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Analysis: Bush Administration's National Security Strategy
 Bush's National Security Strategy
NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
On Friday, the Bush administration released a document called the National Security Strategy, a paper that describes the overarching goals of US foreign and military policy and a broad outline of how to achieve them. It's the most comprehensive presentation so far of the policies that President Bush has articulated over the past year, some of which represent a dramatic departure from the national strategy of the past half century. The biggest threat to the United States, the paper argues, no longer comes from rival powers bent on conquest but from failed states that harbor terrorists. Containment and deterrence, two pillars of the Cold War policy, are dismissed as largely obsolete.
Given the demonstrated capabilities of terrorists, the United States can no longer rely solely on non-proliferation, a multilateral approach, to contain the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the missiles that might deliver them. The policy is now counterproliferation, a much more active and aggressive approach that could include pre-emptive strikes. At the dawn of the 21st century, the National Security Strategy describes freedom, democracy and free enterprise as the sole sustainable model, and it promotes the export of democracy as a major goal. The United States will not permit any nation or group of nations to challenge its military supremacy.
Getting less attention are pledges to increase foreign aid, fight disease, especially AIDS, and promote literacy. The document addresses approaches to various regions and problems. What's the national strategy towards Africa, Russia, China, the Middle East? How new is this? Does it envision cooperation with the United Nations? If you want to know more about the National Security Strategy, give us a call and ask your question. Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
Later in the program, historian Douglas Brinkley will join us to discuss how the Bush doctrine fits into the history of US foreign policy. And we'll ask why it emphasizes human dignity in favor of human rights.
NPR's Mike Shuster joins us now to answer questions about what this important document says. Mike is with us from our bureau in Los Angeles. Always good to have you on the show.
MIKE SHUSTER (NPR): Thanks, Neal.
CONAN: To what degree, Mike, is this a post-9/11 document?
SHUSTER: It feels very much like it's nearly 100 percent a post-September 11th document. There are some core ideas in this National Security Strategy that came with the Bush administration when it first took office in 2001. But from reading it, the emphasis on fighting terrorism, particularly terrorism of global reach, and basing the National Security Strategy of the United States on the nexus or what they say the crossroads of radicalism and technology, meaning weapons of mass destruction, focuses very sharply, the national security of the United States in the interests of the Bush administration, on the world as we know it after September 11th.
CONAN: In a way, the Bush I and Clinton administrations were groping for a national strategy following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Is this, do you think, the first real post-Cold War policy?
SHUSTER: Well, I think that senior members of the current Bush administration believe that it is. They look back--I think Secretary of State Colin Powell has even testified to Congress, and I think Condoleezza Rice as well, the national security adviser, that the collapse of communism from 1989 to 1991 and the attack of September 11th might be seen as bookends on a transitional period, essentially the 1990s, into a new period. And Secretary Powell, I think during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate, said that the United States has entered--that the post-Cold War period has ended, and this National Security Strategy just definitely feels like the Bush administration sees the United States having entered an entirely new period after September 11th last year.
CONAN: Well, that said, how much of this is actually new?
SHUSTER: Well, I think experts would probably say that there's nothing in it that's absolutely new, but that the mixture, the balance and the equilibrium between the United States emphasizing military force, pre-emption and the focus on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to multilateral and multinational kinds of efforts using international institutions, emphasizing diplomacy, that the balance has shifted greatly in this document; that in previous documents like this--and each administration is required to submit one to Congress--pre-emption was always there as a possibility. And, in fact, other American presidents have used pre-emption when they believed it was necessary to defend the United States. But the balance and the emphasis is so much different now that it feels like a new document with new ideas, even perhaps if they're not all entirely new.
CONAN: As you mentioned, Mike, every administration's required to submit a similar document to Congress. Most previous ones have not gotten this amount of attention in part because the president's instructions, at least as reported in the newspapers, `write it in plain English so the boys in Lubbock can understand it.'
SHUSTER: Yeah. They haven't gotten this much attention probably because some of the ideas expressed in earlier documents were not as sharply expressed and were not so much a departure from previous practices.
CONAN: Now I outlined a bit of the document in the introduction. Would you expand on what I was talking about? I mean, what are the principal themes to this document?
