US National Security Strategy Research Articles

US Security Concerns in Africa: An Afrocentric Perspective

This qualitative article employs an Afrocentric perspective as an alternative theoretical and/or contextual lens to provide an overview of the national security challenges facing the United States of America (US) within the context of its engagement in Africa. It also demonstrates the reactions of the US to African security threats (real or imagined) to its national well-being. At the centre of the discussion of this article is the articulation of the main issues about the US National Security Strategy in relation to Africa. The objective is to unravel the myth that Africa is a threat to the US national security and the reality about its dismissed importance to US within the context of the current global discourse on security. In order to provide a wider context for understanding the security dimension of the US foreign policy as it relates to Africa and to foster epistemic justice, it is important to address this subject from the viewpoint of Africans and others whose fate is tied to this continent. Â

Offline: From 1918 to 2018—the lessons of influenza

Estimates of mortality during the 1918–20 influenza pandemic range from 20 million to 100 million deaths. Mortality between countries varied enormously. A large part of this variation was related to wealth. Resource-poor countries, with weak health systems, pervasive undernutrition, and widespread poverty, had higher death rates. When 1918 mortality rates are modelled for the modern era, an epidemic of influenza with similar virulence and pathogenicity would cause around 62 million deaths, with younger age groups especially vulnerable. 96% of these deaths would occur in developing countries. The centenary of the 1918 influenza pandemic is a moment to pause and think carefully about the world's present capacity to respond to another worldwide epidemic. The conclusion will be troubling, even alarming. President Trump's first year in office has seen America turn its back on multilateral efforts to defeat threats to human health—withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, reintroduction of the “global gag rule” (banning US global health assistance from funding, counselling, and advocacy for abortion), cuts to foreign aid, and an overall diminution in American engagement in global health. But publication of President Trump's National Security Strategy in the closing days of 2017 suggests the US Government not only understands the immediate threat of disease pandemics, but also promises to do more to protect countries from their consequences. The US National Security Strategy is based on four pillars—protecting the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life; promoting American prosperity; preserving peace through strength; and advancing American influence. The first pillar—protecting the American people—includes a section entitled, “Combat biothreats and pandemics”. The strategy notes that, “Naturally emerging outbreaks of viruses such as Ebola and SARS, as well as the deliberate 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, demonstrated the impact of biological threats on national security by taking lives, generating economic losses, and contributing to a loss of confidence in government institutions.” Three priority actions are offered. The first is detecting and containing biothreats at their source. This commitment will involve improving country capacities to detect and deal with infectious disease outbreaks early. Part of this response will be to “encourage other countries to invest in basic health care systems and to strengthen global health security”. (The two additional policy actions are to support biomedical innovation and to improve domestic emergency responses.) America's National Security Strategy suggests a pivot to engage more aggressively in international actions that demonstrably benefit the US—a practical realisation of President Trump's promise to put “America First”. What does America's vision for its own security mean for global health? Optimisitically, it should mean that President Trump will invest in universal health coverage (UHC). Last month, the Japanese Government hosted a UHC Forum in Tokyo. The Declaration from that conference united WHO with the World Bank and UNICEF in a commitment to strengthen global and country momentum towards UHC by 2030. An important new international target was set—that by 2023 (the midpoint between 2016 and 2030) essential health coverage will have been extended to an additional 1 billion people. This target is challenging. Currently, at least half the world's population does not have coverage with essential health services. What is lacking—in President Trump's National Security Strategy and WHO's General Programme of Work—is any detail about how this promise will be fulfilled. The grand commitments of governments and UN agencies risk being little more than empty words. There are no new programmes or initiatives offered on health financing, expanding the health workforce, or extending the coverage of essential medicines and services. And that is where the lessons of the 1918 influenza pandemic become important. UHC is the right goal for the health sector to pursue. But if we are to provoke governments to turn their words into deeds, UHC will not be the lever to do so. What will trigger political action is the fear and threat of another pandemic—and the urgency of strengthening “basic health care systems” to address those fears and threats. In 2018, the single most important priority for WHO must be to make pandemic preparedness a central objective for the national security of all its member-states. This strategy will deliver UHC. The centenary of the 1918 influenza pandemic is the best opportunity we have for making global health security the foundation for achieving UHC.

