Churchill, Not Quite

In the September/October issue of The National Interest, Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes note President Bush’s admiration for Winston Churchill and suggest that the President might ask himself: What would Churchill do facing a grave threat to his society and way of life?

On the one hand, they applaud the President’s recent performance at the St. Petersburg G8 Summit and the important steps Presidents Bush and Putin took there in addressing what both agree is the single largest threat not only to their nations but globally: nuclear terrorism. They note, “The significance of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism lies not only in its substance but in Russia’s visible joint ownership of the Initiative.” 

On the other hand, they fault the Bush administration for failing to establish priorities in America’s response to the grave threats it faces today. They argue, “An American Churchill confronting a threat of such monumental proportions would make defeating this challenge the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy.”

Link to article in The National Interest