2023 Summer Recommended Reading with Brigadier General Chad T. Manske, USAF (Ret.) Continues with a focus on Military History. Brigadier General Manske was the former Commandant of National War College, is a prolific reader, author and publisher of dozens of book reviews and articles, and is the Special Advisor to the NDU Foundation CEO (https://ndufoundation.org/bio/staff/manske_chad).
Transitions from one US presidential administration to another have been a mixed bag of both smooth and difficult, yet the one from Bush #43 to Obama is arguably the smoothest ever. Why? Because both endeavored to make it so. Bush’s legacy is often tarnished by the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 on grounds of WMD that never materialized. Despite that, the rest of his presidency and how his team smoothly handed off to the Obama team left our country in a great position. This newly-released volume containing many declassified memos details the policies and memoranda from myriad foreign policy and national security topics ranging from China, Russia, the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, climate, economy, pandemics and the like. The key cabinet players and their decisions from presidential guidance show how these issues were handled and use the benefit of hindsight to grade how they performed in a critical way now that a dozen or so years have passed. The Bush Administration codified many of the transitional practices for future Administrations as a way of strengthening American democracy for successive administrations. Very comprehensive in its review and scope, containing the original memos and documents, this volume will be studied for years by historians and presidential scholars alike.
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Brigadier General, USAF (Retired) Chad Manske was the former Commandant of National War College, is a prolific reader, author and publisher of dozens of book reviews and articles, and is the Special Advisor to the NDU Foundation CEO (https://ndufoundation.org/bio/staff/manske_chad).