ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how opportunity structures for leadership open and close within a single presidency in American foreign policy. Bilateral relations between states lend themselves particularly well to such an analysis, examining how windows open or close in response to the political/electoral cycle. It proposes the administration of George W. Bush missed a critical window of opportunity in 2001, a chance to capitalize upon a deliberate attempt by Iranian reformists to open up a new strategic relationship with the United States. As Peter Galbraith notes, the war was supposed to eliminate an imagined threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, disregarding the far more real nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea. After 9/11, America enjoye a surprisingly plentiful reservoir of soft power in Iran, and in the Middle East more broadly, upon which a judicious president might draw. The phrase Axis of Evil was partly the work of Canadian speech writer David Frum working in the White House.