SHUSTER: Well, I think one of the most interesting is the first theme expressed in what they write as an overview of America's international strategy and then champion aspirations for human dignity. And I think this parallels something that President Bush expressed in his speech to the United Nations a couple of weeks ago. The document says, `The US National Security Strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.' And then it goes on to say that, `Embodying lessons from our past and using the opportunity we have today, the National Security Strategy of the United States must start from these core beliefs and look outward for possibilities to expand liberty.' And the focus on the core beliefs are beliefs drawn from the Declaration of Independence and from the Bill of Rights, essentially believing that all humans around the globe demand liberty and that governments are there to create liberty and freedom for them.
And President Bush in his speech to the General Assembly of the UN a couple of weeks ago said that it was not just a moral goal of the United States to support the liberty of Iraq, for instance, but it was a strategic goal to support the liberty of Iraq; that is, it is in the national interest of the United States and the national security interest of the United States to support liberty for the people of Iraq and now, in this document, for people around the globe. So they're tying notions of liberty that come from the way the United States emerged into the world and the values that have operated in the United States for more than 200 years. And they're saying that the expansion of those ideas is in the national security of the United States.
CONAN: It's a pretty idealistic thought in a way.
SHUSTER: Yes. But I think that you may find that when you talk to historians perhaps later in this program that these are themes that have been echoed throughout American history, throughout the more than 200 years of American history; that in the first century of the United States, the idea that foreign policy was used to preserve liberty for Americans--that is, to defend the United States against encroachment on the liberty of Americans. But then in the 20th century, it was a debate for more than a hundred years about whether extending liberty to other nations was in the national security interests of the United States.
CONAN: Our telephone number again is (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. If you have questions about what's in this document and what its intentions are, we'll do our best to answer them. And remember, it does address all of the parts of the world, at some point or another. It is what diplomats like to call a tour d'horizon, and so there is a lot in here. If you're interested in one particular region, give us a phone call.
Our first caller is Harochi(ph), who joins us on the line from San Francisco.
HAROCHI (Caller): Yes. I had a question for you regarding what Jeffrey Pfeffer at Stanford has called the knowing and doing gap. This document seems to have a lot of interesting things that we know that we should do, particularly on supporting democracy, fighting AIDS, literacy issues. Does it address how we actually intend to do that?
CONAN: Mike.
SHUSTER: No, it doesn't. It says that it is the national security policy of the United States to engender greater economic freedom and development around the world to encourage free trade, to confront the scourge of AIDS, to support education in the Third World. And it says that the United States, under the Bush administration, will do that. But it's simply a blueprint. It is not a road map in that sense of how the policies will be implemented. That's obviously for the day-to-day operations of the Bush administration to carry out.
CONAN: Harochi.
HAROCHI: That seems to be just sort of the important missing key in a lot of this, is that it seems to be a pattern generally, particularly with government documents, is that it's a lot of high-level 30,000-foot discussions on the `what' that we do. And really, the key here is in the `how,' and that's really where this could potentially get bogged down or it could run into problems or it really could be successful. I'd be curious to know who's leading the charge around figuring out how to actually execute on this, if there's anyone.
CONAN: Do you have any ideas on that, Mike?
SHUSTER: Well, obviously, in every administration, they set their goals--the White House sets its goals and then looks at the political line-up of forces, particularly in Congress, to see whether, in fact, those goals are achievable. And when there is a division of power and there are disagreements over what the goals are and how to get there, often, there's gridlock in government, which we've seen for quite some time. But I don't think that that necessarily obviates the need for an administration, for each administration, to at least establish the principles upon which it will act in the world, and the goals. And then issuing a document like this later on, the American public can take a look at whether the goals were good, whether the implementation was good and where the administration has taken the United States.
CONAN: Thanks very much for the call.
HAROCHI: All right. Thank you.
CONAN: Let's go now to Richard, who joins us from Laurel, Maryland.
RICHARD (Caller): Yeah. Hi. What I want to say just only takes 10 seconds. No war on Iraq, no war on Iraq, no war on Iraq, no war on Iraq, no war on Iraq, no war on Iraq!
CONAN: And, as promised, it was 10 seconds.
SHUSTER: Yeah.
CONAN: Does the document specifically address Iraq in any way?
SHUSTER: No. No, Neal, it doesn't specifically address Iraq. But implicitly, it includes Iraq in the list of rogue states and possible supporters of terrorism that the United States must confront. And I think that there's something in here that's very interesting that bears on the issue of Iraq. At one point, the document says, `Legal scholars and international jurists often condition the legitimacy of pre-emption,' which has been so much talked about, `on the existence of an imminent threat; most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies and air forces preparing to attack. We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries.'
