World or homeland? US National Security Strategy in the 21st century

The new National Security Strategy of the United States promulgated by the Bush administration in September 2002 describes itself as being “based on distinctly American internationalism”. This new form of ‘internationalism’ – what may be termed the Bush Doctrine – projects what this remarkable document claims to be “the union of our values and our national interests”. The outcome is a strategy whose “aim…is to help make the world not just safer but better.”

The new doctrine: global, not national, security

This is a surprising posture for a Republican administration that had talked about a more humble foreign policy and criticised nation-building. It draws on early 20th century Wilsonian beliefs in America’s mission to bring democracy to the old world of Europe. It reproduces a rather Clintonesque view of “promoting democracy.” As such, it has brought together two groups in an unlikely alliance: the so-called neo-conservatives or ‘neo-cons’ (essentially, Republicans – and indeed some Democrats – who want to exercise power abroad), and liberal interventionists from the Clinton administration.

To be sure, the neo-cons would challenge the Clintonites’ preference for working with the United Nations and having the support of the international community. But they arrive at the same end point, the belief that America’s interests are best pursued by spreading democracy throughout the world by means of the direct projection of American military force.

While the Bush Doctrine draws upon the strategies developed by these contrasting sources in the 1990s, it only came about – and they only came together – after the events of 11 September 2001.

Those events devastatingly demonstrated that a new and real threat to the US homeland does exist. This threat stems not from the military power of foreign states, but from terrorist groups. The rational consequence is for the United States to “clear the decks” and focus its national security strategy on the terrorist threat posed by those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the al-Qaida terrorist network, and any other network that seeks to emulate it. The core element and primary objective of the national security strategy henceforth should be to protect the homeland against future terrorist attacks.

Instead, the Bush doctrine offers a sharply different strategy. It is less a national security doctrine designed to safeguard the US in the new era of world terrorism, than a global security doctrine which commits the country to a fusion of its perceived self-interest with that of the planet.

The core element and primary objective of the national security strategy henceforth should be to protect the homeland against future terrorist attacks.

It is important to emphasise that a reassessment of America’s national security was indeed necessary after 9/11. The Constitution of the United States of America makes clear that one of the paramount responsibilities of the federal government is to “provide for the common defense.” This obliges the president to ensure the security of the American homeland and public, something that must be the primary objective of any national security strategy. The terrorist attacks demonstrated that not just new measures but a new overall posture was needed to ensure the common defense.

The aims of the new US National Security Strategy

However, the new National Security Strategy of the United States of America announced by President Bush in September 2002 speaks little about protecting the US homeland. Indeed, the only reference to homeland security is more of an afterthought: “While we recognize that our best defense is a good offense, we are also strengthening America’s homeland security to protect against and deter attack.”

The Bush Doctrine embodied in the new strategy includes two specific policies designed to protect America against terrorist attacks:

• strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against us and our friends
• prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends, with weapons of mass destruction.

But the other, more numerous goals proposed in the document are clearly not directed at protecting the American nation against terrorism:

• champion aspirations for human dignity
• work with others to defuse regional conflicts
• ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade
• expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy
• develop agendas for cooperative action with other main centers of global power
• transform America’s national security institutions to meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

It is these latter aims which give the Bush Doctrine its planetary character. They mean that the current national security strategy of the United States is dedicated, in its own words, to using unrivaled American power to “defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere.”

In the short term, the US’s military campaign in Iraq is likely to bestow the legitimacy of immediate success on this doctrine and its interpretation of America’s national security. Thus in articulating his overarching rationale of the need for US military action against Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, President Bush did not highlight weapons of mass destruction or indeed any threat, direct or indirect, to the United States. The rationale, by contrast, was a universalist one:

“The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life… It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world – or one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim – is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and tactics of terror.”

A strategy of empire

This justification for regime change in Iraq commits the United States to a new strategy of empire. It will be extremely expensive. It will involve the reinforcement of a large state. It will over-extend America’s commitments. It will provoke needless resentment and enmity. It will make the United States less secure. In short, the Bush Doctrine subverts the obligations the Constitution lays upon the federal executive.

(T)he current national security strategy of the United States is dedicated, in its own words, to using unrivaled American power to “defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere.”

Is there a threat to the homeland?

The best way to explain why is to recall the exceptionally secure nature of America in traditional terms.

