The Bush strategy at war.

• Author: Berman, Ilan

QUIETLY, and largely away from the public eye, a revolution has begun in American strategic thinking. The endeavor currently being pursued by the Bush Administration is breathtaking in scope, entailing a re-examination of virtually all the traditional elements of U.S. strategic posture. And while its contours are just becoming visible, this blueprint has already begun to reshape world affairs.

The reconception now emerging in American strategy, articulated partly in the September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), can be defined by three distinct revolutions--each of which is already being put into practice by the Bush Administration. The first involves the way in which the United States uses force in the post-9/11 world. The NSS makes a convincing case that the concept of imminent threats must be amended to take into account "the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries": the amorphous nature of today's terrorism, the availability of weapons of mass destruction and the sinister possibility of a synergy of these elements with rogue states. In response, it codifies America's fight to act proactively to neutralize gathering dangers, declaring such moves to be a necessary and legal response to new global realities.

These new parameters of power are hardly limited to the theoretical. Indeed, they were prominently on display in the war against Iraq that the United States and its "coalition of the willing" waged in the spring of 2003. The Bush Administration's rationale for regime change in Baghdad hinged on the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction, and on the frightening possibility that a confluence of objectives could prompt the transfer of such tools of destruction to terrorists. The need for a preventive response, in turn, served as the guiding principle behind Washington's subsequent decision to resort to military action.

The second revolution in strategic thinking deals with how the United States defines defense. From its early days in office, the Bush Administration has worked actively to alter the Cold War-era strategic mindset that had held sway, quite counterintuitively, well into the 1990s. Even before September 11, it directed a wide-ranging reevaluation of America's strategic posture, launching the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) under the auspices of the Department of Defense. The September 11 attacks underscored the salience of the QDR's recommendations, released just days later, of a capabilities-based strategic posture able to assure allies, dissuade adversaries, deter aggression and--if necessary--decisively defeat undeterrable enemies.

Since then, the White House has moved decisively to enshrine this paradigm shift. With Russia, it has launched a comprehensive overhaul of strategic ties. Building on the recommendations of the QDR, the Congressionally-mandated January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review officially removed Russia as the principal strategic threat to the United States, setting the stage for the sweeping bilateral reductions in strategic arsenals codified by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin later that year in the Moscow Treaty. And, at home, Washington's June 2002 withdrawal from the ABM Treaty paved the way for President Bush's subsequent decision to construct a near-term, "initial set of missile defense capabilities."

The third and final transformation encompasses the way the United States approaches proliferation. In response to perceived inadequacies in existing arms control arrangements, the White House has placed emphasis on active counterproliferation as the hallmark of successful efforts to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Building on that theme, President Bush announced in late-May 2003 the establishment of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a loose-knit alliance intended to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction, as a supplement to existing arms control measures.

This initiative has since blossomed into a significant partnership. (1) Two subsequent meetings, in June and July 2003, have fleshed out the core principles for the grouping: strengthening existing international security agreements, stepped-up intelligence-sharing among PSI member-states and active proliferation prevention through coordinated air, land and sea interdiction efforts. As such, the PSI represents a signal strategic development--the evolution of arms control into a proactive nonproliferation tool.

The Strategy Beyond Baghdad

QUITE clearly, the war with Iraq constituted the first concrete manifestation of these new principles. The conceptual underpinning of the Bush Administration's decision to go to war revolved around the need to prevent, by any means necessary, the acquisition of "catastrophic power" by rogue states and terrorist groups--in a word, pre-emption. And yet, despite both its significance and its current international prominence, Iraq represents only one part of a substantially larger picture. Beyond Baghdad, a number of high-profile crises now confront the emerging American strategy.

Foremost among these is North Korea. The current political stalemate on the Korean Peninsula is a product of Pyongyang's unexpected October 2002 revelation of its clandestine nuclear program. Since then, North Korea has...