As the United States has gone through another presidential transition in the aftermath of the 2024 election, Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama is a timely book that details the transition from the administration of President George W. Bush to that of President Barack Obama. It offers insight into the recent transition between the administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump and the documents and foreign policy advice that the Biden administration passed to the Trump transition team.
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Review Essay 122
Stephen J. Hadley, Peter D. Feaver, William C. Inboden, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, eds. Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama. Brookings Institution Press, 2023. ISBN: 9780815739777.
Review by Mohammad Ebad Athar, Syracuse University
13 May 2025 | PDF: http://issforum.org/to/RE122 | Website: rjissf.org | X: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Daniel R. Hart
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Katie A. Ryan
As the United States has gone through another presidential transition in the aftermath of the 2024 election, Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama is a timely book that details the transition from the administration of President George W. Bush to that of President Barack Obama. It offers insight into the recent transition between the administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump and the documents and foreign policy advice that the Biden administration passed to the Trump transition team.
Hand-Off has an impressive scope and provides a comprehensive overview of the Bush administration’s foreign policy from more well-known episodes like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to lesser-known areas like the administration’s policy toward Africa. In total, the book contains thirty of the forty once classified transition memoranda that are here published in their entirety across the first 29 chapters. Each memorandum is followed by a postscript written by members of the NSC reflecting on the policies they helped implement, which provides a lens into the foreign policy views of the National Security Council (NSC). Key members of this team like Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security advisor from 2005–2009, and Meghan O’Sullivan, the administration’s deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, provide commentaries on, as well as their rationales and analyses of, the policies on which they advised the president. In addition, these postscripts assess the continuities and discontinuities between the foreign policies of the Obama and Trump administrations. Agreeing with the assessments of Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who provide the foreword and preface to the book respectively, they collectively argue that there remains much continuity in foreign policy from administration to administration, and that this especially holds true when examining the foreign policy of Bush’s successors.
The various authors and editors of Hand-Off acknowledge that they are not objective commentators on the policies that they had a hand in implementing. The last three chapters of the book contain essays by Melvyn Leffler, Hal Brands, and Martha Joynt Kumar that provide scholarly perspectives and analysis of the Bush administration’s foreign policy and transition. In his assessment of the transition memoranda, Leffler emphasizes the great value of the “collection in telling us the history of Bush administration’s foreign policies,” but he also notes the limitations of the book, especially its postscripts.[1] Although they engage in some self-criticism and are reflective to an extent, Leffler is correct when he asserts that “one cannot help but note how often Hadley and his assistants judge themselves to have done a better job than their successors in the Obama and Trump administrations (636). For example, in her postscript on the 2007 surge in US troops in Iraq, while Meghan O’Sullivan notes that it “temporarily stabilized the country” and made US success in Iraq “far from certain,” she also argues that the surge created a “dramatic improvement in security that offered real opportunities for progress and the ultimate stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq” (157).[2] In this assessment, O’Sullivan downplays the extreme human cost paid largely by Iraqis as the US significantly increased its troop presence in 2006. As other commentators have argued, the surge did not set the stage for a more stable Iraq and only exacerbated the growing insurgency against the US occupation forces.[3]
Leffler’s other critiques of the memoranda are also worth mentioning. He observes how even though Bush was committed to the ideals of democracy, freedom, and human rights outlined in his Freedom Agenda, his administration’s conduct throughout the Global War on Terror “undercut and often made a mockery of its self-proclaimed Freedom Agenda” (650). As Leffler points out, the transition memoranda and postscripts do not address the administration’s use of “extraterritorial rendition, secret prisons, torture” at Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) black sites around the globe, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, or the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (650). Hadley attempts to defend these policies by stating they were “determined to be lawful by the Justice Department,” which were later outlawed by Obama.[4] Although they recognized that these policies made “many good and loyal Americans uncomfortable,” the Bush administration “believed it was a price worth paying to keep the nation safe” (32). Lastly, Leffler makes the salient point that the transition memoranda and their associated postscripts do not challenge the assumptions made for key policy decisions. For example, in its nonproliferation policy, the memoranda tell a story of an administration deathly afraid that terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were working to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) like nuclear weapons. Leffler questions this by asking whether it was a realistic possibility that Al-Qaeda could acquire nuclear weapons given the extreme pressure that the Bush administration was applying to Al-Qaeda through military force and financial sanctions. As Leffler argues, we must question the assumptions of Bush and the NSC, who routinely acted on faulty intelligence in making consequential foreign policy decisions (655-657).