Стратегія національної безпеки США як інструмент підтримки глобального лідерства та міжнародного порядку за адміністрації Б. Обами та Д. Трампа.

The article attempts a comparative analysis of the “US National Security Strategy” by B. Obama’s democratic administration and the Republican’s D. Trump. The problems of US support for global leadership and international order were the main categories of comparison. These problems are on time now, because of the end of the bipolarity era and the development of a new system of international relations in which America should take a prominent place. The differences in the treatment of these problems were revealed not only in the documents of both administrations, but also in the “National Security Strategy” that were adopted in 2010 and 2015 for the presidency of B. Obama. Conducted a comparative analysis, the author came to the conclusion about the evolution of approaches to the definition of US global leadership in documents adopted by the administration of B. Obama that embodied in the “renewal of leadership” to its “approval”. Regarding the international order, the US under B. Obama’s presidency was guided by a strategy of “strategic restraint” and “strategic patience”. D. Trump’s administration also has the goal of achieving and retaining leadership, but primarily focusing on the national interests of America, its consolidation, rather than a comprehensive engagement in world affairs. The issue of maintaining international order also varies from a detailed review of Obama’s strategy to focus on the regional level in D. Trump one. Differences in understanding of the maintenance of international order are embodied in the characterization of the partner states and allies of the USA, in particular, relations with China, cooperation with international organizations and involvement in the settlement of conflicts and global problems. If the democrats were guided by the embodiment of the policy of multilateralism, the Republicans appeal to the principled realism. In the document D. Trump’s administration does not refuse of the leadership, but the methods of its implementation are shaken, guided by the slogan “America first” and the idea if the US grows, then the whole world is growing.

Back to the Future: Post-Cold War US National Security Strategy and American Hegemony under the Trump Administration

Back to the Future: Post-Cold War US National Security Strategy and American Hegemony under the Trump Administration

Governing ‘ungoverned’ space: humanitarianism, citizenship, and the civilian sphere in the territorialising practices of the US national security complex

ABSTRACTThe ‘war on terror’ has seen an increased overlap between military and humanitarian practices in US national security strategy. Guided by imaginative geographies of ‘ungoverned’ or ‘under-governed’ space, aid distribution and humanitarian assistance efforts are frequently coupled with stability efforts and counterinsurgency operations. This overlap has been buttressed by a growing collaboration between the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development – often termed the ‘3Ds’of defense, development and diplomacy – bringing a greater influence of the civilian sphere on US national security strategy. In this paper, I explore the influence of the civilian sphere on these military-humanitarian practices. Through an analysis of publications and policy documents from across the US national security complex, I argue that the civilian sphere is central to US efforts to territorialize ostensibly insecure, ‘ungoverned’ space so as to extend US global geopolitical influence and the US-led global neoliberal market. This involves both a more substantial role for civilian organisations in security efforts, adding legitimacy and civilian expertise to territorialising military-humanitarian practices, and a growing focus on the harnessing of the civilian sphere of targeted populations on-the-ground through a greater emphasis on citizenship, and its related ideas of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, in security policy. Not only does this focus on citizenship couch US intervention in a moral discourse, it also indicates how ‘ungoverned’ space is to be rendered ‘governed’ through the encouragement of a technology of citizenship and a subjectivity conducive to the expansion of the neoliberal market.

Priorities of international political activities in US national security strategies

Priorities of international political activities in US national security strategies

Strategije nacionalne bezbednosti SAD i Ruske federacije i moguće implikacije po bezbednost Republike Srbije

Strategije nacionalne bezbednosti SAD i Ruske federacije i moguće implikacije po bezbednost Republike Srbije

The US National Security Strategy and Its Implementation in Today's Conditions

The US National Security Strategy and Its Implementation in Today's Conditions

Toward a computational hermeneutics

We describe some of the ways that the field of content analysis is being transformed in an Era of Big Data. We argue that content analysis, from its beginning, has been concerned with extracting the main meanings of a text and mapping those meanings onto the space of a textual corpus. In contrast, we suggest that the emergence of new styles of text mining tools is creating an opportunity to develop a different kind of content analysis that we describe as a computational hermeneutics. Here the goal is to go beyond a mapping of the main meaning of a text to mimic the kinds of questions and concerns that have traditionally been the focus of a hermeneutically grounded close reading, a reading that focuses on what Kenneth Burke described as the poetic meanings of a text. We illustrate this approach by referring to our own work concerning the rhetorical character of US National Security Strategy documents.

