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Rumsfeld''s folly: the radical Bush doctrine for America''s military was cooked up long before 9-11. Now, theory has become practice--and it doesn''t work.

Article Excerpt
Since coming into office, the Bush administration has radically altered national-security and military doctrines that had successfully safeguarded American interests for more than 50 years. The changes, as the current crisis in Iraq demonstrates, have actually undermined U.S. security.

George W. Bush's new national-security doctrine, officially promulgated on Sept. 17, 2001, discards the longstanding American policy of using American military and economic power, in conjunction with international support, to create a stable international order by deterring and containing those who would challenge this order.

The Bush strategy, by contrast, is to make the United States the world's dominant military power and to use that power--unbound by the need for allies or United Nations approval--to take unilateral, preemptive military action against tyrants who support terrorists or who seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the president contends that in order to deal with the root causes of terrorism, American power must be used to create free-market democracies to replace these rogue regimes. The Bush plan, in other words, is not just to make the world safe for democracy but to make it democratic.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has just as radically altered the nation's military strategy. Ever since the Vietnam debacle, the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders have argued, in what has been known as the "Powell doctrine," that before this nation commits its troops to battle, it must be willing to deploy overwhelming force to the theater of operations and have a clearly defined exit strategy. Under Rumsfeld, Pentagon policy is to use advanced new technologies to reduce the military's need for large numbers of forces to wage military campaigns. Moreover, Rumsfeld is introducing these changes dramatically rather than gradually, with an abrupt reversal of the Powell doctrine. This, in effect, throws out the baby with the bath water.

The Bush administration claims that the terrorist attacks of September 11 necessitated the new doctrines, but, in fact, many of the people the president appointed to high positions on his national-security team came into office with these agendas. As early as September 1999, in a speech at the Citadel, then-Texas Gov. Bush criticized President Clinton for grossly underfunding the military,...