President spells out new, bellicose philosophy for US

The Bush administration made official its new philosophy of America yesterday: it is a country that reserves the right to act pre-emptively against a potential foe, brooks no military rival and regards most non-proliferation treaties as barely worth the paper they are printed on.

The approach has been evident almost from the moment George Bush took office. It could be seen in dismissive attitudes to non-proliferation and arms control treaties, in the "pre-emption" doctrine set out at the President's West Point speech in June and in the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the document, "The National Security Strategy of the United States", which the White House has just sent to Congress, pulls together the strands as never before.

It reveals how the attacks of 11 September last year have conclusively laid to rest the thinking that dominated the post-war Cold War era.

No less striking is its language, straight forward to the point of bluntness. Mr Bush, according to The New York Times, told his staff the document "had to be written in plain English 'because the boys in Lubbock ought to be able to understand it'."

Deterrence in its old sense of "Mutual Assured Destruction", is out – "there is no way in this changed world to deter those who hate the United States and everything for which it stands," says the document. America "is now threatened less by conquering states than by failing ones". The US would not hesitate to act "alone if necessary" to exercise its right to self-defence.

In the war against terrorism, Washington now vows "to convince or compel" states to accept their sovereign responsibilities – an argument used by the Bush administration in the case of Iraq.

Nor should too much faith be placed in non-proliferation treaties. The new buzzword is "counterproliferation" – a concept embracing everything from missile defence programmes and military strikes to taking out threatening weapons facilities. To have a free hand to fulfil its aims, America will not permit "any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the US has opened up since the fall of the Soviet Union" in 1991.

The document also says America will continue to use the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to spread its free-market doctrines.