QUIETLY, and largely away from the public eye, a revolution has begun in American strategic thinking. The endeavor currently being pursued by the Bush Administration is breathtaking in scope, entailing a re-examination of virtually all the traditional elements of U.S. strategic posture. And while its contours are just becoming visible, this blueprint has already begun to reshape world affairs.
The reconception now emerging in American strategy, articulated partly in the September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), can be defined by three distinct revolutions--each of which is already being put into practice by the Bush Administration. The first involves the way in which the United States uses force in the post-9/11 world. The NSS makes a convincing case that the concept of imminent threats must be amended to take into account "the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries": the amorphous nature of today's terrorism, the availability of weapons of mass destruction and the sinister possibility of a synergy of these elements with rogue states. In response, it codifies America's fight to act proactively to neutralize gathering dangers, declaring such moves to be a necessary and legal response to new global realities.
These new parameters of power are hardly limited to the theoretical. Indeed, they were prominently on display in the war against Iraq that the United States and its "coalition of the willing" waged in the spring of 2003. The Bush Administration's rationale for regime change in Baghdad hinged on the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction, and on the frightening possibility that a confluence of objectives could prompt the transfer of such tools of destruction to terrorists. The need for a preventive response, in turn, served as the guiding principle behind Washington's subsequent decision to resort to military action.