In the past, the primary threats to the United States and its interests were other nation states. But the opening of the 21st century finds the US in a unique geo-strategic position. Two great oceans continue to act as vast moats to protect its western and eastern flanks. America is blessed with two friendly and stable neighbours to the north and south. The American homeland remains essentially safe from a traditional conventional military invasion. And the US strategic nuclear arsenal acts – in size, range and accuracy – as an effective and credible deterrent against possible attack, nuclear or otherwise, from any government, regime or alliance fighting from fixed positions such as a national capital.

Not only is the United States relatively insulated against possible attack, the US military is by an unparalleled margin the dominant military force on the planet. In 2001, US defense expenditures (nearly $348 billion) exceeded those of the next thirteen nations combined (most of whom are allies or friendly to the United States).

The country closest in defense spending to the United States in 2001 was Russia ($65 billion). But it is clear that under its president, Vladimir Putin, Russia has charted a course to move closer to the United States and the west, both politically and economically.

China – whom many see as the next great threat, even though it is not at all inevitable that China will indeed become an aggressive great power that challenges the United States – had estimated defense expenditures of $47 billion. Moreover, the combined defense spending of the so-called “axis of evil” (North Korea, Iran, and Iraq before regime change) was only $5.3 billion, or little more than 1% of the US defense budget.

The resulting bottom line is that a conventional military threat to the US homeland is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

The United States not only far outspends most of the rest of the world (the proposed financial year 2004 defense budget is $380 billion even before funding for the recent war with Iraq is factored in); its military is technologically a generation superior to any other country. Thus, it should be abundantly clear that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer faces a serious military challenger or a global hegemonic threat from any competitive state. The resulting bottom line is that a conventional military threat to the US homeland is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

Where does the threat lie?

This is a welcome situation for America – and it should be welcomed. But it does not call for splendid isolation. On the contrary, it invites judicious, realistic and prudent deployment of the strengths bestowed by such good fortune, so as not to squander them. It requires a concentration on the actual remaining threats posed by terrorism.

As Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has pointed out in Peace & Freedom – foreign policy for a constitutional republic (2002 ): “The terrorist attacks on America have given added urgency to the need to adjust Washington’s security policy… [W]e cannot afford the distraction of maintaining increasingly obsolete and irrelevant security commitments around the globe.”

To be sure, some part of US national security strategy must necessarily focus outwards, on external threats. President Bush’s national security strategy correctly identifies this outward focus: “Our priority will be first to disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations of global reach and attack their leadership; command, control, and communications; material support; and finances.”

But instead of making this its main thrust, his new national security strategy gives primacy to an indefinable threat from ‘rogue states’ and weapons of mass destruction. The guiding principle it advocates is to “stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends.”

This assumes, without justification, that rogue states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction will certainly provide them to terrorists. Clearly, this was one of the administration’s reasons to pursue regime change in Iraq. The principle involved has come to be called ‘pre-emptive war’.

Pre-emptive or preventative war?

But pre-emptive war is not an accurate description of what the doctrine entails. Rather, it is preventative war whose logic – to “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed” – is a recipe for a state of endless, perpetual conflict.

But pre-emptive war is not an accurate description of what the doctrine entails. Rather, it is preventative war whose logic – to “act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed” – is a recipe for a state of endless, perpetual conflict. Real threats to America do not have to materialise. Instead, the emergence of a potential threat, even as only one of several possible outcomes of a given situation might be a sufficient reason to go to war. Thus, the litmus test for the decision to wage war is the plausible allegation of a likely threat – even unknown future intentions and capabilities – but not the convincing proof of the existence of a threat.

In more practical terms, the Pentagon lists as “emerging and extant threats” to the United States twelve nations with nuclear weapons programmes, thirteen with biological weapons, and sixteen with chemical weapons. If mere possession of these so-called weapons of mass destruction was sufficient criteria to attack Iraq, how many other countries are potential threats that the United States must attack? Even before the United States declared military victory in Iraq, the rhetoric had already turned to Syria as a potential next target.

But why would a regime such as Syria’s provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for them to use against the United States, when any such action would provoke that regime’s utter ruin?

A seamless transition: from cold war to empire

President Bush’s new national security strategy seems increasingly like the cold war paradigm run amok, but without an enemy and having abandoned the theory of deterrence.

Yet ironically, it is the end of the cold war that has made the strategy possible. For the collapse of the Berlin Wall (in 1989) and the Soviet Union (in 1991) brought about the unopposed military dominance of the United States. The new national security strategy is really a formalisation of this reality into a rationale for giving US military forces freedom of action to engage in intervention throughout the world, which their current supremacy permits.

President Bush’s new national security strategy seems increasingly like the cold war paradigm run amok, but without an enemy and having abandoned the theory of deterrence.

