Index
Seven
BUSH’S NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY:
A CRITIQUE OF UNITED STATES’
NEO-IMPERIALISM
William C. Gay
Many individuals domestically and internationally who strive for peace and justice are concerned about the new National Security Strategy issued by the George W. Bush Administration in September 2002.1 William Galston, for example, writes in a recent issue of Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly:
A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws and norms that we have worked to build for more than a half a century. To his credit, Kissinger recognizes this; he labels Bush’s new approach “revolutionary” and declares, “Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system.”2
Does the new Bush doctrine end the international legal system? Is the new Bush doctrine making policy declarations that are unprecedented in United States history?
While I share many of the concerns critics are expressing about the new national security strategy, I contend that the more serious issue is not the ways in which this strategy represents a departure from those of prior United States presidential administrations but the actual practices of the Bush administration that appeal to this strategy. I will indicate how this new national security strategy does not represent much of a shift in policy, capability, or practice. Instead, this strategy Bush is using the strategy as an enabling device for a disturbing resurgence of United States global imperialism that serves interests that are actually opposed to the political rhetoric of the value of nations aiming for democracy and a market economy. I conclude by commenting on pursuing genuinely democratic values. I suggest that if the United States were truly committed to democratic values, then any military interventions would require the prior consent of the people. [edb1]Otherwise what the United States refer to as “bringing democracy” to a people will be more like a militarily enforced authoritarianism that too closely resembles old-style exploitive imperialism.
[In the paragraph above, in the third sentence, which you took out of passive voice, remove “this strategy” so it reads “Instead, Bush is…” In the last sentence the first verb should be “refers.” You make an inquiry at the end of the penultimate sentence. Regarding direct and representative democracy, I put in quotation a passage you could use. I think it is a bit long; you can decide whether to simply leave the text as is, use the new text, or edited the new text. Here it is: “While in a direct democracy this consent should involve a referendum on whether to go to war that a majority of those who vote support, in a representative democracy, such as the United States, the legislative representatives of the people should express this consent in a vote on a declaration of war that that is supported by a majority of the total number of the legislators who vote.]
The National Security Strategy document lapses into fundamental logical fallacies. George W. Bush opens with a three page statement he signed on 17 September 2002, followed by thirty-one pages of text. By my count, Bush’s rhetoric-filled preface contains eight question-begging epithets and a minimum of four false statements. The following text contains twenty-two question-begging epithets, nine instances of special pleading, and over a dozen false statements.[edb2] The document also has over a dozen references to weapons of mass destruction, but directly or indirectly refers to preemptive military strikes only five times. Some of the indirect references are euphemistic, including phrases such as “destroying the threat before it reaches our borders”and “proactive counter proliferation efforts” to designate a preemptive military attack.3 In this regard, members of the Bush administration are like almost all political and military leaders in their misleading use of the language of war.4
[I think I will pass on your inquiry where you wonder if I might give examples of false claims. To do so would be to make further claims that could be viewed as requiring support, and I think that to do so would lengthen this aside unduly.]
If students submitted such highly fallacious work in an entry-level college course that stresses complying with basic principles of critical thinking, they would deserve a failing grade. Unfortunately, political documents, on which hinge the fate of the earth, do not adhere to the standards of logic; so, I will forego giving primacy to a logical critique of this national security strategy. Instead, I will turn to an assessment based on a comparison of the Bush administration with prior administrations.
1. Not a New Policy
Many Americans think that the Bush administration’s national security strategy represents a departure from past policy of the United States government. Even the national security strategy document admits:
[I think something like the original “However” is needed at the beginning of the above sentence to show that the new strategy rejects the popular view. You could use a phrase like, “On the contrary,” for this purpose.]