And that's obviously what the Bush administration has been doing for quite some time now. But in his speech to the General Assembly of the UN a couple of weeks ago, President Bush called Iraq `a grave and gathering threat.' He did not call it a grave and imminent threat. And there seems to be then some kind of gap between the way the administration and the president sees Iraq precisely now and the principal of pre-emption that they would like to use possibly to attack Iraq sometime in the future.
CONAN: Well, might that have been incorporated in the idea of counterproliferation?
SHUSTER: Yes. But counterproliferation is also not a new idea. In fact, in the first Clinton administration, senior administration officials talked a lot about counterproliferation. They saw particularly the threat emerging from the insecurity of nuclear materials in Russia, were greatly concerned about that, and initially developed the strategy for more proactive aggressive and potentially military moves to counter the proliferation of those potential weapons, should they get into the hands not necessarily of terrorists at that point but of just people who had ill will against the United States. I...
CONAN: And...
SHUSTER: I'm sorry. Go ahead, Neal.
CONAN: I was just going to say briefly, an expression of that might have been the recent operation to remove potentially dangerous material from the former Yugoslavia.
SHUSTER: That's correct. And, in fact, it had a precedent in the Clinton administration I think in 1994 and 1995 when a similar operation removed highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan, as the Soviet Union had dissolved.
CONAN: We're talking with NPR's Mike Shuster about the Bush administration's National Security Strategy. We're going to come back from a short break and take more of your calls on this, (800) 989-TALK. Are you interested in how the policy applies to Russia, to China, the Middle East? Give us a call. That's (800) 989-8255. Or you can send us e-mail. That address is totn@npr.org. Will a policy of first strike make America more secure or more vulnerable? When we return, reactions from abroad.
I'm Neal Conan, and you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
We are talking about the Bush doctrine on foreign policy and military affairs, the National Security Strategy. It was released on Friday. It calls for exporting the principles of democracy, freedom and free markets and demands the dominance of America militarily. What questions do you have about this new policy? Give us a call, (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK.
And Mike Shuster is with us from our bureau in Los Angeles.
Let's go now to Kevin, who joins us from Sterling Heights, Michigan.
KEVIN (Caller): Good afternoon.
CONAN: Good afternoon.
KEVIN: My question concerns what the paper addresses for China, and it's a basically totalitarian government and how we're going to export free markets there without just turning them into a fascist state and their emerging superpower status.
CONAN: Is there any instruction on how to deal with China in this document?
SHUSTER: There is, Neal. The paper essentially says that the United States looks forward to the emergence of China on the world stage and points to China's economic progress over the last 20 to 25 years as a positive element, but then goes on to say that China, it believes, the Bush administration believes, is held back by the lack of political freedom in China and that China can only come into its own, it asserts, once a freer political system comes into play in China. It asserts essentially that the United States can work well with China and coexist with an emerging China, but then raises a couple of concerns, particularly about Taiwan, and asserts the United States' interest in defending Taiwan if China should try to seek to merge the two using force. So, in effect, it's a restatement of the policy that has been in effect for the United States and China for quite some time.
CONAN: But other than broad principles of calling for democracy everywhere, does it specifically address that in China?
SHUSTER: Yeah. It specifically says that China is held back by the lack of democracy in China, that the Chinese people will flourish to democracy and that the United States anticipates that that will be the trend in the future.
CONAN: Have we seen any reaction from China to this paper?
SHUSTER: Not that I'm aware of. I'm not absolutely certain, but not that I'm aware of. I don't think many nations so far have reacted specifically to the publication of this strategy. And the Chinese government is usually quite circumspect and careful in reacting to things like this.
CONAN: Kevin.
KEVIN: Thank you very much.
CONAN: Appreciate the phone call.
KEVIN: Take care.
CONAN: Reactions abroad to the Bush administration's foreign policy have often been a mixed bag of reluctant admiration or outright criticism. The foreign policy document repeats recent messages of the Bush administration that the US would act alone if allies are reticent to take action against a perceived threat. Included in that is a policy of first or pre-emptive strike.
Sam Gardiner joins us now. He's a retired Air Force colonel who's taught at the National Defense University. He's currently a visiting scholar at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm. We reached him today by phone in Arlington, Virginia. And, Colonel Gardiner, welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
Colonel SAM GARDINER (Retired, Air Force; National Defense University): Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: How is the idea of a Bush doctrine playing among Europeans? Is there reaction yet there?
Col. GARDINER: Well, there is, Neal. And, you know, the military part of it is not new. The pre-emption surfaced as long ago as January in a speech by Secretary Rumsfeld at the National Defense University. So I spent a good part of the summer testing with Europeans this notion of pre-emption and testing scenarios in which it might be applied. And frankly, the answer is it scares them a lot.
