufman no doubt will claim that it is. After all, according to Francis Fukuyama, neoconservatives believe (as does Kaufman) that "the internal character of regimes matters," that "foreign policy must reflect the deepest values of liberal democratic societies," and that there are certain problems in the world that can be addressed "only through the prudent exercise of [American] power." But Kaufman argues that while there are similarities between moral democratic realism and neoconservative foreign policy --primarily the "higher realism" that understands that the spread of stable, liberal democracies is in the U.S. national interest--the former "imposes tighter geopolitical limits on the use of American power to promote democracy." Prudence is critical. Like Thucydides, Bush understands that the security of a state is enhanced when it is surrounded by others that share its principles and interests. But, as Kaufman shows, while the content of U.S. foreign policy is important, we cannot ignore the role of prudence.

Will the Bush Doctrine succeed? Kaufman is guardedly optimistic. But we need to understand that adherence to a particular theory is not in itself a guarantee of success. In the recent past, U.S. foreign policy has been informed by realism (Nixon) and liberal multilateralism (Carter), and both failed. The Bush Doctrine too will fail, if it is not applied with prudence and blessed with a certain amount of good fortune.

Mr. Owens is a NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE contributing editor and professor of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.