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The National Interest
The Transformation of National Security
by Philip Zelikow
. . . All national security strategies start with a mental image of the world. The image of the new era is properly that of a modern and truly pluralistic international system. . . .
The United States is central in world politics today, not omnipotent. Nor is the U.S. Federal government organized in such a fashion that would allow it to wield durable imperial power around the world-it has trouble enough fashioning coherent policies within the fifty United States. Rather than exhibiting a confident will to power, we instinctively tend, as David Brooks has put it, to "enter every conflict with the might of a muscleman and the mentality of a wimp." We must speak of American power and of responsible ways to wield it; let us stop talking of American empire, for there is and there will be no such thing.
The United States does have unique responsibilities as the greatest power in this pluralistic world, however. Those responsibilities have moved the Bush Administration to rethink the meaning of America's national security, and it is a process of thinking that transcends yesterday's partisan differences. Both conservative and liberal orthodoxies are being challenged. To attain lasting influence, these new ideas must pass into the vocabulary and assumptions of many in both parties-just as happened with strategies of "containment" in the late 1940s and early 1950s-even as political conflict continues around the edges of this new vision.
--This vision is redefining the geography of national security.
--It is redefining the nexus between principles and power.
--It is redefining the structure of international security.
--It is redefining multilateralism.
--And it is redefining national security threats in the dimension of time. . . .