The 1352nd meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was held on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 5p.m at the New Haven Lawn Club. Some 80 members and their guests enjoined wine and conversation before the presentation, which, was followed by dinner.

At 5:30 p.m. the President, Ernest Kohorn welcomed the audience and introduced the speaker for the evening, John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. The title of Professor Gaddis' talk was "American Grand Strategy: Its Past and Future". Professor Gaddis put the current difficult world situation into historical perspective by looking back into history and finding analogous situations. Surprise attack, he said always precipitates change in the grand strategy of a nation's foreign policy. September 11, 2001 was one such event and so was the attack on Pearl Harbor during the Second World War and the attack on Washington by the British in 1814. Each attack resulted in the expansion of the responsibility of the United States. The attack of 1814 was particularly significant because it precipitated the doctrine outlined by John Quincy Adams, whom Dr. Gaddis considers the most important Secretary of State in American history. This attack was also responsible for the vivid blood curdling second and third verses of "the Star Spangled Banner"! But this outcry was merely a reflection of the new vulnerability to national security that the attack had evinced, and John Quincy Adams' response was to devise a three-step strategy. First "preemption" against any raiders that threatened the security of the nation. He suggested that the attack on the Indians was an example of such preemption. Second "unilateralism" on the principle that America could not trust another nation to protect its security. This notion was later known as isolationism. And Third, "hegemony". As Adams wrote to his mother Abigail in 1811, the choice was between having, on the one hand, "an endless multitude of little insignificant clans and tribes at eternal war with one another for a rock, or a fish pond," or, on the other, "a nation, coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact. So that these ideas are not new Professor Gaddis said and he then examined the effects of the Pearl Harbor attack in the light of these ideas. President Roosevelt's response was quite different. He sought international support and took a multilateral approach. America needed the allies and in particular the Russians. For every US soldier killed in the Second World War 60 Russians died. This was the first Grand Alliance and Roosevelt hoped to continue this relationship into the post war period. As far as preemption was concerned this was ruled out by Roosevelt who maintained that the Russians could be contained through a cold war and that the Russians should be the ones to fire the first shot. In terms of hegemony this was an element of Roosevelt's thinking that was not known because he was a master at tact and diplomacy. In reaction to the September 11th attack in which 19 terrorists killed over 2000 people while spending a half a million dollars, a small amount of force for a great leverage, the Bush administration reverted to the Adams doctrine of the 19th century. Professor Gaddis said that preemption was a means of warning states not to harbor terrorists. He argued that this was the real reason for attacking Iraq rather than the stated reasons of removing weapons of mass destruction, the control of oil supplies and the elimination of Saddam Hussein. He said it was rather like the notice "don't even think of parking here"! He considered that preemption will remain with us and that it is a justified means of defense. We have an obligation to deal with dictators and questioning why this particular dictator requires removal and not one of the many in the world simply reinforces the argument that it is a necessary policy. The Bush administration also followed the strategies of unilateralism and hegemony but projected this time on a global scale, in response to the present series of catastrophic events. However he said that internationalism would follow unilateralism because of the world's obligation to support the removal of dictators. Professor Gaddis argued that in the long run Iraq will be seen as far more important than Vietnam in shaping America's Grand Strategy. Many questions and comments followed this provocative and stimulating presentation.