ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between President George W. Bush's leadership, the power of ideas and the conduct of the War on Terror. According to different versions realism, which is dominant in American IR, power capabilities are the determining factor of states choices. Leaders or aspiring leaders have to compete with political rivals to appeal favorably to the hopes and interests of would-be followers. Robert G. Patman, focusing on the question of how the US responded to the leadership challenge of the post-Cold War era, analyzed the Bush administrations efforts in re-branding national conceptions of leadership. As Nannerl Keohane once put it: Judgment is needed to identify issues and priorities, know how to allocate time and energy, make decisions, choose and recruit the people best qualified to be lieutenants and collaborators, and see how to use their skills. Domestic institutions and actors can facilitate and impel foreign policy leadership, but can hardly change the overall direction of foreign policy choices.