Use of Force: Ideological Influence on US National Security Strategies under George W. Bush and Barack Obama (2002-2010)

This research extends the survey that classifies the US political theories upon the issue of military enforcement issue in American foreign policy and international relations. The article demonstrates how earlier proposed theoretical classification and its implications works when applied to the comparative analysis of the National Security Strategies of the USA released by George Bush Administration in 2002 and 2006 and Barack Obama Administration in 2010. The key provisions of these Strategies are reviewed consistently with the ideas of American political scientists who participated in the elaboration of the Strategies’ drafts. The research has shown that the Strategies 2002, 2006 and 2010 had inherited the main principles and guidelines worked out in by Philip Zelikow, Peter Feaver and James Steinberg as for the Strategies of the years 2002, 2006 and 2010 respectively. The analysis of ideological influence on Bush and Obama Strategies has also exposed that Bush and Obama political courses have quite similar ideological backgrounds for the use of force issue In this way the Obama’s Strategy of the year 2010 contains the same categories as the Bush’s Strategies of 2002 and 2006: the regime change, the limited sovereignty and probable preventive use of force. Henсe, interventionalism turns out to be the primary ideological foundation of the Strategies of 2002, 2006 and 2010. However the differences between the approaches of the Bush and Obama Administrations towards the questions of the use of force legitimacy and priorities unveil that the Strategies of 2002 and 2006 have radical inclinations whereas Obama’s strategy incorporates the ideas of rationalism.

No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security Policy, by Thomas M. Nichols

Thomas M. Nichols No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security Policy Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. 232 pp., $39.95 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-8122-4566-0Based on data for late 2013, United States' nuclear arsenal includes an estimated 7400 warheads; of these, 4650 ready for use, with an additional 2700 awaiting destruction.1 What utility do these weapons have? This question lies at centre of No Use, as Thomas Nichols of US Naval War College considers what role nuclear force can and should play in US national security strategy. Nichols advances a compelling argument that challenges prevailing assumptions about nuclear force and its role in US national security policy. The United States, Nichols argues, should abandon its Cold War outlook completely in favour of its existing unspoken nuclear toward Russia and China of minimum deterrence (173). No Use makes an important contribution to our understanding of past and present US nuclear strategy, as well as offering well-reasoned recommendations regarding future role of nuclear weapons in US national security policy.At core of Nichols' argument lies a paradox: although decades have passed since collapse of Soviet Union, US nuclear policy continues to be dominated by Cold War thinking. To demonstrate ongoing predominance of Cold War interpretations, Nichols briefly explores history of US nuclear strategy, illustrating predominant assumption that nuclear weapons were (and continue to be) a successful deterrent. While post-Cold War administrations have undertaken nuclear posture reviews (NPRs), these reviews have not precipitated any concrete change in US strategy. Instead, policymakers have retained an approach of favouring the devil we know rather than overhauling policy (81-82). In absence of significant change resulting from NPRs, US post-Cold War nuclear doctrine retains Cold War thinking, continuing to be a diluted version of Mutually Assured Destruction. As a result, United States is more prepared to respond to a nuclear threat from Russia or China-the easy scenarios to plan for, according to Nichols-than to a more probable, but less predictable, threat posed by a nuclear-armed smaller state or non-state actor (55-56).The challenges confronting United States and its allies today, however, not same as those posed by Soviet Union in past. While this seems obvious, No Use makes it clear that US nuclear thinking today draws no such distinction. Instead of reconsidering role of nuclear weapons, policymakers continue to recycle old assumptions, hoping that deterrence will work again (if indeed it did in first place). Existing US policy assumes that small states are subject to same supposedly iron laws of deterrence that constrain large powers (132). This poses a number of questions. Can a small state be deterred by threat of nuclear retaliation? Is United States willing to retaliate, and if so, how? Nichols addresses a lengthy list of issues that would face US government, including co-location of civilian and nuclear targets and potential damage to neigh- bouring allies. …

