Robert Litwak focuses his book on how the United States should respond to the potential post–Cold War proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—especially nuclear weapons—to so-called rogue states and nonstate actors like Al Qaeda. Litwak makes three central arguments: 9/11 transformed America's conception of national security; U.S. policy toward rogue states oscillates between the contradictory objectives of regime change versus behavior change; and in the post–9/11 world, the main security threat to the United States is the nexus of nonstate actors like Al Qaeda that want to acquire WMDs and states that might—either passively or actively—facilitate their acquisition by such organizations.

Part I of Regime Change surveys U.S. approaches to international order since World War II, to the use of force, and to rogue states. Part II consists of case studies of U.S. counter proliferation policy toward North Korea, Libya, Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and terrorist organizations. A brief review cannot do justice to Litwak's analysis of a very broad topic. But several points deserve special attention.

The weakest aspect of the book is its broad critique of the Bush administration's national security strategy. Litwak argues that after 9/11, the Bush administration effectuated a radical threefold change in U.S. national security strategy by adopting preventive war policies, by defining threats to the United States based on the “very character of its adversaries” (p. xii), and by repudiating multilaterialism and international norms on the use of force. For sure, there is a great deal for which the Bush administration justifiably can be criticized. However, Litwak is off base on these particular points. While unquestionably more inept than most of its post-1945 predecessors, the Bush administration is not a grand strategic outlier.

First, with respect to preventive war, as the historian Marc Trachtenberg has noted, the Bush administration's strategy is not an anomaly: “Under Roosevelt and Truman, under Eisenhower and Kennedy, and even under Clinton in the 1990s,” preventive war thinking “came into play in a major way” (“Preventive War and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Security Studies 16 [January/March 2007]: 29). As offensive realists have pointed out, in the competitive arena of international politics, great powers have strong incentives to defend themselves through “anticipatory violence” and by seeking to dominate the international system—which is precisely what the United States has done since 1945. (On the first point, see John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. 2001. On the second, see Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions, 2006). Second, the Bush administration is only the most recent in a succession of administrations going back at least to Woodrow Wilson that have regarded certain types of regimes—usually nonliberal ones—as threats to the United States. (See Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 1954.) Finally, the idea that the United States—until the Bush administration—preferred to act multilaterally is myth, not fact.

All post-1945 U.S. administrations have acted unilaterally when they believed it was necessary to do so—during the Suez, Berlin, and Cuban missile crises and the Vietnam War, for example. For sure, the Bush administration acted foolishly and recklessly when it invaded Iraq in March 2003, but it would have been equally foolish and reckless even if the invasion had been blessed by the United Nations. Moreover, Litwak's claim (p. 3) that multilateralism “fostered the perception of the United States as a benign superpower” and thus had negated the need of other states to balance against American power is dubious. Even during the Cold War, U.S. allies worried about unbalanced American power and tried—albeit unsuccessfully—to balance against it, and today others are engaged in both hard and soft balancing against the United States.

Litwak makes some impressive points, however, when he focuses on the specifics of U.S. counterproliferation policy. He nicely undercuts two of the main rationales employed by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war, and the threat to use force against North Korea and Iran. Contrary to what the administration claims, such regimes are not undeterrable, and there is little chance that they would transfer nuclear or other WMD capabilities to groups like Al Qaeda. As Litwak observes (p. 304), any state that provided terrorists with WMD “would be taking the risk that the unconventional weapon employed by the terrorist group might be traced back to it and thereby trigger a devastating U.S. retaliatory risk,” and “nothing short of regime survival itself” would drive a rogue state to run such a huge risk.

Litwak also argues compellingly that it would be counterproductive for the United States to use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As this is written (early September 2007) there is mounting evidence that—notwithstanding the Iraq quagmire—the Bush administration is planning a massive strategic bombing campaign against Iran. President Bush has for several years stated repeatedly that a nuclear-armed Iran is “intolerable.” Recently, the administration has laid the foundation for military action against Iran by blaming Tehran for meddling in the Iraq war. And, in his 28 August 2007 address to the American Legion's national convention, Bush, after stating that Tehran's policies have placed the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” stated that “Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere…. We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

Litwak points out (p. 241) that Tehran would regard U.S. strikes “not as a discrete counter-proliferation action, but as the initiation of a general war to topple the regime.” If the United States attacks, he warns (p. 241), Iran will retaliate against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with a global terrorist campaign directed at the American homeland and U.S. interests abroad. Although the Bush administration seeks regime change in Iran, and Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocons believe a U.S. attack on Iran would trigger a popular uprising against the regime, Litwak notes (p. 241) that “air strikes would actually set back the prospects for indigenous regime change by giving the Tehran leadership a rally 'round-the-flag boost.” Moreover, he makes the important point (pp. 241–42) that military strikes would not destroy Iran's nuclear program but, at best, would only delay it temporarily.

There is much to commend in Regime Change, especially the excellent case studies. On some issues however, Litwak is better at diagnosis than prescription. Two issues stand out in this respect: the problem of weak states (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) that are passive facilitators of potential WMD acquisition by terrorists, and failed states that terrorists can use as bases to build WMD capabilities. One also wishes that he had asked two key questions: Why does the United States have problems with Islamic terrorists, and is there a better grand strategy that the United States could follow that would reduce its vulnerability to attacks by Islamic radicals? Still, this is a thoughtful analysis of a timely and important subject.