CONAN: Well, give us an example. And just to pick one, oh, hypothetical case, how about Iraq?
Col. GARDINER: Well, the Iraq thing has been discussed a lot, and I think we've heard a lot of reaction. But what I talked about with them was the next step. See, on the table--has been written about publicly--is a nuclear light water reactor at Bushehr in Iran. Israel has said that they can't stand to let it be completed. There are implications, if you read this strategy, that that will be next on the United States' list. Now whether or not that was intended, that's beside the point. But the Europeans are reading this as if, well, the next logical step after Iraq is Iran.
CONAN: Mike, that idea is certainly within this document.
SHUSTER: I think, in principle, the idea is embedded within the document. It's not spelled out specifically in any way, but Bush administration officials have spoken in public and testified before Congress on this. The Bush administration, like its predecessor, the Clinton administration, has made the issue of sharing Russian nuclear technology with Iran high on the priority list of dealing with Moscow. And, in fact, I think there are those in the administration who may be thinking about what kind of actions the United States can take if it cannot persuade through diplomacy Russia to modify or end its nuclear cooperation with Iraq.
CONAN: Sam Gardiner, I wonder, there are those who've said about the policy of pre-emption that if the United States reserves its ability to do this, certainly it would have less authority to prevent other places from doing this. Is that something that you've been running through as well?
Col. GARDINER: Well, as a matter of fact, it seems as part of this agreement that the president has nodded to Vladimir Putin that if he is interested in using pre-emption to go after the terrorists in Georgia, that that's OK. Now what that is connected to historically with the Russians is the argument that they have had for years that they have the authority to use military force in the near abroad. The near abroad they define as being the countries on their periphery.
CONAN: The former SSRs.
Col. GARDINER: Exactly. One of the scenarios that I actually spent a major part of my time talking about was tensions between the United States and Russia over the Baltic states, over Kaliningrad, that isolated part of Russia on the Baltic Sea, which is in the Russian near abroad and which could be a source of tension over the next years.
CONAN: Did you get any reaction, you know, as you went through these scenarios, which as you say can get pretty scary pretty quickly--any idea what the Europeans, other than being worried about it, anything they might do about it?
Col. GARDINER: Well, what I saw in the scenarios is maybe what we're seeing now, which is the `do' is not to cooperate. The `do' is to leave that to the United States, to say it another way. Secretary Rumsfeld will be in Warsaw this week.
CONAN: He's there now, I think, yeah.
Col. GARDINER: He's going to try and convince NATO to develop a rapid-reaction capability. Now when I talked to even NATO officials, the professional staff of NATO and Europeans, they see this as an attempt to make a connection between this extension of pre-emption. And I suspect, from what I've heard, he's going to run into a lot of trouble with the Europeans, trying to transform NATO, once the United States has this doctrine on the table. The secretary-general of NATO responded the last time Rumsfeld talked to them, very clearly saying NATO is not a pre-emptive alliance. NATO is a defensive alliance.
CONAN: Any longer-term problems that cropped up as you went through these scenarios?
Col. GARDINER: Well, yes. One which I don't hear many people talking about--and some of this I got from discussions in Finland, too--and that is with the Russians--you know, I know the president thinks he has a relationship with Putin, but I have to tell you that the Russian military planners, the strategists who do the kind of things that I do, will read this document as being very focused on them. It talks in the document about how to deal with great powers. It talks about pre-emption. And what the Russians are reading is this document, in line with what the secretary of Defense has said in his posture statement to the Congress, which is, `We're adding conventional capabilities to our nuclear deterrent.' The Russians were writing, oh, 18 months ago that they feared worse that the United States would attack them with its conventional capabilities, eliminate a good portion of their delivery capability, deal with the rest with the missile defense. I mean, so in ways, their worst fears are in this document.
CONAN: Thanks very much. Sam Gardiner is a retired Air Force colonel who taught at the National Defense University, now a visiting scholar at the Swedish National Defense College. And he spoke to us by phone from his office in Arlington, Virginia.
And let's get back to the phones. NPR's Mike Shuster is still with us. We are talking about the new National Security Strategy that was promulgated by the Bush administration, sent up to Congress last Friday.
Our next caller is Bruce, who's with us from Northfield, Minnesota.
BRUCE (Caller): Hello. I'm a former military analyst and a mathematician that spent a lot of time studying deterrence back when that was national policy, particularly mutual-assured destruction and all the things that led to, you know, the basic nuclear winter fears and everything.
