President reaffirms policy of striking foes first

WASHINGTON — President Bush today issued an updated national-security strategy reaffirming his doctrine of pre-emptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq.

The document, an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities required by law every four years, lays out a robust view of the country's power and an assertive view of its responsibility to bring change around the world.

On everything from genocide to human trafficking to 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 pre-emption doctrine generated fierce debate at the time, and many critics think the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has fatally undermined an essential assumption of the strategy: that intelligence about an enemy's capabilities and intentions can be sufficiently reliable to justify a preventive war.

Bush, however, offers no second thoughts about the pre-emption 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 (WMD).

"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 the United States and its European allies have brought Iran before the U.N. Security Council to answer allegations that it is developing nuclear weapons secretly.

Some security specialists criticized the continued commitment to pre-emption. "Pre-emption 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 in Washington. "To have a strategy on pre-emption 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, an American Enterprise Institute resident fellow who has written on the 2002 strategy, said the invasion of Iraq in the strict sense is not an example of pre-emptive war, since it was preceded by 12 years of low-grade conflict and essentially was the completion of the 1991 Gulf War.

Still, he said, the recent problems in Iraq contain lessons for those who would advocate pre-emptive war elsewhere. A military strike by itself is not enough, he said; building a sustainable, responsible state in place of a rogue nation is the real challenge.

"We have to understand pre-emption; it's not going to be simply a pre-emptive strike," he said. "That's not the end of the exercise but the beginning of the exercise. ... The larger of the two problems is not the weapons but the states themselves."

The White House plans to release the 49-page National Security Strategy today, starting with a speech by national-security adviser Stephen Hadley to the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. The White House gave advance copies of the strategy to three newspapers.

The strategy has no legal force but serves as a guidepost for agencies and officials drawing up policies in a range of military, diplomatic and other arenas. Much of the new document echoes the 2002 document.

"I don't think it's a change in strategy," Hadley said. "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 highlights 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 are lifted directly 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 White House meetings 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 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 (also known as Myanmar) and Zimbabwe. Iran and North Korea receive special attention because of their nuclear programs, and the strategy vows "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 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week. It recommits to joint efforts with European allies to pressure Iran to give up any aspirations for nuclear weapons and adds: "This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided."

The language about confrontation is not repeated with North Korea, which claims to already have nuclear bombs, an assertion believed by U.S. intelligence. But Pyongyang is accused of a "bleak record of duplicity and bad-faith negotiations," counterfeiting U.S. currency, trafficking in drugs and starving its 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 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."

The document also warns China "it must act as a responsible stakeholder that fulfills its obligations" and guarantees political freedom and economic freedom.

To assuage allies who were antagonized by Bush's go-it-alone style in his first term, the White House stresses alliances 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 be less effective than "coalitions of the willing," or ad-hoc 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-U.S. 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 bird flu, AIDS, environmental destruction and natural disasters.

Critics have accused the Bush 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.