The Great Transformation and the Failure of Illiberal Hegemony - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 179

This tendency toward unilateralism followed in part from the new threats themselves: if
the stakes are rising and the margins of error are shrinking in the war on terrorism, multilater-
al norms and agreements that sanction and limit the use of force are obstacles to action. The
United States would need to play a direct and unconstrained role in responding to threats. 66 It
was also a conviction partially based on a judgment that no other country or coalition—even
the European Union—has the force-projection capabilities to respond to terrorist and rogue
states around the world. A decade of U.S. defense spending and modernization had left allies
of the United States far behind. In combat operations, alliance partners found it increasingly
difficult to mesh with U.S. forces. This conviction was also based on the judgment that joint
operations and the use of force through coalitions tend to hinder effective operations. To
some observers, this lesson became clear in the allied bombing campaign over Kosovo. The
sentiment was also expressed during the U.S. and allied military actions in Afghanistan. Sec-
retary of Defense Rumsfeld explained this point in 2002 when he said: “The mission must de-
termine the coalition; the coalition must not determine the mission. If it does the mission will
be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.” 67 The Bush grand strategy did not
advocate the dismantling of alliances or multilateral security mechanisms. 68 Rather, the view
was that these forms of security cooperation were less useful in confronting new threats. 69
This impulse toward unilateralism was also expressed more generally in Bush's foreign
policy. After he took office, his administration famously stepped back from a series of
pending multilateral agreements, including the Kyoto treaty combating global warming, the
International Criminal Court, and the protocol implementing the ban on biological weapons.
The Bush administration also withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which
many observers see as the centerpiece of the global arms-control system. In the national se-
curity area, officials across the Bush administration evinced a general skepticism of arms
control and multilateral security agreements, arguing instead, as one report indicated, that
“the United States must rely on its own capabilities rather than treaties to protect its interests
and sovereignty.” 70 As we will see later, this unilateral orientation toward security protection
resonated with and was reinforced by a broader administration resistance to rule-based, mul-
tilateral cooperation.
The fifth element of Bush grand strategy was the view that the United States would not
just dominate and lead the existing order—it must actively transform it. To fully become se-
cure, the United States must pursue an ambitious agenda of state building and democracy
promotion. President Bush's most sweeping statement of this view came in his second in-
augural address when he argued that “[t]he survival of liberty in our land increasingly de-
pends on the success of liberty in other lands.” 71 In his State of the Union address of the
same year, Bush elaborated on this conviction. “In the long term,” he said, “the peace we
seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies
of murder. If whole regions of the world remain in despair and grow in hatred, they will be