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
BRUCE: And what I was wondering, this new strategy seems to be saying, `We don't want to ever get into that world again because it's untenable and--I mean, it's just too dangerous. We saw how nervous everybody was with just the small India-Pakistan thing last spring. And I'm wondering whether this strategy--remember the Treaty of Versailles said that the Germans couldn't do certain things after World War I. They couldn't build a big bomb, they couldn't build an air force and so forth. Is this kind of a return to that idea, but using the fact that maybe national technical means coupled with asymmetric force structures, coupled with a really aggressive free press can actually make that strategy work, that we can keep people from building weapons that will allow them to creep up to where they suddenly become a threat?
CONAN: Mike, is that detailed a thought in there?
SHUSTER: In fact, it is, Neal. And it's been discussed a great deal even before this paper was published on Friday. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld talks about it all the time. Toward the end of the document it says `We know from history that deterrence can fail and we know from experience that some enemies cannot be deterred. The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy whether a state or non-state actor to impose its will on the United States, our allies or friends. We will maintain'--I think this is the operative sentence. `We will maintain the forces sufficient to support our obligations and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States.'
This administration does not like that policy of deterrence and especially mutual assured destruction that kept the equilibrium during the Cold War. And they believe--Secretary Rumsfeld has stated it more than once in public that if the United States pursues a policy of strength in the maintenance of its dominance in all aspects globally that this will discourage any other nation or combination of nations from making the commitment in financial resources and political resources to try to match or surpass the United States in strength.
CONAN: But does it say how it would intend the United States to preserve the military advantages that it currently enjoys. I mean, for example, would it prevent other nations or groups of nations from acquiring those capabilities or just keep ahead?
SHUSTER: I think it implies both. It implies that for nations like Russia, where the United States could not act to, in effect, disarm them, that it will keep ahead and that it will use other means to improve the relationship with Russia. But in other aspects, it implies that it will act--you raised the issue of counterproliferation earlier on--that it will act to destroy, if necessary, if the acquiring of weapons of mass destruction from states hostile to the United States if it sees that as a threat.
CONAN: Bruce?
BRUCE: A follow up then?
CONAN: Yeah.
BRUCE: Do you see us eventually going to countries with Britain as our partner, I presume, like Argentina and saying, `I'm sorry but you don't need submarines. There's no credible threat to provide you with submarines and we're going to sink your subs if you don't do it yourself'?
SHUSTER: I don't think that this particular document addresses that, particularly--it doesn't address the buildup of conventional military forces around the world. It asserts that the United States is stronger than any nation in terms of conventional forces, but what it focuses on in terms of counterproliferation and the preemption of a threat is specifically and totally on weapons of mass destruction.
CONAN: And interestingly, Argentina and Brazil, examples of a success of non-proliferation, I guess the previous theory, when they mutually agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons and the missiles required to deliver them.
SHUSTER: That's right.
CONAN: Bruce, thanks very much for the call.
BRUCE: Thank you.
CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Mike, the document repeatedly uses the phrase `human dignity.' We've become accustomed--you know, going, again, back to the days of the Cold War--to the reiteration of the phrase `human rights.' Is there a distinction here?
SHUSTER: Well, I think that there--and perhaps in reality there's not a distinction, but the writers of this document preferred to use language that they found, I think, at first in the Declaration of Independence and then later in the Bill of Rights that connects with the core values upon which the United States was founded and based. In the document it says `America's experience'--I like this aspect of it, `America's experience as a great multiethnic democracy affirms our conviction that people of many heritages and faiths can live and prosper in peace. Our own history is a long struggle to live up to our ideals. But even in our worst moments, the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were there to guide us. As a result, America is not just a stronger but is a freer and more just society.'
So I think that the writers of this document were reaching into the past and to the original documents that founded that United States for the kind of language that they wanted to put forth to establish the principles upon which US foreign policy will now be based.
CONAN: Some of that language you were just talking about is almost reminiscent of candidate George W. Bush when he was talking about injecting more humility into US foreign policy.
SHUSTER: Yes. But the truth is that this is not an especially humble document and I think a number of people have pointed out that candidate George Bush's remarks along those lines during debates in the 2000 election haven't been reiterated in the same language since he came into office and especially since his foreign policy has emerged over the past year.
