The White House released the new National Security Strategy (NSS) today.

The NSS is a big deal. It frames the work of the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the DoD. It drives the SECDEF’s National Defense Strategy (NDS), which in turn drives both the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s National Military Strategy (NMS) and the Strategic Planning Guidance (SPG), which in turn drives the entire DoD budgeting process. And the arm bone is connected to the collarbone which is connected to the…

I haven’t had time to read it in full yet, but from what I can tell from the press releases, there isn’t anything radically new. The strategy seeks to “protect the American people, advance American interests, enhance global security, and expand global liberty and prosperity” through two pillars:

The first pillar is promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity – working to end tyranny, to promote effective democracies, and to extend prosperity through free and fair trade and wise development policies.

· The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

· In the world today, the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them. Free governments are accountable to their people, govern their territory effectively, and pursue economic and political policies that benefit their citizens. Free governments do not oppress their people or attack other free nations. Peace and international stability are most reliably built on a foundation of freedom.

The second pillar of the strategy is confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies.

· Many of the problems we face – from the threat of pandemic disease, to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to terrorism, to human trafficking, to natural disasters – reach across borders. Effective multinational efforts are essential to solve these problems. Yet history has shown that only when we do our part will others do theirs. America will continue to lead.

The first pillar echos Bush’s second inaugural, while the second pillar strikes me as a very direct effort to counter the criticisms of the 2002 NSS’s “preemption” doctrine. It is very satisfying to see the sub- and trans-national dangers of our world being recognized as our major dangers. Hysterical China fears were kept to a minimum; a quick search finds most references to China regarding economic integration and cooperation. The worst it gets is this:

China’s leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world.

I am pretty satisfied that the strategy recognizes that China is currently on a peaceful path, so I’m not going to get bothered by this right now.

Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t get off so easy. In the equivocating, group-think tone of bureaucratic prose, the NSS states that “[w]e may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

More to come as I get the chance to read the strategy in its entirety.