Strategy for the Next American President: An Interview with Ivo Daalder and Bruce Jentleson

Today, the Center for a New American Security releases a report, "Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy," that sketches the broad outlines of a recommended U.S. national security strategy for the next president of the United States. The centrist but Democratic-leaning CNAS, founded by two former senior staffers of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has existed for a little more than a year. But the report grew out of a project known as the Phoenix Initiative, which according to CNAS began three years ago as a collective effort of a number of U.S. foreign policy experts to develop a policy-focused framework for "advancing America's interests and values" in the world. The report's authors, which include 10 eminent scholars and experts on U.S. foreign policy, start from a position of opposition to many of the policies of the Bush administration, and from the assumption that "now, more than at any time since the late 1940s, it is vital to chart a new direction for America's global role."

World Politics Review asked two of the report's co-authors -- Ivo Daalder and Bruce Jentleson -- to answer questions via e-mail about the report, and they graciously agreed. Ivo Daalder was the director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Among other books, he is the author, with James Lindsay, of "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy." Bruce Jentleson is a professor of public policy studies and political science at Duke University. His latest book is "American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century."