CONAN: Here's an e-mail question relating to that military supremacy idea we were talking about just a couple of minutes ago. This from David Walker(ph). `This plan,' he writes, `sounds an awful lot like the British plan to have a navy larger than the next two largest navies combined. Once they gave up an idea they gave up in the 1920s when it was obvious the USA could outcompete them if it wanted to. Does this doctrine,' he asks, `mean that we will go to war with China in the next decade to prevent them from economically passing the US and thus becoming a rival superpower in the middle of the 21st century?'
SHUSTER: Well, of course, we can't predict under what circumstances the United States might take military action, hypothetically, in the future in any scenario, China or otherwise. But I think it'd be interesting to put that question about the parallel between the United States now and Britain in the late 19th century. I think historians may tend to say that Britain was the preeminent global power at that time, but wasn't as powerful and didn't have such a lead over all other nations as the United States does now, and that there was a competitive environment and atmosphere in the world, particularly for colonies, that led to conflicts very quickly after Britain had gained its supremacy over the seas.
This document asserts that that competition no longer exists between great powers on the globe, that for the first time in hundreds of years, nation-states are willing to compete in peace to work together to extend human freedom around the world. That's the vision of the globe that this document puts forward.
CONAN: And interestingly, that British supremacy at sea was later negotiated in a multilateral agreement. The London and later Washington naval agreements that set formulas for capital ships, battleships in those days, between the United States and Britain were equal. I think Japan and Italy were at a lower level, also equal. Didn't work out. World War II broke out later.
We're talking about the Bush administration's new national security doctrine and we'll be back with more in a moment.
It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Tomorrow, author Bruce Feiler joins us for a discussion of the pivotal role that one man plays in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Abraham. That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION.
Today we're talking about the Bush administration's national security strategy. Our guest is NPR's diplomatic correspondent, Mike Shuster. He's with us from our bureau in Los Angeles.
Presidents have always tried to make a mark by redefining new courses, either in foreign or domestic policy. So how much of a departure is the Bush doctrine? How does it fit in the history of policymaking by presidents? Joining us now is Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans. He's on the line with us from New Orleans.
And always good to have you on the program.
Professor DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (University of New Orleans): Oh, thanks for having me.
CONAN: How is this Bush doctrine--for example, how does it compare to his predecessor, President Bill Clinton?
Prof. BRINKLEY: Oh, I think it's quite a departure from Bill Clinton. The Clinton years, they were trying to find a post-Cold War term on something that would transplant containment. The Soviet Union had broken up and they had what they called the Kennon Sweepstakes(ph) in the White House and they eventually came up with a term that never really took off, but it was called `democratic enlargement.' That really became the national security policy, if you'd like, during the Clinton years. And what Democratic enlargement entailed was the continuation of NATO enlargement, which was very controversial throughout the '90s, and also the enlargement of the belief that democracy comes to countries when they can buy American exports, when they have a middle-class consumer culture. So it was kind of a democracy through trade, democracy through enlarging the most successful security organization, NATO, to guarantee success in Europe.
So it was always a multilateral sort of approach, with the United States clearly taking the lead on free trade and on security issues, and you could see the success of Democratic enlargement on the military sense in Bosnia, where peacekeepers did come together and finally, after quite a struggle, were able to secure peace in that region and to try some of the people who were behind the genocide that occurred in former Yugoslavia.
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
Prof. BRINKLEY: By contrast, the Bush doctrine is very much a go-it-alone approach. There are some lines in there that do talk about global cooperation. But by and large, the 33-page document, which will be talked about by historians forever, the Bush doctrine, says, `You know what? It's a New World Order now and warfare is not traditional, so we have the right, the United States, if we think somebody is going to be attacking us, we don't need to even go to the UN or we don't have to talk to anybody. We're a sovereign country. And if we feel threatened, we reserve the right--in fact, we're putting it in a doctrine--to strike at that country.' Now, of course, this means Iraq and it could very well be that it is the best policy to go into Iraq right now. But the problem with the Bush doctrine, by putting it as a doctrine, it smells of American arrogance. It is simply saying, `We do what we want when we feel like it and we will declare war on anybody if we think they might be declaring war on us.' If we just stop for a minute and say, `Does that mean that India can say, "We think Pakistan doesn't like us and they're harboring some weapons there, so we're going to go strike them and have war with Pakistan"?' You could do that all over the world and we'd have a very unruly place.
