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The Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale, Gaddis was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor of cfr.org, on February 10, 2005.

In a recent Foreign Affairs article, you talked about what might be ahead for President Bush. What is your evaluation of the second term so far?

In several different ways, it seems to me it’s been a good month, or maybe even a good six weeks, for the Bush administration. First of all, I think the simple fact of re-election- the confirmation that the Bush team is going to be there for another four years- has stabilized relationships with allies. The simple element of predictability having replaced uncertainty is one thing.

But there have been two or three other things that are quite extraordinarily important. One is the holding of successful elections in the Palestinian territories following the death of [Palestinian Authority President Yasir] Arafat, which has restarted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Of course, one of the things I said in the article was that that had not happened yet. Well, now it has rather dramatically. That surely is a plus. I think, secondly, most obviously, the Iraqi elections, which were remarkably successful.

You were rather assertive in your article about the importance of elections held in dangerous areas.

I was pointing to the importance of elections, but I had no assurance whatever that they would go as well as they did. I think that was a big surprise to everybody, and a big boost to the administration, because it does suggest that their argument that the democratic instinct, or at least the appeal of free elections, transcends culture. This begins to look pretty good now in the wake of Afghanistan, in the wake of Ukraine, the Palestinian territories, and, of course, Iraq. It looks much better than it did even five months ago. So I think that’s a plus.

And then, thirdly, it seems to me the second inaugural address really was quite a remarkable document, which bears close reading. It was carefully composed. It goes a long way toward meeting one of the other criticisms I made in the Foreign Affairs piece, which of course, appeared before the inaugural, which was that the administration had not efficiently, clearly explained its long-term objectives. This statement, which is now being called the Bush Doctrine, [established] that it is the long-term objective of the United States to try to abolish tyranny throughout the world. That’s very welcome for several different reasons.

The president is going to Europe next week and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just completed a trip to Europe and the Middle East. Are there now grounds for some hope that the sharp differences within the alliance can be reconciled?

We see that happening already. We saw it happening in the comments that came from the German and French leadership in the aftermath of the [Iraqi] elections, conciliatory comments in both cases. We see it happening in the sense that the sharply visible criticisms of the administration we [previously] heard have been muted.

Surely what has happened regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation- which is an enormous vindication of the president’s strategy of refusing to deal with Arafat and waiting until there was [another Palestinian leader]--has diffused one source of criticism from the Europeans. Secondly, and at least equally important, the success of the Iraqi elections has diffused a major source of European criticism.

The combination of the [president’s] re-election, plus the facts on the ground, both in the Palestinian situation and the Iraqi situation, have created a number of reasons why the Europeans would want to look at trying to rebuild the relationship and would respond favorably to the efforts that are also ongoing from the American side, because it’s quite clear the administration attaches high priority to trying to repair this relationship. That was stated in the inaugural address. The fact that Condoleezza Rice has been in Europe, the fact that the president is going to Europe, indicates that the priority exists on this side as well.

Do you think the administration recognizes, without admitting it, that its initial polices, which shocked some allies, were too harsh?

The administration has acknowledged that it was too harsh in its original rejection of the Kyoto Protocol [on Climate Change] and the International Criminal Court. There has been open acknowledgement that those issues, which arose in early 2001, could have been handled better. On the business of Iraq and the debate leading up to the actual invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was not handled well on our side, but it has to be said it wasn’t handled well by the French or the Germans, either. It seems to me this is just one of these situations that, at this point, needs to be left to the scavengers of the past, the historians, and just move on and try to repair the relationship. I don’t think anything is gained by going back and trying to assign blame for what happened in the past.

What’s the preferred policy to try to resolve the dilemmas posed by North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs? Should the administration stick with a multilateral course no matter what?

No, you don’t stay on a multilateral course no matter what. That is a little too categorical, but certainly the multilateral course, for the moment and for the foreseeable future, is still the right course to be on. This is just a continuation of what the administration’s been doing. Try to work with North Korea’s neighbors and try to work with the United Nations and the Europeans on the Iranian situation. It’s worth remembering that the way to handle both situations, it seems to me, is a combination of sticks and carrots. It would be a mistake to offer only carrots or to simply try to get an agreement without concern for the nature of the agreement or the possibilities of verifying it. We’ve gone down that path before.

