The New American Empire?
Americans have an enduring aversion to planting the flag on foreign soil. Is that attitude changing?
More ambitious than pre-emption is the sometimes overlooked assertion that the United States will remain powerful enough to keep potential adversaries from a military buildup that would surpass or equal the power of the United States. Reflecting the thinking of Wolfowitz, who proposed elevating the same principle to doctrine after the Gulf War in the first Bush administration, the idea goes beyond pre-emption to something like prevention. Critics charge that this effectively cancels the doctrines of containment and deterrence, though the Bush Doctrine says that it does not. And in the current flare-up of tensions with North Korea, Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that the United States will rely on containment. The notion of prevention does, however, tie in with the doctrine's assertion that the age of great-power rivalries is over: It is a warning against any unfriendly would-be rival to America's unipolar supremacy.
Some critics argue that the Bush Doctrine is naive in suggesting that the age of great power rivalries is over, but on this point Rice is unyielding: "I think it is hard to make an argument that the future we face includes the kind of great power rivalries that we saw from the 17th century to the 20th century, which led to war and efforts to redraw the map. It's a wonderful academic debate, but I would have to say that if you look where the threats are--the spread of weapons of mass destruction, irresponsible states, the threat of extremism--the great powers have a great deal of common interest in confronting those trends."
But does the assertion of American pre-eminence represent the abandonment of multilateralism? Again, the doctrine would suggest not. It is replete with affirmations of the importance of the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and other alliances. But this multilateralism is definitely of the FDR variety and not of the Woodrow Wilson strain: It embraces cooperation without the loss of sovereignty. It will not sign on to all international agreements or wait for international bodies to take action on urgent matters, such as the threat of Iraq. Indeed, says a senior administration official, "Iraq is now an example of what happens when the United States puts something on the agenda and then brings the rest of the world to that position by, in this case, reinvigorating the most important multilateral institution, which is the [U.N.] Security Council."
In addition to identifying the key threats of our time, the strategic means of responding to them, and the importance of great-power cooperation, the Bush Doctrine contains another central element that until recently received little attention: a commitment to extending peace by "encouraging free and open societies on every continent." The Bush team knew that this salient point would be overshadowed by debates over preemption and charges of naked unilateralism. Some members even resisted bringing up the preemption principle for that reason. But in recent weeks, with Haass speaking in public forums on democracy promotion in the Islamic world and Powell talking about development projects in the Middle East, this aspect of the doctrine is beginning to receive more attention. And, of course, more criticism as well. Some say that it smacks of the "goo-goo idealism" of Wilson; others, that it chauvinistically asserts the universality of liberal values. Indeed, in an age given over to value relativism, the latter may be the most radical aspect of the doctrine. As Haass affirmed in his recent address to the Council on Foreign Relations, the administration does not view the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as "just lifestyles America thinks it ought to export." Nor is this simply posturing. Haass concedes that the United States had for too long turned a blind eye on Middle Eastern regimes that have suppressed those rights. While that might have been justifiable as geopolitical jockeying during the Cold War, he says, it no longer is.
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