So I think the Bush doctrine is a doctrine of American exceptionalism and it's one of American ignominy and it's a document, I think, that creates great problems with the United States operating as a leader of an alliance or as the leading member of the United Nations. It's a bit of a go-it-alone lone wolf kind of approach and I'm not sure that it was the smartest crystallization of Bush policy that should have come out at this particular moment. It might play well, as George Bush said, with the boys in Lubbock, it might play well with his constituents and it might even play well in public opinion polls in this country, but it seems very retrogressive, if one studies the history of the 20th century, in trying to get countries to work together in unison to promote democracy.
We're supposed to be all together against Iraq right now, not the world very angry at the United States. So I think it was a muddled document and mistaken when it was issued.
CONAN: In terms of the timing, in any case.
Prof. BRINKLEY: Yes.
CONAN: Now in his speech to the United Nations a couple of weeks ago, President Bush reminded everybody that the United States was, of course, a founding, a charter member of the United Nations. Is this document out of sync with everything that has come on since the United Nations charter in terms of international cooperation?
Prof. BRINKLEY: I think it shows a great deal of disrespect to the United Nations. As you said, we were--I actually did a book called "FDR and the Creation of the UN" with Yale Press some years back, trying to show just the role the United States had for our self-interest. We didn't join the UN or try to create it to be good guys. We were doing it for the self-interest of ourselves and the world. And I think Bush's speech was terrific. He came and addressed the UN and explained to them the very real problem that we're facing in Iraq and why it's of such concern in his administration. And he gave the UN all of a couple days to digest it, and as soon as Saddam Hussein made what was a very predictable offer to let inspectors in, but he knew there were going to be some strings tied to it, boom, the Bush doctrine gets issued, which works in the sense of scaring Saddam Hussein, not letting him off the hook, telling people we're not going to fall for any of his tricks.
But to put it in a doctrinaire fashion instead of dealing with it state by state, our problem right now is with Iraq, not with, oh, every country in the Middle East. We're not--I think that it creates a disappointment in the United Nations with the US government, and I think it's going to make it a little harder to ally-build if we go to war with Iraq, although we do have Britain on our side and Italy and Spain, Turkey and some other countries. It would have been very nice to have been able to have the full gusto of the United Nations behind a military effort that's going to take nation-building. If we are successful in regime change in Iraq, we're going to then have to get into the rebuilding of Iraq stage and we really could use the help of the United Nations in an endeavor like that. So I feel that it was a little too much of a bellicose document which wasn't necessary to be launched last week. Although they did have to present to Congress their blueprint, their proposal, it seemed to me the language should have been toned down considerably.
CONAN: Mike, I wonder if--do you detect in this a consistent ideology, if you will, a consistent theory of the way states and the world works?
SHUSTER: I think that there is a consistent set of assumptions about the way states work and how the United States ought to be in the world. And I think certainly one of the fundamentals is that the United States must be very strong and must act to prohibit other nations from getting as strong as the United States. And that works not only in general sort of geopolitical strategy, but also vis-a-vis specific weapons, like weapons of mass destruction, that--this document takes a position that it is not through international treaties or multilateral action or, I think it would even suggest, naive attempts to persuade other nations to act along with the United States, but in being tough, being strong and being willing to take action when and if there seems to be a threat to the United States that will stop other nations from acquiring weapons and trying to challenge the United States.
CONAN: Let's go back to the phones. Our next caller is A.J., who joins us from Concord, New Hampshire.
A.J. (Caller): Good afternoon, Neal.
CONAN: Good afternoon.
A.J.: And good afternoon to your guests. Just a bit of a concern. The term, I feel, `preemption' is severely misused. What President Kennedy did in '61 with the Cuban missile crisis when he took his photographs to the UN and said, `The Soviets have parked their missiles in our back yard,' that was preemption. He was preempting the Soviets from getting an unfair advantage. It just seems as though what the Bush administration is doing is prevention. They've got no evidence, no photographs, they haven't made a compelling case to the world community, yet they've got some theories about what Hussein's intentions are, and based on that, to play it safe, they're going to launch an attack. And I think it's deeply distressing and frightening when you can use that line of reasoning to topple governments. And I'll take my response off the air. Thank you.
CONAN: Thanks very much for the call.
Douglas Brinkley, do you see an analogy?
Prof. BRINKLEY: Well, I agree with what the caller said and I do see an analogy. The shame of the Bush doctrine is that it's being applied everywhere in the world. It gives this notion now that what the United States stands for is that anytime we feel we have a hunch that a government does not like us and that may be planning in their drawing room something against the United States, we reserve the right to wipe that country out. The problem with that, if people are supposed to model themselves after our country, the United States, if we are the city on the hill and the great democratic country, we want people to follow the way that we do things, how can we ever justify any other country having a doctrine like that?
