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Bush to Restate Terror Strategy    [

    President Reaffirms Pre-emptive War Doctrine
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 16 March 2006

    Washington - Undaunted by the difficult war in Iraq, President Bush reaffirmed his strike-first policy against terrorists and enemy nations today and said Iran may pose the biggest challenge for America.

    In a 49-page national security report, the president said diplomacy is the U.S. preference in halting the spread of nuclear and other heinous weapons.

    "If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur - even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," Bush wrote.

    Titled "National Security Strategy," the report summarizes Bush's plan for protecting America and directing U.S. relations with other nations. It is an updated version of a report Bush issued in 2002.

    In the earlier report a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush underscored his administration's adoption of a pre-emptive policy, marking the end of a deterrent military strategy that dominated the Cold War.

    The latest report makes it clear Bush hasn't changed his mind, even though no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

    "When the consequences of an attack with weapons of mass destruction are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. ... The place of pre-emption in our national security strategy remains the same," Bush wrote.

    The report had harsh words for Iran. It accused the regime of supporting terrorists, threatening Israel and disrupting democratic reform in Iraq. Bush said diplomacy to halt Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons work must prevail to avert a conflict.

    "This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," Bush said.

    He did not say what would happen if international negotiations with Iran failed. The Bush administration currently is working to persuade Russia and China to support a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran end its uranium enrichment program.

    A top Iranian official said Thursday that his country was ready to open direct talks with the United States over Iraq, marking a major shift in Tehran's foreign policy a day after an Iraqi leader called for such talks. Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator and secretary of the country's Supreme National Security Council, told reporters that any talks between the United States and Iran would deal only with Iraqi issues.

    But any direct dialogue between Tehran and Washington - were it to happen - also could be a beginning for negotiations between the two foes over Iran's suspect nuclear program.

    White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the United States was ready to talk with Iran about Iraq. But he also said that any discussions must be restricted to that topic and not include other contentious subjects like Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

    Bush also had tough words for North Korea, which he said poses a serious nuclear proliferation challenge, counterfeits U.S. currency, traffics in narcotics, threatens its neighbors and starves its people.

    "The North Korean regime needs to change these polices, open up its political system and afford freedom to its people," Bush said. "In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct."

    Bush issued rebukes to Russia and China and called Syria a tyranny that harbors terrorists and sponsors terrorist activity.

    On Russia, Bush said recent trends show a waning commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions. "Strengthening our relationship will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic, that Russia adopts," he said.

    The United States also is nudging China down a road of reform and openness.

    "China's leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world," Bush wrote.

    He said these "old ways" include enlarging China's military in a non-transparent way, expanding trade, yet seeking to direct markets rather than opening them up, and supporting energy-rich nations without regard to their misrule or misbehavior at home or abroad.

    In 2002, when he sent his first report to Congress, Bush was struggling to persuade U.S. allies to join an offensive to topple Saddam Hussein.

    Since then, the oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan was replaced by a freely elected government. In Iraq, citizens voted in the nation's first free election, a constitution was passed by referendum and nearly 12 million Iraqis elected a permanent government.

    Challenges remain in Iraq, where sectarian violence threatens the fragile government and the U.S. death toll has topped 2,300. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Iraq's political transition will take a couple of years. Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced it was moving about 700 additional U.S. troops into Iraq from Kuwait because of the escalating killings there and fears that a Shiite holiday would spark even more violence.

    "When the Iraqi government, supported by the coalition, defeats the terrorists, terrorism will be dealt a critical blow," Bush said, acknowledging that the fight against terrorism was far from over.

    The report is laden with strategies for advancing democracy across the globe, a theme of Bush's second inaugural address.

    The president said his administration was advancing this goal by holding high-level meetings at the White House with democratic reformers in repressive nations; using foreign aid to support fair elections, women's rights and religious freedom; and pushing to abolish human trafficking.

    Countering suggestions that he favors a go-it-alone approach to foreign policy, Bush emphasized multilateral problem-solving.

    "Many of the problems we face - from the threat of pandemic disease to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to terrorism, to human trafficking, to natural disasters - reach across borders," he said.

    "Effective multinational efforts are essential to solve these problems. Yet history has shown that only when we do our part will others do theirs. America must continue to lead."

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    Bush to Restate Terror Strategy
    By Peter Baker
    The Washington Post

    Thursday 16 March 2006

2002 doctrine of pre-emptive war reaffirmed.

    President Bush issued 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 U.S. 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."

    In a letter introducing the new strategy document, Bush also said, "We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country. We seek to shape the world, not merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better instead of being at their mercy."

    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 officially released the 49-page National Security Strategy today ahead of 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 yesterday.

    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.