The way this is expressed in The National Security Strategy of the United States is that “the presence of American forces overseas is one of the most profound symbols of the US commitments to allies and friends. Through our willingness to use force in our own defense and in defense of others, the United States demonstrates its resolve to maintain a balance of power that favors freedom.” Indeed, the new national security strategy calls for making the world “better” by “expanding liberty” throughout the world based on American values of “political and economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity.”

This, shorn of rhetorical decoration, is a strategy of American empire. Will it make America safe? The answer is surely negative. The result is most likely to be increased resentment and animosity towards what is perceived by the rest of the world as an imperialist America.

Defining the national interest

It is fashionable to think that other countries and people hate the United States for “who we are.” In his address to a joint session of Congress and the American people after the 11 September terrorist attacks, President Bush said: “Why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber – a democratically elected government…They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

The world and America: a love/hate relationship

This is to profoundly misread the attitude of most people around the world to the United States of America. The reality is different. In most of the world there is a deep and widespread admiration for America and what it has accomplished domestically, including its energy, productivity, much of its culture and its values. There is rather a ‘love/hate’ relationship with America. People love what we are; but they often hate what we do.

There is abundant evidence that anti-American sentiment is fueled more by the country’s actions than by its existence. According to Peter Bergen, one of the few western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden: “What he condemns the United States for is simple: its policies in the Middle East. Those are, to recap briefly: the continued US military presence in Arabia; US support for Israel; its continued bombing of Iraq; and its support for regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that bin Laden regards as apostates from Islam.” (see Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., The Free Press, 2001).

The point has been confirmed by various polls taken around the world. For example, the Zogby International “Ten Nations Poll” – monitoring five Arab, Muslim nations; three non-Arab, Muslim nations; and two non-Arab, non-Muslim countries – shows that people generally like America but “(i)ncredibly low marks are given everywhere for United States policy toward the Arab nations and toward the Palestinians.

In most of the world there is a deep and widespread admiration for America and what is has accomplished domestically, including its energy, productivity, much of its culture and its values. There is rather a ‘love/hate’ relationship with America. People love what we are; but they often hate what we do.

Another Zogby poll found, as Karen De Young noted in the Washington Post, that Arabs look favorably on American freedoms and political values, but have a strongly negative overall view of the United States based largely on their disapproval of its policy toward the region.”

These views are not confined to countries that might somehow be inherently predisposed to disliking the United States. As Dartmouth College professors Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth point out: “Washington also needs to be concerned about the level of resentment that an aggressive unilateral course would engender among its major allies. After all, it is influence, not power, that is ultimately most valuable.” (“American primacy in perspective”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2002).

A poll conducted for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund of the United States showed that “a majority of people surveyed in six European countries believe American foreign policy is partly to blame for the September 11 attacks.” And the results of a Gallup International poll of thirty-six countries showed that in twenty-three countries (nine of which were western European countries, and included Britain), “more people think US foreign policy is negative rather than positive in its effects on their country.”

The benefits of narrowness

America must always be watchful about the one real external threat that could cause it serious disquiet: the potential rise of a hostile global enemy. But that is nowhere on the horizon today.

The obvious conclusion which should be drawn by American policymakers is that the United States needs to stop meddling in the internal affairs of countries and regions around the world, except when they directly threaten US national security interests – that is, when the territorial integrity, national sovereignty, or liberty of the United States is at risk.

In addition it would be necessary to prevent the emergence of an expansionist hegemonic power. America must always be watchful about the one real external threat that could cause it serious disquiet: the potential rise of a hostile global enemy. But that is nowhere on the horizon today.

This makes the grand and noble cause of spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world even less attuned to the specific and harsh reality facing the United States: the need to protect America against more terrorist attacks from al-Qaida. This requires US national security strategy to be focused not externally on the rest of the world, but more inwardly on protecting the US itself – the country, the population, and the liberties and freedoms that comprise the American way of life.

It would be more prudent, realistic and better for national security, to recognise and accept that even a country as large and powerful as the US cannot control what happens everywhere in the world.

Rather than continuing to expand its national security interests and extend its defense perimeter and global military presence, the United States needs to more narrowly define those interests. As Richard K. Betts at Columbia University points out:

“…it is no longer prudent to assume that important security interests complement each other as they did during the Cold War. The interest at the very core -- protecting the American homeland from attack -- may now often be in conflict with security more broadly conceived and with the interests that mandate promoting American political values, economic interdependence, social Westernization, and stability in regions beyond Western Europe and the Americas.”

