A while back I linked to an article that shed some light on the philosophical premises behind administration policy. Here is much more of the same, with a veritable reading list to choose from. How Books Have Shaped U.S. Policy

Indeed Mr. Bush, whose father was accused of lacking the "vision thing," presides over an administration that is driven in high degree by big and often abstract theories: theories that promote a "moral" (some might say moralistic) approach to foreign policy; an unembarrassed embrace of power; a detestation of relativistic thinking; and an often Manichaean view of the world that, like the president's language, manages to be darkly Hobbesian and willfully optimistic at the same time.