Sat, Feb 05, 2005 page9

• Bush doctrine phase two: the spread of freedom worldwide

  • By Yuan Jing-dong
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  In his second inauguration speech, US President George W. Bush called for the spread of human liberty and freedom to all corners of the world. This was a speech full of American ideas and ideals and one that recalled other historical moments in the short chronicle of the young republic -- from Woodrow Wilson, to Franklin Roosevelt, to Harry Truman. Take the following:

  "So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

  Almost 58 years ago, appearing before a joint session of Congress seeking US$400 million for Greece and Turkey, Truman made a similar appeal: "It must be the policy of the United States" to support their efforts to resist "subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." It was a call to arms to resist the spread of communism, an ideology seen as a serious threat to liberty and democracy. The Truman Doctrine ushered in the strategy of containment as the core of postwar US national security policy.

  However, the strategy of containment was limited in its scope and applied in a more defensive manner, with clearly defined objectives: to resist Soviet communist expansionism to regions critical to US strategic interests -- Europe and East Asia. But Bush's call for freedom envisions a much grander objective and with a much more sweeping reach.

  World Transformation

  Now the very security, prosperity and wellbeing of the US will depend on whether the idea and ideal of human liberty and freedom could transform the entire world. This is a tall order that demands a level of determination and commitments of resources and resolve that America, powerful as it is, may ill afford and indeed be unwise to execute.

  The US' power in the post-Cold War world is unprecedented. Never before in history have economic wealth, technological advances, and military prowess concentrated in one single country. The US' national security strategies since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Communism have been to maintain, consolidate and expand American primacy to prevent any potential competitor(s) from arising to challenge its unipolar position in the international system.

  The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the growing threats of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems convince the neoconservatives that the world will never be safe for America unless and until this conditions pertains: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

  The issue is not about whether the expansion of freedom and the success of liberty across the globe are something to be praised -- they are, albeit with different interpretations and emphasis in different parts of the world and with different cultures and traditions; the issue is how this ideal is to be achieved. Here lies the second phase of the Bush doctrine, whose first phase emphasized military preemption, unilateralism, and the pursuit of absolute security.

  Preserving Primacy

  There is a strong continuity between the first and the second phase. Indeed, proponents of the Bush doctrine have argued that the US should take advantage of the unique opportunity (unipolarity) to use its primacy to build a balance of power favoring freedom. Given the nature of the threats to its security interests, the US should not hesitate and must be willing to exercise its military power to defend itself and further advance its primacy.

  This inclination toward unilateralism and absolute security manifested itself even before Sept. 11. The administration rejected the Kyoto protocol on climate change and the protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, had gone ahead with missile defense plans, and withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Sept. 11 attacks further reinforced the notion that traditional approaches to handling security could no longer be relied upon to deal with emerging new threats.

  In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush described North Korea, Iraq and Iran as constituting the "axis of evils" -- states that repress their own people and arm to threaten world peace and US interests -- and asserted that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." America's response, according to the National Security Strategy of the US released one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, would be: "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

  The US invasion of Iraq was the culmination of this strategy of preemption.

  More Questions

  The Bush doctrine has drawn heated debates and criticisms at home and from abroad. Widely perceived as departing from the traditional US defense posture of deterrence and retaliation, the new emphasis on preemption raises a series of questions. One is the legality of attacking another sovereign state even though the imminence of threats is not clear. Another is its erosive effect on international norms and institutions. Yet a third is the precedent that the US' application of preemption sets for other states and regions where temptation to resort to the use of force to resolve international conflict could rise.

  The wisdom of preemption and use of force is now heatedly debated. The Iraqi situation does not offer much optimism, at least not for some time to come. The anticipated impact on the greater Middle East has been dubious at best. Indeed, achieving the goals of spreading human liberty and freedom may require much more patience, tact, and soft power.

  This is not something that can be accomplished in a stroke, nor can it be imposed from without. Indeed, it can only be "chosen" and America would be wise to promote the conditions under which people will choose freedom themselves. In this regard, phase two of the Bush doctrine perhaps should start anew.

  Yuan Jing-dong is research director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he is also an associate professor of international policy studies.
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