LETTER FROM AMERICA: It has often been said that the times we live in are more dangerous and unpredictable, paradoxical as it may seem, than the world of the Cold War when the balance of nuclear terror imposed a certain brutal order on world affairs, writes Patrick Smyth
The disappearance of such constraints on the main players and the emergence of new non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden, have pushed the world's leaders in search of new paradigms to govern their response. While in Europe, broadly speaking, we have moved to create new mechanisms to respond collectively to the evolving security challenges, most notably through the creation of a rapid reaction force, in the US the tendency has been to retreat into unilateralism and self-reliance.
In that regard the development by the Bush administration of a new strategic doctrine that moves away from the Cold War pillars of containment and deterrence toward a policy that supports pre-emptive attacks against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons is particularly important.
Speaking at West Point's commencement on June 1st, President Bush spelled out clearly his rationale for a possible attack on Iraq, but also a doctrine that has far-reaching implications for the international rule of law. "If we wait for threats to fully materialise," he said, "we will have waited too long . . . security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."
Adopting a pre-emption doctrine is a radical shift from the half-century-old policies of deterrence and containment that were built around the notion that an adversary would not attack the US because it would provoke a certain, overwhelming retaliatory strike.
Administration officials say the US has been forced to move beyond deterrence since September 11th because of the threat posed by terrorist groups and hostile states supporting them.
"The nature of the enemy has changed, the nature of the threat has changed, and so the response has to change," a senior official told the Washington Post recently, noting that terrorists "have no territory to defend . . . It's not clear how one would deter an attack like we experienced". And the Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, told the 18 NATO allies in Brussels recently that the alliance could no longer wait for "absolute proof" before acting against terrorist groups or threatening countries with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Conservative commentators here point out that the US has in the past reserved the right to make pre-emptive strikes, even of a nuclear kind, to prevent attacks on the US. The threat, they argue, is a key element of deterrence and the Bush elaboration of such a strategy does not represent new ground.
Yet, in truth, there is a qualitatively new dimension to the Bush doctrine. In a sense pre-emption has moved from being one weapon of many in the armoury to becoming the policy itself.
The real innovation in the Bush strategic thinking is that pre-emption by the US under the new doctrine does not have to be confined to the minutes, hours or days before an enemy strikes one, but when he begins to develop weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, at any stage, with all the devastating political consequences that may follow from an attack seen by one side as warranted by a potential threat, and by the other, as an outrageous violation of the notion of national sovereignty that has been the cornerstone of the international rule of law.
And what is the line between pre-emptive action against specific, immediate threats and preventive action against potential capabilities? The further the pre-emptive attack from the actions it is supposed to forestall, the more destabilising it will inevitably be.
Indeed, the very act of adopting such a strategy is likely to prove deeply destabilising in itself, quite possibly propelling rogue states into desperate gambles before the US gets the chance to destroy its weaponry.
"Pre-emption is attractive on the surface," defence analyst Harlan Ullman argues. But he adds: "As one gets deeper, it gets more and more complicated and dangerous." For the international community the new strategy poses huge challenges.
Either we move collectively, as many multilateralists have increasingly argued in relation to genocide, to redefine the right of international pre-emptive intervention, and then set out rules to govern such. Or we move away from order to anarchy where states with the ability to project their power act untramelled.
But, morality apart, many commentators here doubt whether unilateralism is a wise course for a hyper-power that desires to retain its global domination? Enlightened self-interest, many commentators say, should point the US towards restraint.
For one thing, as political scientist Joseph Nye has written "[The term] unipolarity is misleading because it exaggerates the degree to which the US is able to get the results it wants . . . American power is less effective than it might first appear." And Stephen Brooks and William Wohlworth, from Dartmouth College, argue in the latest Foreign Affairs that "Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth from classical Greece onward. Standing taller than leading states of the past, the US has unprecedented freedom to do as it pleases. It can play the game for itself alone or for the system as a whole; it can focus on small returns today or larger ones tomorrow."
That argument is reinforced by Harvard's Stanley Kaufman in the same issue."The world risks being squeezed between a new Scylla and Charybdis," he writes. "The Charybdis is universal intervention, unilaterally decided by American leaders who are convinced they have found a global mission provided by a collossal threat. Presentable as an epic contest between good and evil, this struggle offers the best way of rallying the population and overcoming domestic divisions.
"The Scylla is resignation to universal chaos in the form of new attacks by future bin Ladens, fresh humanitarian disasters, or regional wars that risk escalation. Only through wise judgement can the path between them be charted."