The United States long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security . . . . To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.5
Since the beginning of the nuclear era, the United States has never had a “No First Use” policy. At a time when the threat of weapons of mass destruction is touted by the United States government, we need to remind ourselves that the first United States policy on nuclear weapons was a policy of use.6
Atom bombs were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, as a different but more effective means to execute the practice of “obliteration bombing” inaugurated in World War II, such as was done as done in Leipzig and Dresden, Germany.7 Obliteration bombing refers to the intentional targeting of civilians to instill terror. Then, throughout the Cold War, the United States maintained within the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) a policy of first use of tactical nuclear weapons. The list goes on. We need to be careful about how terms such as weapons of mass destruction are used. Too often, we have a case of special pleading where our weapons are “defensive” and our opponents “threaten” us with weapons of mass destruction.8
[Is the article “the” needed before “NATO”? It sounds strange to me.]
My point here is descriptive, not prescriptive, with respect to the United States retaining the option of first use. From a moral perspective, this position has obvious limitations, as Steven Lee has so effectively shown. He notes:
What are the moral issues raised by first use policy? It is, of course, a moral imperative to keep the risk of nuclear war, and the risk of aggression, as low as possible. Thus, a first use policy would be morally preferable only if it was a more effective deterrent. As the usability paradox suggests, however, the judgment of deterrence effectiveness must take account not only of the risk of aggression, but also the risk that a conventional war would escalate to the nuclear level.9
Unfortunately, just as political documents are not held to the standards of logic, even so policy statements are not restrained by principles of morality.
2. Not a New Capability
Many Americans think that the Bush administration’s national security strategy requires capabilities not possessed previously by the United States military. After all, we are fighting a supposed “war on terrorism” that requires different methods than conventional war. The national security strategy puts the issue of capability in the following way:
The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy—whether a state or non-state actor—to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends.10
I am afraid the capability that the United States needs in its war on terrorism requires a quantitative increase in killing, not a qualitative change in capability. As David Luban observes in another recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs Quarterly:
The aim of war is not to kill the enemy—killing the enemy is the means used to achieve the real end, which is to force capitulation. In the War on Terrorism, no capitulation is possible. That means that the real aim of the war is, quite simply, to kill or capture all of the terrorists—to keep on killing and killing, capturing and capturing, until they are all gone.11
The United States has long had the capability of killing and will continue to do so but without any defined end in sight.
Assessing capability is different than assessing policy declarations. Since World War II, the United States has always had the capability of a first strike.12 As I observed in an earlier essay on the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly known as “Star Wars”):
Assessment of systems should not occur in abstraction from their possible use. Since they can be used to help initiate attack or to help respond to attack . . . the designation . . . defensive introduces a vacuous contrast that can be quite deceptive. Just as the Defense Department is in charge of war, even so defensive systems are instruments of war.13
The United States already had the capability to kill terrorists and can now designate the execution of this capability as a war on terrorism. Likewise, since the United States government controls the politics of definition, the United States government can define the war on terrorism as defensive. Over a decade ago, Robert Holmes observed:
The killing of children does not become less reprehensible because done from a plane, by soldiers trained in warfare and acting under orders from a duly elected leader than when done clandestinely by men acting on their own or in concert with a few conspirators.14
3. Not a New Practice
Many Americans think that the Bush administration’s national security strategy involves practices not undertaken by prior administrations. It initiates preemptive military action and does not restrain its actions based on a lack of United Nations support. The Bush administration acts unilaterally. It overthrows governments and assassinates political figures in other countries.
I do not believe that the Bush administration is engaging in new practices. But my position could be challenged because the Bush administration is changing some definitions to present its actions to sound as if they are in line with practices of previous administrations. The new national security strategy states:
Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat . . . We must adapt the concept of immanent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.15
Here, Bush admits a history of preemptive military strikes. The difference is that he wishes to expand the scope of what counts as a threat that warrants a preemptive attack.
