Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama

Stephen J. Hadley served for four years as the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 2005 to 2009. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Hadley was the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, serving under then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. He resides in Washington, D.C.Peter D. Feaver served as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House from 2005 to 2007. He is currently a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University. He resides in Durham, North Carolina.William Inboden served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council Staff and also on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. He is currently the Executive Director of the Clements Center for National Security and associate professor at the LBJ Policy School, both at the University of Texas, Austin.Meghan L. O’Sullivan was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2007. She is currently the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and the Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

[A] tour d’horizon of the international challenges that awaited Mr. Obama and his team in January 2009…. As enlightening as the memos are, however, they also underscore that major challenges on the international stage are rarely solved for good, but instead are bequeathed from one administration to another, even in evolved form. So too are the successes and failures.