About “The Transition”
How “The Transition” project came to be…
In the Spring of 2022, the SMU Center for Presidential History seized a unique opportunity. Former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had gathered a team of former national security officials from the George W. Bush administration to publish a book, Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama. This book would feature about two dozen memos written by Bush national security officials, each to be handed off to their successor in the incoming Obama administration. The book would also feature reflections by Hadley and some of his Bush administration colleagues, including co-editors Peter Feaver, William Inboden, and Meghan O’Sullivan.
However, the book could not feature everything. In fact, the Bush team produced forty memos, and hundreds of attached documents, many of which remained classified…until now. This website features for the first time, all publicly-available, declassified documents associated with these National Security Council memos from the Bush-Obama transition.
The Team who Created “The Transition”
Brian Franklin, Project Coordinator
Associate Director
SMU Center for Presidential History
Benjamin Feinstein, Research & Editor
Undergraduate Research Assistant
SMU
Trevor Gicheru, Website Designer
Undergraduate Research Assistant
SMU
Petros Rosenbaum, Research & Editor
Undergraduate Research Assistant
SMU
The Book
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 climate change—an agenda that still dominates America’s national security and foreign policy.
Hand-Off will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, policy analysts, and general readers seeking to understand afresh the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly in view of the records of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
Reviews of Hand-Off
An impressive contribution to Applied History that shows the Bush administration learning from history to help subsequent administrations build on their success and learn from their failures.
~ Graham Allison, Harvard Kennedy School
Stephen Hadley always has been and remains a thoughtful and candid public servant, one who puts his country’s national interest on the very highest shelf. Above all, he understands well what philosopher George Santayana meant when he said: “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” This Hadley-edited book, Hand-Off, is a frank examination of the eight years of foreign policy of President George W. Bush, whom Steve served for four years as National Security Advisor and four years as Deputy National Security Advisor. An honest critique of both the strengths and weaknesses of that administration during a critical time in U.S. history, Hand-Off is a must read for anyone who wants a good understanding of how foreign policy was formulated and implemented under President Bush.
~James A. Baker, 61st U.S. Secretary of State
Reading this book is a rare privilege to understand the navigator’s choices when charts are unclear and pathways forward are critical.
~ John J. Hamre, President and CEO, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense
Presidential transitions are fraught with risk, particularly when thousands of Americans are in harm’s way as one administration passes the baton to the next. This volume provides invaluable insights as to how the Bush administration prepared to hand off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention persistent terrorist threats and other brewing crises) to the Obama administration. Whether one is a fan or critic of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, there is much to be learned from these newly declassified materials and many lessons to be applied to reduce national security risks in future presidential transitions.
~ Michèle Flournoy, Cofounder and Managing Partner, WestExec Advisors, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
These national security transition memoranda, attachments, and, perhaps most importantly, the postscripts, constitute an invaluable resource for policy makers and historians. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a veteran of two White Houses, I particularly appreciate how helpful these materials will be in ensuring future transitions serve the country well from a national security point of view.
Rob Portman, U.S. Senator, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, former U.S. Trade Representative
This is a brilliant, powerful work of transparency. Serious people writing about declassified Top Secret and Secret transition memos that many of them had a hand in writing. I have covered nine presidential transitions going back to Nixon-Ford in 1974. Transitions are among the most dangerous times for our nation. Witness Trump-Biden and the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. These memos tell us a lot about the foreign policy Bush passed to Obama, what came after, and what stabilizing and timeless lessons can be learned.
~ Bob Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post, co-winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, fifteen time #1 New York Times bestseller
Headlines and spin come and go, but history and substance endure—a great truth amply illuminated by this landmark book. Historians and citizens alike will benefit enormously from this unusual offering of real-time memoranda and retrospective analysis. The result is an essential contribution to the literature not only of the American presidency, but of democracy itself.
~ Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian