The Great Transformation and the Failure of Illiberal Hegemony - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 180

the recruiting grounds for terror, and that terror will stalk America.” 72 The administration's
national security strategy called for the employment of an array of tools and efforts to pro-
mote transitions around the world to democracy—or at least to rule-abiding and accountable
regimes. Past American presidents had also championed freedom and democracy. The Bush
administration's formulation was distinctive in the linkages it drew to national security. In
the post-September 11 era, the United States was “now threatened less by conquering states
than we are by failing ones.” 73 A global agenda for transformation was tied directly to Amer-
ican national security.
Terrorist groups were threats in part because states in troubled parts of the world were
weak and failing, providing havens for these groups. Other states—such as Iraq under
Saddam Hussein—were autocratic states that posed a threat both directly if they acquired
weapons of mass destruction and indirectly if they passed weapons or materials off to terrorist
groups. Out of these new security worries grew the agenda for regime transformation. Threats
by terrorists and hostile autocratic states could only be confronted by altering the character
of the states themselves. 74 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice captured the essence of the
Bush administration's new view in a January 2006 speech at Georgetown University: “Since
its creation more than 350 years ago, the modern state system has rested on the concept of
sovereignty. It was always assumed that every state could control and direct the threats emer-
ging from its territory. It was also assumed that weak and poorly governed states were merely
a burden to their people, or at most, an international humanitarian concern but never a true
security threat. Today, however, these old assumptions no longer hold. . . . The fundamental
character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power.” 75 The
United States could not render itself safe in the existing system. States would variously need
to be confronted, strengthened, and democratized.
Finally, the Bush administration made the support of other states to America's war on ter-
ror the preeminent determinant of the quality and character of relationships within the global
order. “Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable
for inactivity,” President Bush asserted soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks. “You're
either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” 76 Soon after, at an international confer-
ence on terrorism in Warsaw, Bush remarked that “[n]o nation can be neutral in this conflict,
because no civilized nation can be secure in a world threatened by terror.” 77 In effect, coun-
tries would not be allowed to remain on the sidelines. The United States would determine if
countries—allies or otherwise—were supportive of the new American-led global security or-
der and, in particular, its war on terrorism. States had a simple choice: they could work with
the United States or they could be part of the problem, and rewards and punishments would
follow accordingly.
This was a remarkable foreign policy message to the world. The United States was the
dominant global power with vast, far-flung, and multifaceted relations with almost all states