The Use of Force for Humanitarian Purposes

Humanitarian intervention remains a very controversial area of international law. For many commentators the paradigm case is that of NATO's 1999 operation over Kosovo, but states are still divided on the legality of this use of force. As Kosovo pursues independence today the question whether it was created by the unlawful use of force is still important. The 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia raises similar questions. The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is strongly opposed by the Non-Aligned Movement who see it as a pretext for intervention by powerful states. Few states openly support the legal doctrine; even fewer have relied on it to justify their use of force. Its legal basis is apparently an interpretation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter which allows the use of force to further the purposes of the UN, in particular the protection of human rights. The UK is the foremost supporter in public. It has invoked the doctrine to justify the no-fly zones over Iraq, and has made attempts to draw up a legal framework to govern the use of force on behalf of the international community to prevent humanitarian catastrophes. However, in his secret Memorandum on the 2003 use of force against Iraq the UK Attorney-General acknowledged that the doctrine was controversial. The position of the USA remains uncertain: President Obama's 2010 US National Security Strategy is equivocal to say the least.Recently there have been attempts to shift the focus away from this controversial doctrine to a new concept, that of the Responsibility to Protect. This was unanimously supported by the member states of the UN in the Outcome Document of the Millennium Summit, and was hailed as a major advance. There is some disagreement as to whether the use of force in the name of the Responsibility to Protect can be carried out only by the UN Security Council and whether it rules out the unilateral use of force by states. Various bodies within the UN have worked to elaborate on this concept and to further its implementation in practice, but it remains more an aspiration than an existing duty under international law.

Predator Empire: The Geopolitics of US Drone Warfare

This paper critically assesses the CIA's drone programme and proposes that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving an increasingly “dronified” US national security strategy. The paper suggests that large-scale ground wars are being eclipsed by fleets of weaponised drones capable of targeted killings across the planet. Evidence for this shift is found in key security documents that mobilise an amorphous conflict against vaguely defined al-Qa'ida “affiliates”. This process is legitimised through the White House's presentation of drone warfare as a bureaucratic conflict managed by a “disposition matrix”. These official narratives are challenged by the voices of people living in the tribal areas of Pakistan. What I term the Predator Empire names the biopolitical power that digitises, catalogues, and eliminates threatening “patterns of life” across a widening battlespace. This permanent war is enabled by a topological spatial power that folds the distant environments of the affiliate into the surveillance machinery of the Homeland.

EXPLORING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROLIFERATORS

This theoretical analysis explores which countries might constitute the next generation of nuclear proliferators, using Venezuela as a case study of one of the possible next nuclear weapon states. Three alternative theoretical frameworks or models are used to analyze the preconditions that might or might not drive Venezuela to pursue nuclear weapons in the near future. This study finds that there is little evidence to support the alarmist claims surrounding a future Venezuelan nuclear weapons program. These findings are important for both devising an accurate US national security strategy for identifying and combating the next generation of proliferators and also for implementing effective policies for the future of US-Latin American relations.

The rhetoric of imperial righteousness in a post-9/11 world

This paper examines the three US national security strategies released by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama since 9/11. These national security strategies are required presidential statements describing US plans for national security. The authors analyze Bush’s two and Obama’s one post-9/11 national security strategies and evaluate the argumentative framework of imperial righteousness in the documents. The rhetoric of American imperial righteousness contains four themes: national security, the nature of the enemy, freedom and democracy, and American morality. While there are some differences between the documents, the authors argue that Bush and Obama both promoted the idea of imperial righteousness in their plans for American national security. Moreover, the four themes of imperial righteousness worked together effectively to advance America’s interests in world affairs.