In reassessing its vital security interests the United States needs to adopt a more restrained foreign policy as balancer of last resort. The US should not be the world’s policeman (or armed social worker) and intercede in the myriad of situations where tyranny and breaches of human rights prevail. If it moves towards empire as the Bush Doctrine proposes, the US will feel itself called upon to dictate outcomes everywhere. It would be more prudent, realistic and better for national security, to recognise and accept that even a country as large and powerful as the US cannot control what happens everywhere in the world.

Less intervention, more security

More important, for its own national security the United States does not need to control outcomes everywhere and on every issue. In the post-cold war world, there is no major competitor or rival hegemonic power to the US on the horizon; and not every problem, crisis, and conflict in the world is a direct threat to its vital security interests. Put another way, instead of being an intervener of first resort, the United States should step in only when its vital interests are at stake. The most vital interest of all is, of course, the homeland.

Such a change in security strategy and policy is even more appropriate given the threat of terrorism. It directly comes to grips with the fact that since terrorist attacks are virtually impossible to deter or prevent, US security would be better served by refraining from unnecessary military deployments and interventions that fuel the flames of vehement anti-American sentiment.

It is significant that even the Bush administration admits the relationship between American global interventionism and retaliatory acts of terrorism against the United States. According to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf war in 1991 were “part of the containment policy [of Iraq] that has been Osama bin Laden’s principal recruiting device, even more than the other grievances he cites.” But the administration is unable to connect the dots: the United States would actually be more secure if it became less involved in other people’s problems.

Two illustrations: North Korea and the Philippines

There are two currently relevant cases, North Korea and the Philippines, where an American policy of disengagement would increase national security.

The present crisis over North Korea could be an important opportunity for the United States to move in a realistic direction. Rather than the US continuing to guarantee and underwrite the security of South Korea and Japan as it does at the moment, American national security would be better served by allowing these and other countries in east Asia to develop a rational balance of power in their region.

This might even include the option of allowing South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear deterrents (or missile defense) if they feel that is how best to defend their security interests. Of course, such thinking runs counter to conventional thinking about nuclear proliferation – that is, more countries possessing nuclear weapons is inherently bad and unstable.

But which situation is better: a communist North Korea with a nuclear monopoly while the US guarantees South Korea’s security (which involves us in being willing to protect Seoul by trading Pyongyang for Los Angeles), or two nuclear-armed democratic nations (both with vibrant economies) that balance North Korea’s nuclear ambitions?

The United States involvement in the Philippines is just one example of how – even in the direct war on terrorism – the US is flirting dangerously with other people’s problems that are not vital to American national security. There, the US military has been participating since December 2001 in joint training exercises with the Philippine military to eradicate Abu Sayyaf, a militant separatist Islamic group.

Despite claims that Abu Sayyaf is linked to al-Qaida, the group are more financially-motivated kidnappers than radical Islamic terrorists. Even the Philippines president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, acknowledges that connections between al-Qaida and Abu Sayef are tenuous (if they exist at all) and there is no evidence of an al-Qaida presence in the country after 1995. (see her interview with Lally Weymouth, “We Will Do The Fighting”, Washington Post, 3 February 2002).

Why then put American lives at risk and squander American treasure in a situation which the Philippines government should learn to deal with itself, and when the only likely long-term outcome of American military involvement there is the likelihood of entrenched hatred of the United States provoked by its intervention?

Homeland security is national security

The less the United States meddles in the affairs of other countries or intervenes in “somebody else’s civil war,” the less likely the prospect that America and Americans will be a target for terrorism. And that – not making the world a better place – is what should matter most about any US national security strategy.

The United States national security strategy must put defense against terrorism and homeland security at its core. In doing so, it must recognise the link between an interventionist American foreign policy (however noble or well-intentioned) and terrorism against the United States. It is too late to stop al-Qaida from targeting America and Americans (and the United States must do everything in its power to dismantle the al-Qaida terrorist network worldwide), but the United States must avoid needlessly making new terrorist enemies or fueling the flames of virulent anti-American hatred, especially in the Muslim and Arab world.

The less the United States meddles in the affairs of other countries or intervenes in “somebody else’s civil war,” the less likely the prospect that America and Americans will be a target for terrorism. And that – not making the world a better place – is what should matter most about any US national security strategy.

Iraq is now a better place. But with over 100,000 US troops policing that country, is America safer? A true national security strategy would be to withdraw, not expand our country’s presence; vigorously protect the homeland, rather than expose our well-being to new vulnerabilities by expanding our direct rule elsewhere. The United States of America needs a new National Security Strategy.