Global Policy Forum

By John C. Hulsman and Eric Hamilton *

What should a National Security Strategy for the United States in the 21st century look like? Two Heritage Foundation analysts see twin dangers in Charles Pena's focus on homeland security and Philip Bobbitt's emphasis on alliance-building: isolationism and internationalism. The challenge for the US is to avoid both neglect and overstretch, and to pursue a realist foreign policy that can ensure its global hegemony for centuries to come.

The admirably clear pieces by Charles Peña and Philip Bobbitt together bring to mind the experience of Homer's Odysseus. They crystallise the difficulty for the United States in the post-9/11 era: how to navigate between the Scylla of too little international involvement and the Charybdis of a hyperactive foreign policy that leads America to fritter away its dominant global position. The answer, we will argue, lies in a realist foreign policy based on America's national interests – one that both overcomes these competing dangers and ensures American security for decades to come.

The problem with Peña

Charles Peña, launching the debate on the Bush doctrine in openDemocracy, says that America's central object in national security should be to protect the homeland. This cannot be denied. The real question, however, concerns the means to achieve this aim.

Peña's critique differentiates between global and national security, as though there is little correlation between the two. In reality, it is through measuring American national interests in the global security arena that should provide a definitive yardstick for assessing what ‘national security' actually means in a policy sense. For example, dealing with terrorists abroad in places such as Afghanistan (surely a global security outcome) and ensuring homeland security (a national security outcome) are inextricably linked.

In arguing that the pre-eminent present threat comes from global terrorism, Peña far too easily dismisses medium-term threats from nation-states. While al-Qaida is undoubtedly a primary threat to American interests, Peña does not worry enough about rogue states developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which may either use such weapons or sell them.

Indeed, Peña fails to see that concerns about rogue states and terrorism are intimately connected. He assumes that US strategy is to purge WMD from every nation in possession of them, such as India, while ignoring the main problem with rogue states: the destabilising character of the regimes, and the fundamentally anti-American views and policies, that make their possession of WMD such a threat to the US. Once again, differentiation based on American national interests is called for here; Peña provides us with none.

Peña considers the new national security strategy "increasingly like the cold war strategy run amok, but without an enemy and having abandoned the theory of deterrence." This analysis does not stand up. As we have seen, the present primary enemy of the US is both al-Qaida and those nations (rogue states) that harbour and succour the organisation. This reality requires continued American military dominance to react to such threats – not a general global disengagement as Peña might wish.

Critically, the US must abandon its general strategy of deterrence, or at least not assume it will work in all cases. While this strategy made sense during the cold war, dealing with an al-Qaida leadership that may passionately welcome martyrdom makes reliance on this old approach far more problematic. In addition, given reckless North Korean efforts at brinksmanship, it is at least open to question whether the bizarre regime of Kim Jong Il will respond to a reason-based deterrence policy. Peña does not really confront these unpalatable realities.

The author is accurate in saying that the new National Security Strategy contains too much vague talk about striving for the universal values of freedom and democracy, alongside too much rhetoric about defeating ‘terrorism' in some sort of millennial way. This disturbing ambiguity in the document, well brought to light by Peña, leads one to the conclusion that an overly peripatetic foreign policy is being embraced by the Bush administration.

The problem with Bobbitt Philip Bobbitt, by contrast, sets forth a lofty, impracticable agenda for America's national security strategy. He rightly asserts the war against terrorism "cannot be won by simply surveilling and arming the homeland," and that to further America's interests a national security strategy needs to "sustain alliances, intelligence relationships, forward deployments, and credible regional deterrents." However, when he posits ten goals as conditions for a national security strategy he begins to lose focus.

It would be possible to agree that, in a uni-multipolar world (to cite Samuel Huntington's formulation), having allies entails essential, permanent and entangling relationships that preclude America from maintaining its dominant position; America might then be the equivalent of chairman of the board on every index of power, but the other board members are always present.

But the implication of acknowledging this is precisely the need for America to avoid relying on static alliances that no longer reflect the structural reality of the world, and rather to build ‘coalitions of the willing' for issue-specific tasks through a policy of ‘cherry-picking'. International behaviour based on consensus is laudable, but that consensus needs to be assessed appropriately. The United States simply cannot afford to be subservient to any supranational institution that does not share America's interests. We do not live in a multipolar world, however much Bobbitt may wish it.

Beyond this structural problem, Bobbitt falls into what can only be described as the democracy trap. Intervening around the world to expand the zone of democracy, to impose democratic political outcomes on other countries, is a dangerous game. Bobbitt, in line with many neo-conservatives and Wilsonians alike, confuses democratic outcomes with pro-American ones.

Two examples make this point. In December 1991 in Algeria, a radical Islamic political party, (the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS) was prevented by a military coup from certain victory in the general elections; its programme was one of religious extremism, anti-Americanism, and opposition to democracy.

In March 2003 in Turkey, the moderate Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan acted in accord with the wishes of 90% of its electorate…and refused America's pleas to open a second, northern front in the Iraq war.

The dirty secret in the Middle East, as attested by the Pew Research Center report of June 2003, is that the ‘Arab street' is far more radical and anti-American than the often corrupt, repressive, tyrannical rulers of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt. It simply does not follow that building a security strategy around the seemingly laudable goal of expanding the zone of democracy will lead to more pro-American outcomes in certain regions in the world. Bobbitt entirely fails to grasp this sad reality.

British past, American future

Yet what is perhaps most distressing about the current debate on the best security strategy for the United States is the preference among insightful students of history to seek unnecessary, new solutions rather than familiar, tested ones. While a world without precedent would indeed require new thinking, the simple fact remains: we have seen this world before.

Realists look to history and the structural nature of the world as a blueprint for conducting foreign policy. In this vein, we would do well to observe another moment in history with an international structure that mirrors this one. For in the condition of the world it found itself in, and in the strategic advantages at its disposal, post-Waterloo Great Britain in 1815 strongly echoes the conditions facing the United States at the dawn of the 21st century.

The Britain of Lord Castlereagh and the United States of Donald Rumsfeld share a number of striking similarities: a common historical experience of defeating a revolutionary power over many years (Napoleonic France and the Soviet Union); overriding military might centred around the concept of ‘strategic lift'; a common geopolitical position in relation to the Eurasian landmass; inhabiting a uni-multipolar world in which each is the pre-eminent power; being the world's most dynamic economy; and serving as the repository of most of the world's ‘soft power'.

These close commonalities mean that many of the policies and precepts that successfully guided statesmen in the 19th century have special relevance for America at the dawn of the 21st century. At least six general policy prescriptions flow from them which should serve as the basis of any realist National Security Strategy.

About the Author: John C. Hulsman and Eric Hamilton work in the Davis Institute of Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, where Hulsman is Research Fellow for European Affairs.

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