In his analysis of the transition memoranda and postscripts, Hal Brands largely agrees with the critiques advanced by Leffler. He notes how the transition memoranda were largely silent on the decision to invade Iraq and on controversial surveillance and torture policies. Brands offers a persuasive assessment of Bush’s Afghanistan policy: “the fact that securing America’s critical aims in Afghanistan seemed to require producing some degree of lasting stability, but achieving that lasting stability seemed to require a commitment of resources beyond what the country—under any president—was willing to bear” (661).[5] This analysis is tangentially acknowledged by O’Sullivan and Paul D. Miller. Although they acknowledge that the US was unwilling to commit to a full state building project in Afghanistan, they dispute the idea that the American presence in Afghanistan was as an occupying force (124).[6] Yet, the memoranda on Afghanistan challenge that argument where it becomes clear that the US saw economic development in the country through a security lens. In other words, the Bush administration was primarily focused on defeating the insurgency to improve the security situation and thought about economic development as secondary (121). Brands is also correct in arguing for the continuity from Bush to Obama when it came to counterterrorism policies. For example, the controversial Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program developed under Obama borrowed directly from Bush’s Countering Violent Islamic Extremism (CVIE), something which the memorandum on The War of Ideas states.[7] However, Brands’ assertion that “when it came to laying the foundations of a long struggle against violent extremism, Bush succeeded more than he failed,” is more problematic (667). The counterterrorism policies and rhetoric about violent extremism overseen by Bush were extremely detrimental for Muslims and other BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities during his tenure. Mass surveillance and detention sweeps influenced by the Alien Absconder Initiative and the National Entry and Exit Registration System devastated South Asian communities in Brooklyn and led to detention of torture of hundreds of Muslim men.[8] Moreover, the Bush Administration established dangerous precedents that influenced both the Obama administration’s targeting of Muslim communities through CVE and the openly Islamophobic policies of the Trump administration such as the Muslim Travel Ban.[9]
Martha Joynt Kumar places the Bush transition memoranda in their historical context. Working with interviews from Hadley and other co-producers of the larger book, Kumar’s analysis is less about the arguments presented and more about the nuts and bolts of how presidential transitions work. She then compares the 2009 presidential transition to the transitions of 2016 and 2020. Kumar argues that the Bush administration excelled in its transition to Obama given the context of the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When compared to the precarity and disorder of the 2016 and 2020 elections, Kumar observes, the “Bush transition was the most successful in modern times.”[10]
The other recurring theme that can be gleaned from the book is the influence of great power politics in the Bush administration’s foreign policy decision-making process. Take for example its policy toward Pakistan. Although the associated memorandum claims that “our engagement with Pakistan was designed to lead it back toward a democratic path,” a claim also made about Iraq and Afghanistan, the contents of the memorandum illustrate quite the opposite.[11] Historically, the engagement of the US with Pakistan was heavily influenced by great power politics in the Cold War period. Pakistan was viewed as strategic ally and one of several strategic bulwarks against communism in Asia.[12] This contributed to US support of military dictatorships in Pakistan. During the post 9/11 Global War on Terror, similar thinking dominated the Bush administration’s view of Pakistan, which once again became an important staging area for US operations in Afghanistan and an important partner in the White House’s global counterterrorism policies. Much of the memoranda on Pakistan discuss cooperation with President Pervez Musharraf’s military regime in counterterrorism operations and the protection of Pakistan’s nuclear program from terrorists. The postscript doubles down on the importance of the US security relationship with Pakistan but fails to acknowledge how this relationship continued to give the Pakistani military and its intelligence service the power to dominate Pakistani politics and society.