Bridging the gap: Interdisciplinary insights into the securitization of poverty

A significant body of literature within International Relations research attests to a securitization of poverty, since 9/11 especially, and within this process to the centrality of discourse. Remarkably, there has been little reciprocal work within Discourse Analysis to scrutinize the emergence of contemporary security agendas of non-traditional security issues and, as far as we were able to discern, nothing at all of the securitization of poverty. This article reports on part of a larger study into transatlantic representations of international poverty. It responds to the evident need of interdisciplinary research into the securitization of poverty by examining the discursive construction of poverty by United States administrations before and after 9/11. Adopting a Discourse Historical Analysis approach, we examine selected US National Security Strategies for evidence that supports or otherwise makes claims in International Relations literature for the American securitization of poverty. We ultimately conclude that they have engaged in a public discourse that represents poverty as a security issue, cast light upon how this is discursively legitimized and contend that 9/11 accelerated but did not cause this paradigm shift in the treatment of international poverty.

The elephant in the room: US ballistic missile defence under Barack Obama

Conventional wisdom seems to hold that under Barack Obama, the US ballistic missile defence programme has been pushed aside to allow for a refreshed domestic and international agenda. Proponents point to Obama's campaign thinking and rhetoric, the ballistic missile defence (BMD) budget cuts, the decision to end the Third Site in Europe, and the reset relations with Russia through the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) as evidence that the programme has undergone a significant period of change, retraction and rationalisation. This article argues instead that BMD has not fallen from prominence and that there is a change in focus rather than retraction of its strategic goal. Consequently, BMD continues to grow in importance as a component of US national security strategy.

Pre-Emptive Self-Defence Against States Harbouring Terrorists

This Paper analyses the legality of pre‐emptive self‐defence against states harbouring terrorists and elaborates the following aspect: Whether harbouring terrorists entails state responsibility. Therefore, it discusses secondary norms such as attribution rules. This leads to the main question of the Paper, use of pre‐emptive self‐defence against such states, and the legality of it, is looked at through attribution rules and breach of the due diligence obligation. Pre‐emptive self‐defence has enjoyed a new wave of discussion after adoption of US National Security Strategy in 2002. This doctrine has become well-known as “The Bush Doctrine”. The core aspect of this doctrine is: pre‐emptive attack in self‐defence against states harbouring terrorists. Thus, the primary rules of the use of force and the secondary rules of state responsibility stand together. Moreover the correlation of these two sources of law is evident in this regard.

AFRICOM: a threat or an opportunity for African security?

The establishment of an African military command by the United States reflects the growing focus of the United States on Africa in the US National Security Strategy, which appears to be continuing under new US President Barack Obama. This article deals with several questions. What is the stated US National Security Strategy pertaining to Africa? What national interests does the United States have in Africa? What is the United States officially saying about its objectives in Africa and what has it actually been doing to date? And what are other opinion makers saying about US military involvement in Africa? Finally, it looks at the question of US perceptions of possible rivals in Africa and at potential scenarios for conflict before making a series of conclusions about the threats and opportunities posed by AFRICOM for Africa, and recommendations for a response to AFRICOM on the part of policymakers in South Africa.

Whiteness as War by Other Means: Racial Complexity in an Age of Failed States

This paper examines contemporary debates around the US Census, US National Security Strategy, and various documents of postmodern war doctrine to delineate a mutation in domestic social order that is consistent both with the end of civil rights and with US planetary ambition. At one level this paper serves to critique a liberal progressive-activist tendency in the US that remains preoccupied with the very racial oppositions that such a tendency also ironically condemns. The contemporary juridical ethos finds its political analogue not in a post-white “cosmopolitan legal order,” as many would hope, but in the new absolutism of `World-American' rule. At a second level, then, this paper seeks to complicate and challenge US planetary ambition by describing what is ultimately an autogenic form of warfare, a declaration within civil society of a war between the US and itself. The pervasive fractalization of civil rights based forms of domestic social order, and equally, the new minoritarian condition of whiteness, provide apposite bases from within which to rethink race politics in an age of failed states.