Obama's Daunting International Agenda

Gary J. Bass ’92, Ph.D. ’98, associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, calls The Inheritance, by David E. Sanger ’82, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, a “withering indictment” of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, which, Sanger writes, “has left us less admired by our allies, less feared by our enemies and less capable of convincing the rest of the world that our economic and political model is worthy of emulation.” Bass’s review appears in the Times today.

Sanger, Bass writes, “drops the strict detachment of a daily reporter and lets rip.…These unvarnished conclusions by Mr. Sanger will of course confirm the perfidy that Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly presume lies in the black hearts of Times reporters. But Mr. Sanger’s criticism, the product of extraordinarily diligent reporting, is too hawkish to be easily dismissed by conservatives. He believes in putting brute military power behind diplomacy, wants to win the war in Afghanistan and hates the thought of a nuclear-armed Iran and North Korea.” Hence the book’s subtitle: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.

Parts of Sanger’s reporting for the book have also appeared in the newspaper. His page-one story on covert efforts to hinder Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons—after the United States rejected Israel’s request for assistance in bombing nuclear facilities there—was published on Sunday, January 11. And that day’s New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt on the threat of jihadists in Pakistan gaining control of that nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Much earlier in his career, during his senior year, Sanger served as the “Undergraduate” columnist for Harvard Magazine.