Effects of United States presidents' leadership roles on global security: A case of Carter and Bush

This qualitative historical case study explored how a U.S. President's leadership impacts on global security. Presidents G. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were chosen to underscore the historical characterization and effects of their leadership styles on global security and the fight against international terrorism. A thorough review of the literature pertaining to the major concern---global security and terrorism---revealed that studies such as Braziel's (2000), Carens' (2003), Deng's (2001), Hagel's (2002), Lindsay's (2003a), Obi's (2000), and Pillar's (2001) have attempted to address the possibility that a U.S. president significantly affects global security. Some of the studies emphasized military might, military interventions (Hagel, 2002), peacekeeping (Grytsenko, 2006; Jung, 2006), and human rights, democratization, and international economic globalization (Kuperman, 2004) at the expense of intense investigation on the impact on the safety or security of Americans and American interests at home and abroad (Cannistaro, 1995).;The content analysis approach used in this study on the archival data of security decisions collected revealed that both presidents were concerned about global security. In spite of this common passion, however, the presidents deployed different leadership approaches and/or styles (one transactional and the other transformational) with different effects on global security.;The study analysis, which was done by a triangulation approach, showed that various arms of the presidents' leadership consortia interacted, and were measured using qualitative research tools, including "the Zekoist" iterative triangulation concept (ZIT-c). The conclusion reached was that the two presidents' leadership styles affected global security in different ways. The hope here is that this study will generate more interest in leadership and global security and further enhance leadership roles within the purview of systems thinking. With special reference to international terrorism, seeking to redefine leadership concepts in inclusive terns, this study applied ZIT-c to emphasize strongly on iterations as a factor in limiting probabilities of decision errors of leaders. The study used ZIT-c (a new leadership approach) to provide further validation for an earlier "SLT" (the Synergistic Leadership Theory) offered by Irby, Brown, Duffy, and Trautman (2002).;In view of this study, leadership experts, researchers and scholars are encouraged to provide feedback from continued discourses on ZIT-c: an evaluation process, which will further enhance the goal to strengthen global security and reduce international terrorism by redefining the concept of leadership in truly inclusive terms and to reflect today's workplace diversity in our contemporary world, made more urgent and pressing by rapidly expanding globalization.;At the same time, some other studies (Stender, 1998) contended that exploring the leadership roles and styles of past presidents and the presidents' approaches to immigration and security policies would help reveal and add more to the existing knowledge in the area of global security (Hunt, 2002; R. Johnson & Zenko, 2002/2003).;This study has benefited immensely from the comments and reviews of many in addition to those of the school research committee. Professor Mark Ajuogu, President/Director of MacGad Global Research Network Services (MGRS) in Washington State, for instance, strongly believes that the goal of the new leadership approach introduced in "SLT" and "ZIT-c" deserves the scholarly feedback being solicited.