Strategic Assessment

In a series of speeches beginning June 2002, US president George Bush presented the expansion of democracy as a, if not the, key goal of American foreign policy. By March 2006, this was set out formally in the opening sentence of the National Security Strategy: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” This is not pure altruism. September 11 had ostensibly proved that “sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe – because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.” Thus, aggressively promoting “a forward strategy of freedom” in the Middle East “reflects the union of our values and our national interests.”