As Osamah Khalil argues, US foreign policy thinking was dominated by what it perceived as a world of enemies, and these views dominated Bush’s foreign policy as seen with China and Russia.[13] Hand-Off’s transition memorandum on China outline a policy of checking what the Bush administration perceived as Chinese aggression. This involved building security and trade relationships with regional allies and partners “that would reinforce the role of the United States as a Pacific power” and “hedge against the emergence of a more aggressive China.”[14] The Bush White House, like its successors, became obsessively concerned about China’s modernizing military and its growing nuclear capabilities. Missing from the associated postscript, however, is any reflection of exactly why China was pushing against US power in the region. The memoranda on Russia tells a similar story. Although the Bush administration attempted cooperation with Russia regarding nuclear nonproliferation and combatting international terrorism, it acknowledges how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) expansion into Ukraine led to tension with Russia. The postscripts argue that the Bush administration was reacting to increased Russian aggression rather than influencing it. This argument, the postscript contends, is validated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, the NSC failed to question how NATO expansion and the expansion of missile defense systems in Europe contributed to Russia’s more aggressive actions.[15]
There is much in this book that will appeal to a variety of audiences. Historians and other scholars will find the memoranda especially informative on the wide breath of Bush era foreign policy and in ascertaining the assumptions that went into the White House’s foreign policy decision making. In addition, the book’s partnership with the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas is especially valuable in that all thirty of the transition memoranda contained in this book have been digitized and made available to the public, alongside ten others not contained within the volume. Members of the public health and policy community will find the chapters on combating endemic diseases particularly interesting. Future research on the Bush administration’s foreign policy will immensely benefit from this collection. Furthermore, policymakers can learn much from Hand-Off. Though it lacks important critical reflections at key moments, policymakers reading the volume can take heed of the assumptions made in the articulation and implementation of foreign policy and learn from the subsequent mistakes as well.
Mohammad Ebad Athar is a PhD candidate in Distory at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a graduate fellow at the Lender Center for Social Justice. His dissertation examines the global impact of the post-9/11 period for the South Asian diaspora in the United States and the Persian Gulf. In drawing connections between these regions, he illustrates how South Asian identity has been securitized across transnational borders and how the community’s advocacy and activism has resisted that framework.
[1] Melvyn Leffler, “An Illuminating Hand-Off,” in Stephen J. Hadley, Peter D. Feaver, William C. Inboden, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, eds., Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama (Brookings Institution Press, 2023): 635-657, here 636.
[2] O’Sullivan, “Iraq,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 157-182, here 156.
[3] Danny Sjursen, “I Was Part of the Iraq War Surge. It Was a Disaster,” The Nation, 9 March 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/i-was-part-of-the-iraq-war-surge-it-was-an-utter-disaster/; Steven Simon, “The Price of the Surge: How US Strategy is Hastening Iraq’s Demise,” Foreign Affairs, 3 May 2008, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iraq/2008-05-03/price-surge.
[4] Hadley, “Introduction,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 31-34, here, 32.
[5] Hal Brands, “Reassessing Bush’s Legacy: What the Transition Memoranda Do (and Don’t) Reveal,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 658-675, here 661.
[6] O’Sullivan, Paul Miller, and Douglas Lute, “Afghanistan,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 115-134.
[7] Farah Pandith, “The War of Ideas,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 87-108.
[8] Maha Hilal, Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 (Broadleaf Books, 2021); Sunaina Maira, “Citizenship, Dissent, Empire: South Asian Muslim Immigrant Youth,” in Katherine Pratt Ewing, ed., Being and Belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11 (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008); Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2011).
[9] Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States, The White House, August 2011, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/empowering_local_partners.pdf; Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States, Executive Order 13769, The White House, 27 January 2017, The National Archives, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states.
[10] Martha Joynt Kumar, “Transferring Presidential Power in a Post-9/11 World,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 676-697, here, 676-677.
[11] Mark Webber, “Pakistan,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 135-156, here 139.
[12] Usama Butt and Julian Schofield, Pakistan: The US, Geopolitics and Grand Strategies (Pluto Press, 2012); Husain Haqqani, Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding (Public Affairs, 2013); Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan 1947–2000: Disenchanted Allies (John Hopkins University Press, 2001).
[13] Osamah Khalil, A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden (Harvard University Press, 2024), 2-4.
[14] Paul Haenke, Michael Green, and Faryar Shirzad, “China,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 416-444, here 417.
[15] Thomas Graham, “Russia,” in Hadley et al., Hand-Off: 408-415.