So the logic behind an anticipatory strategy is powerful. But its strategic application demands the combined wisdom of Pericles and Solomon. To begin with, the premise for an anticipatory attack posits a hostile leader and regime platonically impervious to any environmental changes whether domestic or international. This is not always a mistaken premise – Hitler and Pol Pot are cases in point – but it is almost always mistaken. Over time, most regimes do change substantially if not essentially. One has only to look at the Soviet Union after 1956 and China after 1978. (en)
If you were to ask Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or President Bush himself who Leo Strauss was, you would probably draw blank stares. The idea of Straussian influence gained currency only because Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, studied briefly with Strauss and with Allan Bloom, who was himself a student of Strauss. But Wolfowitz never regarded himself as a Strauss protégé, and his foreign policy views were much more heavily influenced by other teachers, in particular Albert Wohlstetter. (en)