Miguel
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WASHINGTON — Declaring that the United States will never again be vulnerable to countries with strong militaries, the White House said Friday that its new, formal policy of pre-emption should not send up red flags to other nations.
"What the world has seen is a benevolent America" that uses its strength around the world to make it a better place, said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. "Democracy is on the march around the world with thanks to U.S. efforts."
The White House released its new national security strategy, setting out President Bush's policy of taking pre-emptive action instead of trying to deter or contain hostile states and terrorist groups.
The strategy indicates that the United States will use its military and economic power to encourage "free and open societies," and that it will never allow its military supremacy to be challenged, as it was by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
It also says that it will take pre-emptive action before the United States comes under the cloud of another attack.
"The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past," the new 33-page document reads. "We cannot let our enemies strike first."
"We will not hesitate to act alone, to exercise our right to self-defense by acting pre-emptively against such terrorists," it also says.
U.S.A
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America argues that non-proliferation treaties have failed and another method must be tried.
"We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed, through counter-proliferation," it reads, identifying counter-proliferation as things like a national missile defense.
"The 21st century is seeming to be a century where threats to America are coming from states that are crumbling and are weak. That's where terrorists find homes and that's where the strongest threats to America has come from," Fleischer explained Friday.
The Bush strategy is the most aggressive U.S. strategy since the Reagan administration, if not before. The White House says it promotes a value-oriented strategy, the idea that the United States must not only make the world safer but better.
The document emphasizes creating "a balance of power that favors human freedom" and "supporting moderate and modern government, especially in the Muslim world, to ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation."
Every president issues a National Security Strategy to outline to Congress its intent, and administrations update the strategy periodically.
Former President Bill Clinton's 1999 strategy made no mention of pre-emption.
The strategy accompanies the president's persistent emphasis on the threat posed by Iraq. He told the Republican Governor's Association Thursday night that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein must not be left around to threaten America's grandchildren.
The president said the United Nations must authorize use of force in Iraq and enforce previous resolutions Iraq has violated in order to regain its credibility.
"We want there to be a strong United Nations. The United Nations must be more than a debating society. We don't want the United Nations to become the League of Nations. We want the United Nations to have backbone and enforce its resolutions and doctrines and mandates," Bush said.
The document is not all guns, however. It offers nations some butter by saying that the United States will use its economic engagements to promote higher productivity and sustained economic growth through liberal tax policies, investment in health and education to assist the labor forces and intolerance of corruption.
It says the United States will work with countries that are committed to reform, will help make the World Bank and other international lending organizations more efficient in delivering developmental aid, and will increase the amount of development assistance through grant programs rather than loans.
Some of those incentives could apply to Russia, which is seeking assurances that it will get $8 billion Iraq owes it if it supports a U.N. resolution demanding disarmament.
Bush spoke Friday by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and met at the White House with Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The ministers are not related.
The meeting was intially meant to address the Treaty of Moscow, which details nuclear arms reduction between the two nations. But the administration is also trying to convince Russia to support the resolution declaring Iraq in breach of previous Security Council resolutions, setting a short timetable for compliance and authorizing military force if Iraq does not comply.
The Russians have said that Iraq's offer to allow resumed U.N. weapons inspections means no new resolution is needed. Russia is one of the five members of the U.N. Security Council with a veto.
The White House responded Friday morning that it's not the process of inspection, but disarmament that should motivate other nations.
"The incentive the president is offering is logic and straight, direct, from-the-heart talk about the risk Russia faces and the rest of the world faces in addition to what the American people face from Saddam Hussein's endless quest for weapons of mass destruction," Fleischer said.
The Ivanovs said Iraq's decision to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return was largely due to their work. They stressed the common U.S.-Russian commitment to making inspections important, and said disarmament is the goal of the inspectors.
"Russia and the United States are interested in making the work of the inspectors more effective, giving a clear indication whether weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq or not. We agreed to pursue an exchange of views of how to make (them) more effective," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said through an interpreter.
The president has said that if the United Nations won't act, the United States, and perhaps some of its allies, will go it alone, just as his new strategy indicates.
Nonetheless, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were also meeting with their Russian counterparts Friday to convince Russia to commit to a new resolution.
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Romans 9:11-24
Our Eschatology may vary even our Ecclesiology may be disputed among us but our Soteriology most assume a singularity and exclusivity which in biblical term is known as Quote; "The Narrow Way" and Quote!
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