The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

F O C U S 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 action before a threat materializes — has typically been shunned. The president remains unapologetic for challenging this understanding. “If we wait for threats to fully mate- rialize, we will have waited too long,” he told West Point cadets in June 2002. “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.” Preventive war as advocated by the Bush administra- tion is intertwined with the second premise of the Bush doctrine: namely, that of spreading democratic values. The decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power went beyond simply eliminating a nuisance or a potential threat. It was intended to dislodge a tyrant and establish a democratic government in Iraq. As such, the Bush Doctrine goes beyond the narrow focus of discouraging rogue states from attacking the United States. Equally important is the demonstration effect that is expected to carry over to other rogue regimes: “Do you want this to happen to you?” With its coercive posture, U.S. policy aims to convince despotic regimes to forgo their autocratic ways, or else suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein. This ostensibly applies both to states that do directly threaten the United States, and those that don’t. But there’s a problem: it doesn’t work. The Bush Doctrine fails chiefly because the third element — the assumption of unchallenged American dominance — cannot be sustained indefinitely. And our adversaries know that. Dominant, Not Omnipotent The U.S. has sufficient power to engage in a war to change a regime such as SaddamHussein’s, and can do so in the face of opposition from other powerful states, including China, Russia, France and Germany. As for our power to deter other nation-states from attacking us, our nuclear arsenal alone, irrespective of our political and economic power, is sufficient to devastate entire nations if not the globe. This power has been instrumental in safeguarding U.S. security, particularly since the advent of long-range weapons. A number of countries have the capability to attack the United States, but all have been deterred from doing so. The odd thing is that, despite all this power, Americans feel profoundly insecure. And in one respect, at least, such feelings are justified. Al-Qaida obviously disdains international law, but is equally undeterred by our retaliatory power. Meanwhile, recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan are demonstrating each day that America, while powerful, is hardly omnipotent. Frustrated by the fact that they would feel so insecure after having spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars per year on defense, Americans cry out for a national security strategy that does what it is advertised to do: advance national security. Knowing that power is limited, and that resources must be deployed in a careful and judicious manner, scholars schooled in the realist tradition look to other major powers to do some of the heavy lifting in the inter- national system. Driven largely by self-interest, these regional powers may take action against rogue states that threaten them. They might also intervene in the internal affairs of neighboring states if humanitarian crises give rise to dangerous disorder. Some people, reluctant to sign on to the “old” realist theory of balance of power, yet convinced of our nation’s limited means, favor burden-sharing through the United Nations, or a similar institution empowered to enforce international norms of behavior. The shortcomings of this approach were first revealed during the late 1990s. While professing great sympathy for the goals of the United Nations as an institution, the Clinton administration showed its impatience with the United Nations when it circumvented the world body twice in a matter of six months, first to launch air strikes against Iraq (Desert Fox) in late 1998 and then to launch a war against Serbia in the spring of 1999. The most committed multilateralists must concede that, in the end, national power is what prevails. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, admits as much. During remarks delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations late last year Scowcroft, a member of a high-level panel appointed by the secre- tary general to study U.N. reform, explained: “In the end … if one of the permanent members of the Security Council or a major state considers something to be in its vital interest, the U.N. is not going to be able to do any- thing about it.” That, he went on to say, “is [the] imper- fect nature of the body that we have.” Imperfect and uncertain. It is hardly surprising that North Korea and Iran, both rogue states by the Bush