ABSTRACT
During the Cold War, US security strategy was governed by the perceived need to contain communism, and intervention overseas was justified in these terms. Neo-Conservatives, who dominate the thinking of the Bush administration, argue that the aggressive anti-communist stance adopted by President Reagan in the 1980s not only won the Cold War, but left the USA as the only superpower, with an historically unique opportunity to dominate the new world order, by force if necessary. The Neo-Conservative perspective sees an activist foreign policy as not only protecting American interests, but as a way of fulfilling the USA’s global responsibility to create a world based on American liberal principles. The alternative would be to cede the world to dictators, rogue states and terrorists who, in deadly combination, represent the new post-Cold War challenge to the US-inspired neoliberal order.
“War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder… The conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.”
President George W. Bush The National CAThedral Washington, D.C. September 14, 2001