The new strategy is somewhat provocative, but it is deliberately so. It must be provocative if it is to foster the painful worldwide debate that must occur in order to condition the international community to think hard about these new dangers, and about how the cadence of security threats has changed.²

Of course the administration expected harsh reactions from those it soaked with this glass of cold water. But then no one who initiates a Gotterdammerung should expect to make many friends.

Human, All Too Human

Our highest insights must--and should--sound like follies and sometimes crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

We meet here during a crucial period in the history of our nation, and of the civilized world. Part of that history was written by others; the rest will be written by us.
--George W. Bush, February 26, 2003

CRITICS OF the Bush Administration's foreign policy; like many early critics of Nietzsche's philosophy, are discovering the great difficulty of their task. This is because both the current administration and the German philosopher put forward a way of thinking that clashes head-on with accepted idols and dogmas. In so doing, both Bush and Nietzsche force their critics to acknowledge the intellectual challenge they advance before formulating their disagreements with it. An adequate defense against their ideas, therefore, must first begin with a thoughtful consideration of them. Bush and Nietzsche both win initial victories over their critics by forcing them onto their provocative intellectual turf. That, or the critics relegate themselves to the sidelines with cheap ad hominem attacks, empty partisan ballyhoo or outright silence.

Leo Strauss once wrote that it was intellectually insufficient to refute a way of thinking simply by labeling it a "reductio ad Hitlerum"; it must instead be shown to be a reductio ad absurdum. One cannot simply criticize Nietzsche or the Bush Administration because one finds distasteful the implications of their thinking. It is not enough merely to bemoan the cruel vision of a dead God, a meaningless world and the doctrine of the will to power; one must concede its possibility before attacking it.

Likewise, it is logically unsatisfactory to claim that pre-emptive military strikes against gathering threats, or a foreign policy that focuses on the internal nature of regimes, is too challenging to conventional security dogmas. One can only successfully contest the Bush Administration's strategic thinking by first addressing the conception of world politics that lies at its center. Criticisms that fail to do so cannot hold up beneath the weight of the different provocations that Nietzsche and the Bush Administration advance.

Reviewing the worldwide debate that transpired over military action against Saddam Hussein's regime, few critics of the Bush Administration confronted the central ideas from which its strategic thinking followed. They refused to acknowledge, first and foremost, that America's hegemonic power is the sole guarantor of international security and normative moral order. Furthermore, most critics failed to address the premise that Western civilization's core principles are besieged by apocalyptic terrorist groups and their rogue state allies, both of which crave weapons of mass destruction to further their agenda of devastation. Unlike traditional combat between the mass armies of nation-states, threats in this new environment emerge instantly and catastrophically. Rather than genuinely engaging these provocative ideas, dissenting opinion from Paris to Berlin, Cambridge to Berkeley, Moscow to Beijing, only evaded it. A vast majority of the Bush Administration's critics employed a determined will to ignorance that asserted an unbridled American will to power as the root cause of the September 11 attacks. Such thinking could neither understand nor refute the urgency of disarming the Iraqi regime by whatever means necessary'.

America's post-9/l 1 foreign policy has been radical. With a peck of carrots and a mighty stick, the Bush Administration has determined to coax and prod a large pocket of hold-outs down that inevitable path toward history's end. For those critics willing to engage the administration's provocation, but choosing to travel at a different strategic trajectory thereafter, there is, of course, the possibility for vindication. The Bush Administration may well turn out to be mistaken for having adopted a messianic response to a potentially isolated incident of apocalyptic violence. History, albeit with no end in sight, could ultimately prove either side of this debate terribly wrong.

THERE ARE those, however, for whom the Bush Administration's strategic thinking is highly appealing. Nietzsche, too, found his allies among this same group: the young. Unlike their elders, the young have not yet been shaped by traditional convictions and are thus more willing to examine them critically. It might seem implausible that the Bush Administration's greatest domestic support would come from younger Americans. Their parents and professors have preached mostly of their peace movement experiences with the use and abuse of American power. They have warned how every American war could fast become a bloody quagmire. One could have reasonably expected to find large numbers of young Americans opposed to war in Iraq particularly, and to the Bush Administration's grand strategy more generally.

Yet this is not the case. Prior to war in Iraq, a Time/CNN poll found that 63 percent of Americans 18-29 years of age supported military action against Ba'athi Iraq; this was eight percentage points greater than any other age group, and support for war decreased as age increased. On April 5, 2003, the New York Times reported even more interesting trends on many elite college campuses: "Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of September 11, 2001." Speaking of his student's political disposition, Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis remarked: "These are the kids of Reagan. When I lecture on Reagan, the kids love him. Their parents are horrified and appalled." Their teachers are too, as a whiny professor of women's studies at Amherst College made clear: "Vie used to like to offend people.... We loved being bad, in the sense that we were making a statement. Why is there no joy now?" The Bush Administration seems to find its greatest champions in the young, who appear eager to hoist "Bush/Cheney" reelection placards while some of their parents and more of their professors go marching beneath protest banners that equate Bush with Hitler.

In this same vein, is it really so surprising that "Old Europe" cast itself as the Bush Administration's antagonist, while "New Europe" rallied to America's side? Is it surprising that the administration 's strategic thinking is inherently appealing to "new" European states that have a fresh memory of tyranny, and that have not grown self-satisfied beneath the U.S. security blanket? These young democracies have been eager to jump aboard a lifeboat of English-speaking peoples brandishing riches and rifles for the common defense while Europe itself begins taking on water. These states also had material incentives to do so, it is true; but one should not be so quick to debunk nobler aspirations, especially considering that "New Europe" has been eagerly waiting in line to board an overcrowded European vessel. These states only court disfavor with their elders by affirming the Bush Administration's provocative strategic thinking; and for his part, French President Jacques Chirac, ever the dyspeptic parent, has alr eady given a spanking of sorts to his "poorly brought up" children. But the blood of these new democracies is hot, and they are captivated by the American vision of a better world once the war against terrorism is won--a desire that will surely get them grounded by their EU elders on more than one future occasion.

FRIEDRICH Nietzsche's goal was to chart a path "beyond good and evil" for his intellectual descendents to follow. With an entirely different purpose, but in much the same manner, the Bush Administration appears resolved to lead the United States (and, for that matter, the rest of the civilized world) beyond Cold War thinking and security architecture--to exactly where, however, no one is quite sure. Bush and his principals have dared to provoke conventional wisdom about interstate relations in light of post-Cold War strategic realities. Those old doctrines, institutions and norms certainly served their historical purpose, but wondering whether they have finally reached their twilight is now necessary; not foolish. Perhaps a new day is indeed dawning; perhaps even the most cherished "truths" of international relations are showing inevitable signs of mortality. But as Nietzsche discovered, and as the Bush Administration is learning, the life of the provocateur--the "Madman" whose insights arrive before their ti me--is a lonely one. He is hated in the present and only understood much later, if ever or at all.

As was the case with Nietzsche's philosophy, the provocateur can be extremely successful at smashing old idols and winning young, impassioned hearts and minds. But what can he build in their place? If the traditional thinking about international politics now rings hollow, what new alternative that embraces present realities will achieve a comparable amount of enduring stability and broad-based legitimacy?

Though the Iraq War appears to have been a success that (temporarily) quieted the chattering doomsayers, the Bush Administration, along with its youthful allies at home and abroad, is now charged with winning the peace. In that light, it is perhaps fitting to recall Prince Faisal's aphorism from Lawrence of Arabia:

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