The Csis Podcast

In this episode, former United States National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley joins the podcast to discuss his new book, “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama.” Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama. In a postscript to each memorandum, these same experts now in hindsight take a remarkably self-critical look at that Bush foreign policy legacy after more than a dozen years of watching subsequent administrations attempt to deal with the same vexing agenda of threats and opportunities— China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, proliferation, cyber, pandemics, and clima