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
Prof. BRINKLEY: So it really is a bit of American exceptionalism. And to me, it's a continuation of two long history concepts: Manifest Destiny is really belief that an American exceptionalism and that somehow we have a God-given, ordained right to kind of oversee the world, and it also--it smacks of the Monroe Doctrine, which was, of course, directed just toward the Western Hemisphere. By 1905 Theodore Roosevelt, so-called, put teeth in the Monroe Doctrine with the Great White Fleet that we really could defend this hemisphere. It's kind of telling the world that any moment if we don't like what we see brewing somewhere, the United States doctrine is we will snuff it out before it becomes a problem.
And I just think as a doctrine, there's something oddly Dr. Strangelove about it. It's something a little--it's too much. I think what would have been much better served was to focus directly on our security issues with Iraq, because I think the Bush administration is right, that the UN's been weak in not allowing these inspectors in.
CONAN: Well, a bit of the--excuse me just a second. I have to say that you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
But Iraq is not a grand strategic problem, which is what this paper addresses.
Prof. BRINKLEY: Right.
CONAN: It's, you know, in that respect, almost a tactical concern at this point.
Prof. BRINKLEY: Well, I think the Bush administration's arguing the grand strategic problem is a new group of rogue states, and I think hence that whole axis of evil that it's not just Iraq, that it's Iran, it's North Korea, it's possibly Syria, it's possibly Yemen. It's a number of countries that we feel are rogue countries. And so it kind of is a broad-based look that at any moment that this is what we may do to those countries.
CONAN: OK. Let's get another caller in. Michael joins us on the line from Kansas City.
MICHAEL (Caller): Hello, Neal.
CONAN: Hello.
MICHAEL: Thank you for having me.
CONAN: Sure.
MICHAEL: The Kansas City Star was reporting on this matter last Friday and, let's see, it was Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, political science professor, and he was--well, let's see, the quote goes like this: "The Bush administration has used the term `preemptive war' and `anticipatory self-defense' in its doctrine to shroud what is essentially preventive war," and that's the end of the quote. It goes on to say a little bit about how preventive war of that nature is in direct violation of international law because President Bush hasn't actually presented any kind of real evidence towards the fact that Saddam Hussein or any other people have...
CONAN: Right.
MICHAEL: ...weapons of mass destruction.
CONAN: Mike, does the document address the question of international law on this, the legality of any of this?
SHUSTER: Yes. In fact, I read from a passage that cited international law and the finding of legal scholars about the use of preemptive action in the face of imminent threat. And I think that's one of the most interesting things about the document, as I said earlier, as opposed to the things that President Bush said before the United Nations a couple of weeks ago, that this essentially asserts the right of the United States to act anticipating an imminent threat, but that President Bush did not use that word `imminent threat.' He used the word `grave and gathering threat' before the United Nations. And as I said before, I think that there is, in fact, a gap in the argument between what--the argument that President Bush made before the UN and the argument for preemption that this national security strategy makes.
CONAN: Michael, thanks very much.
MICHAEL: I have another question, if you don't mind.
CONAN: If you can keep it quick.
MICHAEL: All right. The criticism ...(unintelligible) peacemakers on this Earth since the dawn of history have said that peace and freedom cannot be brought by war. So why does the Bush administration think that they're different?
Prof. BRINKLEY: Because peace and freedom is brought by war, as we saw in World War II. There are wars, good wars, wars that are essential. The evil that Hitler was wrecking in Europe and that Japan was in the Pacific needed to be met and the only way to do it was to build up America's military arsenal and defeat the scoundrels. Saddam Hussein may very well need to be defeated by American military or a coalition military. But the problem, I think, we're discussing today is, do we put it in this kind of doctrine to say this is what the United States' foreign policy is all about instead of looking at something case by case, instead of giving it this sort of broad, bellicose, war-hawkish (unintelligible) represent our government?
MICHAEL: So anyways ...(unintelligible) military ideology and so is Bush...
CONAN: Michael, I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks very much for the call, though.
MICHAEL: Thank you.
CONAN: And, Douglas Brinkley, thank you for being with us today.
Prof. BRINKLEY: Hey, thank you.
CONAN: Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, and he joined us from his office in New Orleans. And we were also--of course, always a pleasure to have Mike Shuster with us, NPR's diplomatic correspondent on the line with us from our bureau in Los Angeles. Thanks, Mike.
SHUSTER: You're welcome, Neal.
CONAN: In Washington, I'm Neal Conan, NPR News.
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