National Security Strategy Main Point

“The united States possesses unprecedented and unequaled-strength and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principals of liberty, and the value of a free society, this position comes with unparalleled responsibilities, obligations, and opportunity.”

(President Bush, National Security Strategy, June 2002)

In the turn of the 20th century, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the most powerful nation; it prospered economically, militarily, and politically. With this increase in power came a great consideration over how the United States would deal with foreign affairs. After the attacks on the World Trade Center the idea of preemptive measures became the highlight of the Bush’s National Security Strategy. Everything was based on acting upon the terrorist before being attacked by them. The rest of the world, however, did not agree in preemptive measures and this caused the United States to loose many of its allies. When the United States went into Iraq they did so with more enemies then they had allies, and without the support of the United Nations. Preemptive measures seem necessary at a time of great threat, however without a multilaterist strategy, which the Unites States still lack today, they will not be able to succeed in Iraq. This unilaterist view that President Bush holds also contradicts much of what he has outlined in the NSS, and as a whole much of the rhetoric the NSS uses, is full of strategic myths that contradict with the actions that the Bush administration.

President Bush outlines many of his international goals in the National Security Strategy some of which include, working to accomplish free market and free trade, help defuse regional conflict, and form alliances against terrorism. The most important factor of the strategy, one which scholars have called “revolutionary” is that of preventive attack: the united states will prevent their enemies from threatening them or their allies with weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the United States will go after and attack those countries which are threatening before those countries can attack the United States. This is important because it is the ideology being used today to justify the war on Iraq and it also the strategy that has caused strong conflict in both inside the Unites States and internationally around the world.

The goal of “preventing our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends with weapons of mass destruction” is based around the idea of taking preemptive measures, however Bush makes distinct small details within this measure. Bush described rogue states and terrorist as more likely to use weapons of mass destruction because they willingly kill themselves for their rulers, they have no regard for national law, and they have no values or morals. Therefore, the United States’ main goal should be the deterrence of weapons of mass destruction of these rogue states. He also stated that the united states would use proactive counter proliferation measures in order to reach this goal.

This unilaterist view of attacking without allies, Daalder and Lindsay described was the start of the “Bush revolution.” They argued that this revolution was dangerous because it threatened the influence the United States had on other countries. “Indeed, the more others questioned America’s power, purpose, and priorities, the less influence America would have.”(196) The lost of allies was not doing any good for the United States. As Snyder mentions in “Imperial temptation”, the NSS does mention working with allies but it does so at their own terms. As Daalder and Lindsay pointed out in “Perils of Power”, the United States chased away many potential allies because they questioned the National Security Strategy. Some argue that the Unites States did not go into Iraq alone, but instead went in with the United Kingdom, Spain, and Poland by their side and therefore should be considered multilaterist, however to be multilaterist the U.S. needed the United Nation’s approval, and the United Stated did not have such approval. It also did not have approval of France or Britain; the next great power.

The debate over unilaterism and multilaterism brings up the debate over legitimacy. As Robert Kagan noticed, America is facing a crisis of legitimacy. The inevitable fact that the United States is the most powerful nation worries Europeans because they feel left out in world affairs. Kagan states “Europeans do not fear that the Unites States will seek to control