With North Korea?

Yes. So, a healthy skepticism- and even some indication that an agreement is not necessarily the supreme objective here- is called for. The supreme objective is to ensure that these states do not get an operational nuclear weapons capability. That requires a combination of negotiations and some indication of what might happen if negotiations fail. That, of course, is what the administration has been trying to make quite clear, including Condoleezza Rice in her statements in the past couple of days. So, I think at the moment it’s a good combination of sticks and carrots.

China has more influence on the North Koreans than anyone else, a fact that highlights the United States’ relationship with China. How important is that relationship right now?

The U.S. relationship with China is very important. One of the things that has not been written about as much as it could be is the success of our policy with regard to China over the last three years. You’ll remember that this administration came into office with a quite hostile attitude toward the regime in Beijing. And you’ll remember the downing of the [U.S. Navy reconnaissance] plane over Hainan in the first months of the administration. We actually had a crisis in Sino-American relations.

But in the aftermath of September 11, the relationship has smoothed out. It’s become stable, in many ways. It’s never going to be a completely amicable relationship because these are two great powers and great powers always, in one way or another, are going to be butting up against one another. But the overall pattern of acknowledging that China is a great power, and of acknowledging that the United States has both strong economic and strategic interests in having a stable relationship with China, amounts to a major achievement of the administration.

The administration has done quite well in assessing who the great powers are these days. Our relationship with India, for example, is better than it has been in many years. And the relationship with Russia, which obviously has had its ups and downs, nonetheless is arguably better than it was in the Clinton administration. What I see is an administration that is acknowledging the importance of great powers and has successfully maintained a pretty good relationship with those three, as well as Japan. And that, to some extent, counterbalances the failures that have taken place in the relationship with the Europeans.

Is that because the Bush administration, compared with other administrations, puts less emphasis on human rights issues, even though, at the same time, it stresses the spread of democracy?

I don’t think that the Bush administration is neglecting human rights. The difference is that the Bush administration has identified securing human rights throughout the world as the ultimate long-term objective of American foreign policy. The Clinton administration would quite often focus on some immediate, short-term human-rights issue, which might have been Kosovo or Chechnya or Tibet, in ways that would impair our relationship with the Russians or with the Chinese. [The Bush administration treats] human rights as a long-term, strategic objective with the acknowledgment that you cannot accomplish this overnight, that you have to tolerate inconsistencies. You’re much more likely to [fulfill those objectives] if you have a long-term strategy and if you can do [pursue] it in association with great powers, as opposed to confronting great powers.

How long do second-term presidents have influence? What is the history of accomplishments of second-term presidents?

Look at Ronald Reagan. His second term [when he helped pave the way to the collapse of Soviet communism] was quite remarkable. The record is mixed. A lot of people have pointed out, and with some justification, that re-election can lead to complacency and overreaching. The classic examples are Franklin Roosevelt on domestic policy after 1936 and, of course, Richard Nixon in 1972. But I think there are as many examples of second terms leading to continuations of existing policy, as was the case in the Eisenhower administration, or an increasing involvement in foreign affairs, as was surely true of the Clinton administration, or of dramatically different achievements in foreign affairs, as was true in the Reagan administration.

There is no clear pattern that would or should allow us to try to predict what’s going to happen. So much depends on the administration itself, its ability to take a long-term view, its ability to think strategically. There is no doubt these recent moments are apt to certainly be considered a high point, if not the high point, of the two-term Bush administration. But, to say it’s going to be downhill from here or to say that this is going to be short-lived, is premature, because there are a lot of opportunities that are opening up. The world situation is more fluid than it has been, perhaps, at any point since September 11. The opportunities for achieving the objectives the administration has defined, going all the way back to Bush’s initial post-9/11 speeches and to the national strategy statement of September 2002, are greater, I think, than they’ve ever been. So, it’s a moment for cautious optimism.