Despite this difference, the historical record plainly shows how the United States has regularly taken preemptive military action. Since World War II, almost every United States President has ordered initiation of military action. The United States has threatened and taken military action every decade for many decades. Recent examples include, among others, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. With the Bush administration, we can add Afghanistan and Iraq to the list. While the mainstream media do not say much critical of these interventions, some professional groups have taken on this responsibility. Concerned Philosophers for Peace is an organization that has tried to expose and assess such military actions; over the last twenty years, it has published five issues of its newsletter on these military actions, and several individual articles and special sections in other issues of the newsletter.16
4. New Readiness to Intervene Militarily
So, if the new national security strategy in many ways represents continuity in policy, capability, and practice, how is it different? I contend that the significant difference is in the new readiness of the Bush administration to execute military interventions. The dissolution of the Soviet Union may have been a necessary condition for this shift, but it was not sufficient. The Bush administration is dismantling the strategy of the deterrence wing of national security strategists and is implementing the strategy of the war-fighting wing of national security strategists. Not only in words but also in deeds, the Bush administration has abandoned the self-deterrence that prevailed throughout the Cold War. The shift is not only expressed in policy but also in action.
Only a decade ago, this position was neither policy nor practice, though it was advocated by the war-fighting wing of the strategic community who wanted a theory of victory not curtailed by self-deterrence.17 Anatol Rapoport, famous for his work in game theory, connects this position with the ways in which the strategic community altered revulsion to war in the latter half of the twentieth century. He states:
Whatever inhibitions against the use of war as an instrument of national policy may have been generated by the “de-romantization” or “de-glorification” of war throughout most of our century, these inhibitions were apparently neutralized by the concomitant “intellectualization” or “rationalization” of war.18
The Bush administration’s national security strategy explicitly rejects deterrence as an adequate means of protecting the interests of the United States. Section 5, titled “Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction,” makes the assertion:
Deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people and the wealth of their nations.19
The approach of Bush’s war on terrorism is self-defeating. In David Luban’s article in Philosophy and Public Affairs Quarterly, he also observes:
Of course, no one expects that terrorism will ever disappear completely. Everyone understands that new anti-American extremists, new terrorists, will always arise and always be available for recruitment and deployment. Everyone understands that even if Al-Qaeda is destroyed or decapitated, other groups, with other leaders, will arise in its place. It follows, then, that the War on Terrorism will be a war that can only be abandoned, never concluded. The War has no natural resting point, no moment of victory or finality. It requires a mission of killing and capturing, in territories all over the globe, that will go on in perpetuity. It follows as well that the suspension of human rights implicit in the hybrid war-law model is not temporary but permanent.20
Continuing loss of lives will be coupled with continuing loss of human rights. The Bush administration places its version of national security above the traditional understanding of a democratic society as one in which basic human rights are respected and protected.
In his article on “Human Rights,” David Boersema notes the both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States “incorporated the concept of natural rights into the framework of governmental systems.”21 In a related article, Ioanna Kuçuradi contends that human rights articulate “ethical principles for the treatment of individuals” and “ethical demands” for the laws and policies of social organizations and governments.22 Kuçuradi, like Boersema, connects the giving prominence to human rights with the emergence of the United Nations. Of particular importance in this regard is the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” that was passed by the United Nations in 1948.23 Subsequent conventions have made additional and more explicit assertions about civil and political rights (1966), economic, social, and cultural rights (1966), and women’s rights (1979). Alison Dundes Renteln echoes these views in her prior and even more extensive article on human rights. In her article, she treats explicitly the applicability of human rights even to military interventions, wars, and civil conflicts. Since the United States has been a signatory to these declarations and conventions, when the Bush administration fails to follow these fundamental principles of human rights in its “war on terrorism,” democratic values are eroded.
[Somehow the reference for Alison Dundes Renteln got omitted. At the end of the antepenultimate or penultimate sentence above, add note #24. Then, in the remainder of the essay increase each note number by one, beginning with the Plato reference in the next paragraph being note #25.]
5. Conclusion: Neo-Imperialism without the Ring of Gyges
In the Republic, Plato uses the story of the Ring of Gyges to show how the lure of invisibility illustrates the desire to do wrong with impunity. Plato thinks that, since we lack such a ring, we settle for a situation intermediate between the extreme of ourselves being able to do wrong with impunity and ourselves suffering wrong with no means of redress.24