Bush Report to Outline Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, September 21, 2002

Bush Report to Outline Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes

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The United States government was to publish its first national security strategy on Friday, formally shifting US military strategy toward pre-emptive strikes from the Cold War strategy of deterrence, the New York Times reported.

The strategy document will also state for the first time that the United States will never allow its military supremacy to be challenged the way it was during the cold war, said the newspaper,which released the full text of the document.

Titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," the 33-page document offers the first comprehensive explanation of the foreign policy of the administration of President George W. Bush, from defense strategy to global warming.

The document declares that the strategies of containment and deterrence -- staples of American policy since the 1940's -- are all but dead. There is no way in this changed world, the document states, to deter those who "hate the United States and everything for which it stands."

It argues that while the United States will seek allies in the battle against terrorism, "we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively." That includes "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities" not to aid terrorists. This is the essence of the doctrine Bush declared on the night of Sept. 11, 2001.

One of the most striking elements of the new strategy document is its insistence "that the president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago."

The new strategy departs significantly from the last one published by President Bill Clinton at the end of 1999.

Clinton's strategy dealt at length with tactics to prevent the kind of financial meltdowns that threatened economies in Asia and Russia. The Bush strategy urges other nations to adopt Bush's own economic philosophy, starting with low marginal tax rates.

While Clinton's strategy relied heavily on enforcing or amending a series of international treaties, Bush's strategy dismisses most of those efforts.

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