A Strategy of Partnerships

Colin L. Powell

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2004

Summary:  Pundits claim that U.S. foreign policy is too focused on unilateral preemption. But George W. Bush's vision -- enshrined in his 2002 National Security Strategy -- is far broader and deeper than that. The president has promoted bold and effective policies to combat terrorism, intervened decisively to prevent regional conflicts, and embraced other major powers such as Russia, China, and India. Above all, he has committed the United States to a strategy of partnerships, which affirms the vital role of international alliances while advancing American interests and principles.

Colin L. Powell is the U.S. Secretary of State.

These distortions are partly explained by context. The NSS made the concept of preemption explicit in the heady aftermath of September 11, and it did so for obvious reasons. One reason was to reassure the American people that the government possessed common sense. As President Bush has said -- and as any sensible person understands -- if you recognize a clear and present threat that is undeterrable by the means you have at hand, then you must deal with it. You do not wait for it to strike; you do not allow future attacks to happen before you take action.

A second reason for including the notion of preemption in the NSS was to convey to our adversaries that they were in big trouble. Instilling a certain amount of anxiety in terrorist groups increases the likelihood they will cease activity or make mistakes and be caught. Moreover, some states have been complicit in terrorism not for ideological reasons but for opportunistic ones. It was worth putting the leaders of such countries on notice that the potential costs of their opportunism had just gone way up.

Sensible as these reasons are, some observers have exaggerated both the scope of preemption in foreign policy and the centrality of preemption in U.S. strategy as a whole. As to preemption's scope, it applies only to the undeterrable threats that come from nonstate actors such as terrorist groups. It was never meant to displace deterrence, only to supplement it. As to its being central, it isn't. The discussion of preemption in the NSS takes up just two sentences in one of the document's eight sections.

Some at home have distorted the NSS for partisan reasons, attempting to make the Bush administration look bad by turning fear of preemption into an early twenty-first-century equivalent of the Cold War era's "rocket rattle." Some abroad, meanwhile, have distorted U.S. intentions through an apparent exercise in mirror imaging. Using their own mottled political histories as a reference point, they have asked what they would do with the power that the United States possesses and have mistakenly projected their own Hobbesian intentions onto our rather more Lockean sensibilities.

But however it has happened, the distortion of U.S. foreign policy strategy requires repair. This distortion does a disservice to honest observers trying to understand U.S. policy, and it contributes to irrational partisanship.

THE PRIMACY OF PARTNERSHIPS

The United States' National Security Strategy does commit us to preemption under certain limited circumstances. We stand by that judgment, the novelty of which lies less in its substance than in its explicitness. But our strategy is not defined by preemption. Above all, the president's strategy is one of partnerships that strongly affirms the vital role of NATO and other U.S. alliances -- including the UN.

Don't believe it? Perhaps this is because the commentariat widely claimed that the president's recent decision to seek a new UN Security Council resolution on the postwar reconstruction of Iraq was a sharp break with policy. To think this, one would have to ignore the fact that President Bush went before the UN on September 12, 2002, to make his case for the UN's enforcing its own resolutions (16 of them in total); that Security Council Resolution 1441 -- which warned the Iraqi regime to comply with its own obligations under previous UN resolutions -- passed unanimously in November 2002; that we tried for a further resolution to unite the international community in the months before Operation Iraqi Freedom began; that we went to the UN in May 2003 after Operation Iraqi Freedom to secure Resolution 1483, lifting sanctions against Iraq that had become obsolete; and that we sought and secured Resolution 1500 in August, recognizing the Iraqi Governing Council.

Had we not done all of these things, month after month, the president's decision to go to the UN Security Council in September 2003 -- and to persevere in his efforts until Resolution 1511 was approved by a 15-0 vote on October 16 -- would have been a significant departure from policy. But the administration did do all of these things. Indeed, it would have been a departure from policy not to go to the UN when, in our judgment, the next phase of Iraqi reconstruction was at hand. If there has been any departure here, it is the commentariat's departure from the basic rules of logic.