Défense nationale, July 2006 US National Security Strategy and pre-emption Hans M. KRISTENSEN According to a US National Security Strategy analysis conducted in 2006, pre-emption has evolved from concept into doctrine. The concept plan for Global Strike (CONPLAN 8022-02) will be maintained by the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike (JFCC-SGS), which is planned to be fully operational from the autumn of 2006. CONPLAN 8022 includes nuclear weapons among the means available to destroy targets (the others, and more likely, being conventional, information warfare and special operations forces). Should deterrence fail, weapons must be ready to be put to use, be they nuclear or conventional. ‘America is at war.’ Thus begins the new National Security Strategy of the United States of America, a document published by the White House in March 2006 to guide military and other strategic planning in the coming years. The gloomy first sentence is a stark contrast to the introduction of the previous National Security Strategy from 2002, a document also published during the ongoing ‘war on terrorism’ but which opened with a description of a social struggle between democratic and oppressive societies. Both documents are products of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, which provoked the formulation of the so-called ‘pre-emption’ doctrine, according to which the United States would ‘no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past’ 1 but strike first if necessary. The 2006 strategy repeats this pledge to ‘act pre-emptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defence’. 2 Since it was first published in 2002, the Bush administration’s pre-emption doctrine has been widely criticised for making US national security strategy appear too aggressive and trigger-happy. The new National Security Strategy appears to acknowledge this criticism somewhat by cautioning: ‘The United States will not resort to force in all cases to pre-empt emerging threats. Our preference is that non-military actions succeed. And no country should ever use pre-emption as a pretext for aggression.’ 3 With US military forces tied down in Iraq following a pre-emptive invasion in 2003 that was not in self-defence, the promise not to use pre-emption as aggression obviously appears moot. Yet the new National Security Strategy seems to suggest that very little has changed: If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defence, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialise. This is the principle and logic of pre-emption. The place of pre-emption in our national security strategyremains the same. We willactions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just. 4 Of cause, the United States has never relied ‘solely’ on a reactive posture in the past. The US strategic war plan (Single Integrated Operations Plan–SIOP) in 1969, for example, included more pre-emptive options than retaliatory options. The smallest of the pre-emptive options involved the launch of 58 % of all SIOP-committed nuclear forces against Soviet and Chinese nuclear delivery vehicles and military control centres.5 In that type of Cold War context pre-emption is as old as the nuclear era itself. Yet the 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy documents, and the secret guidance that accompanies them, clearly have shifted the emphasis more decisively toward pre-emption. What has changed is the geographic location and scope of the pre-emptive scenarios, the means to carry them out, and the type of conflict that could trigger them. Although pre-emptive strike options are probably still being updated against Russian and Chinese nuclear forces, today’s pre-emptive planning is increasingly focused on developing strike options against regional proliferators armed with weapons of mass destruction, in low-intensity conflicts, even before armed hostilities have broken out. Making the pre-emptive options credible requires new military capabilities. ‘To support pre-emptive options’, the 2002 strategy stated, we will ‘transform our military forces to ensure our ability to conduct rapid and precise operations to achieve decisive results.’ 6 Building on the decision of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the 2006 National Security Strategy describes the nuclear and conventional forces needed to implement the doctrine: Safe, credible, and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role. We are strengthening deterrence by developing a New Triad composed of offensive strike systems (both nuclear and improved conventional capabilities); active and passive defences, including missile defences; and a responsive infrastructure, all bound together by enhanced command and control, planning, and intelligence systems. These capabilities will better deter some of the new threats we face, while also bolstering our security commitments to allies. Such security commitments have played a crucial role in convincing some countries to forgo their own nuclear weapons programmes, thereby aiding our non-proliferation objectives.7 New guidance The 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy documents are only the public tip of a secret iceberg. They form part of a string of documents, most of which remain classified, that have been issued since 2001 to guide the military and other agencies on how to implement the pre-emption doctrine. So far this has included over a dozen major new guidance documents issued by the White House and the Office of Secretary of Defence, as well as an entirely new strike plan designed by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to provide the President with new nuclear and conventional strike options against regional states and non-state actors. Shortly before the 2002 National Security Strategy itself was published, President George W. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 17. It promulgated a new National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction as a comprehensive approach to counter not just nuclear but also other weapons of mass destruction, reaffirmed the use of nuclear weapons–even pre-emptively–against anyone using weapons of mass destruction i t th U it d St t it f b d d f i