[Mb-civic] Bush to Restate Terror Strategy - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Bush to Restate Terror Strategy
2002 Doctrine of Preemptive War To Be Reaffirmed

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 16, 2006; A01

President Bush plans to issue a new national security strategy today 
reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and 
hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the 
troubled experience in Iraq.

The long-overdue document, an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities 
that is required by law, lays out a robust view of America's power and 
an assertive view of its responsibility to bring change around the 
world. On topics including genocide, human trafficking and AIDS, the 
strategy describes itself as "idealistic about goals and realistic about 
means."

The strategy expands on the original security framework developed by the 
Bush administration in September 2002, before the invasion of Iraq. That 
strategy shifted U.S. foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and 
containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before 
they attack the United States.

The preemption doctrine generated fierce debate at the time, and many 
critics believe the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 
fatally undermined an essential assumption of the strategy -- that 
intelligence about an enemy's capabilities and intentions can be 
sufficient to justify preventive war.

In his revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the 
preemption policy, saying it "remains the same" and defending it as 
necessary for a country in the "early years of a long struggle" akin to 
the Cold War. In a nod to critics in Europe, the document places a 
greater emphasis on working with allies and declares diplomacy to be 
"our strong preference" in tackling the threat of weapons of mass 
destruction.

"If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, 
we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if 
uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," the 
document continues. "When the consequences of an attack with WMD are 
potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave 
dangers materialize."

Such language could be seen as provocative at a time when the United 
States and its European allies have brought Iran before the U.N. 
Security Council to answer allegations that it is secretly developing 
nuclear weapons. At a news conference in January, Bush described an Iran 
with nuclear arms as a "grave threat to the security of the world."

Some security specialists criticized the continued commitment to 
preemption. "Preemption is and always will be a potentially useful tool, 
but it's not something you want to trot out and throw in everybody's 
face," said Harlan Ullman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic 
and International Studies. "To have a strategy on preemption and make it 
central is a huge error."

A military attack against Iran, for instance, could be "foolish," Ullman 
said, and it would be better to seek other ways to influence its 
behavior. "I think most states are deterrable."

Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute 
who has written on the 2002 strategy, said the 2003 invasion of Iraq in 
the strict sense is not an example of preemptive war, because it was 
preceded by 12 years of low-grade conflict and was essentially the 
completion of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Still, he said, recent problems 
there contain lessons for those who would advocate preemptive war 
elsewhere. A military strike is not enough, he said; building a 
sustainable, responsible state in place of a rogue nation is the real 
challenge.

"We have to understand preemption -- it's not going to be simply a 
preemptive strike," he said. "That's not the end of the exercise but the 
beginning of the exercise."

The White House plans to release the 49-page National Security Strategy 
today, starting with a speech by national security adviser Stephen J. 
Hadley to the U.S. Institute of Peace. The White House gave advance 
copies to The Washington Post and three other newspapers.

The strategy has no legal force of its own but serves as a guidepost for 
agencies and officials drawing up policies in a range of military, 
diplomatic and other arenas. Although a 1986 law requires that the 
strategy be revised annually, this is the first new version since 2002. 
"I don't think it's a change in strategy," Hadley said in an interview. 
"It's an updating of where we are with the strategy, given the time 
that's passed and the events that have occurred."

But the new version of the strategy underscores in a more thematic way 
Bush's desire to make the spread of democracy the fundamental 
underpinning of U.S. foreign policy, as he expressed in his second 
inaugural address last year. The opening words of the strategy, in fact, 
are lifted from that speech: "It is the policy of the United States to 
seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation 
and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

The strategy commits the administration to speaking out against human 
rights abuses, holding high-level meetings at the White House with 
reformers from repressive nations, using foreign aid to support 
elections and civil society, and applying sanctions against oppressive 
governments. It makes special mention of religious intolerance, 
subjugation of women and human trafficking.

At the same time, it acknowledges that "elections alone are not enough" 
and sometimes lead to undesirable results. "These principles are tested 
by the victory of Hamas candidates in the recent elections in the 
Palestinian territories," the strategy says, referring to the radical 
group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.

Without saying what action would be taken against them, the strategy 
singles out seven nations as prime examples of "despotic systems" -- 
North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe. Iran and 
North Korea receive particular attention because of their nuclear 
programs, and the strategy vows in both cases "to take all necessary 
measures" to protect the United States against them.

"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," 
the document says, echoing a statement made by Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice last week. It recommits to efforts with European allies 
to pressure Tehran to give up any aspirations of nuclear weapons, then 
adds ominously: "This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is 
to be avoided."

The language about confrontation is not repeated with North Korea, which 
says it already has nuclear bombs, an assertion believed by U.S. 
intelligence. But Pyongyang is accused of a "bleak record of duplicity 
and bad-faith negotiations," as well as of counterfeiting U.S. currency, 
trafficking in drugs and starving its own people.

The strategy offers a much more skeptical view of Russia than in 2002, 
when the glow of Bush's friendship with President Vladimir Putin was 
still bright.

"Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing commitment to 
democratic freedoms and institutions," it says. "We will work to try to 
persuade the Russian Government to move forward, not backward, along 
freedom's path."

It also warns China that "it must act as a responsible stakeholder that 
fulfills its obligations" and guarantee political freedom as well as 
economic freedom. "Our strategy," the document says, "seeks to encourage 
China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge 
against other possibilities."

To assuage allies antagonized by Bush's go-it-alone style in his first 
term, the White House stresses alliance and the use of what it calls 
"transformational diplomacy" to achieve change. At the same time, it 
asserts that formal structures such as the United Nations or NATO may at 
times be less effective than "coalitions of the willing," or groups 
responding to particular situations, such as the Asian tsunami of 2004.

Beyond the military response to terrorism, the document emphasizes the 
need to fight the war of ideas against Islamic radicals whose 
anti-American rhetoric has won wide sympathy in parts of the world.

The strategy also addresses topics largely left out of the 2002 version, 
including a section on genocide and a new chapter on global threats such 
as avian influenza, AIDS, environmental destruction and natural 
disasters. Critics have accused the administration of not doing enough 
to stop genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, responding too slowly to 
the Asian tsunami and disregarding global environmental threats such as 
climate change.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/15/AR2006031502297.html?referrer=email
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