Integrated Power: A National Security Strategy for the 21st Century

Integrated Power: A National Security Strategy for the 21^st Century

Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the president is obligated every year to present to the Congress and the American people a “national security strategy.” The Bush administration has abdicated this responsibility. Today, Lawrence Korb, Robert Boorstin, and the National Security staff of the Center for American Progress fill the vacuum with Integrated Power, a progressive, forward-thinking national security strategy to protect the American people and advance our interests.

• Integrated Power puts the United State s in the strongest position to address threats, prevent conflicts, and recapture its moral leadership. Integrated Power means discarding previous concepts of “hard” and “soft” power and viewing them not as alternatives but as essential partners that must be used in tandem to defend America against its most serious threats. Integrated Power offers a different, better path to keep our country strong and promote democracy and prosperity. America’s dominant power will best be maintained by using a multidimensional approach that links threats to priorities, and priorities to actions by institutions.
  
  

• Bush’s Failed Approach. The Bush administration last released a national security strategy in 2002 – when it offered the now discredited doctrine of preventive war in an attempt to justify the diversion from finishing the job in Afghanistan to pursue the war against Iraq. As a result, our military is weaker, many of our historic alliances are frayed, our Treasury is depleted, Osama bin Laden remains at large, and our tarnished reputation abroad has diminished our capacity to exercise moral leadership.
  
  

• Specific Steps to Protect our Nation. Integrate the offensive, defensive, and preventive elements of our national defense budget; establish a new Department of International Development to oversee foreign assistance and conflict-prevention programs; enlarge the active duty Army and double our Special Forces capabilities; support the “responsibility to protect” doctrine and exert leadership to stop genocide in Darfur; combine the Homeland Security and National Security Councils inside the White House; build local capacity to undertake democracy-building efforts; and engage in both multilateral and bilateral discussions with Iran and North Korea.