How does Obama’s speech repudiate the National Security Strategy?  In other words, what does the National Security Strategy say, and how does Obama reverse some of these claims?  Be sure to cite specific examples from each document.

 National Security and the Islamic World

Min word count 200

Introduction

In September 2002, one year after the September 11^th terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration released a document called the National Security Strategy. It outlined a fundamental shift in American foreign policy.  The National Security strategy announced that the United States must maintain an overwhelming preponderance of military power, not allowing any other country to challenge its overall strength or its dominance in any region of the world. To replace the Cold War doctrine of deterrence, which assumed that the certainty of retaliation would prevent the attacks on the United States and its allies, the document announced new foreign policy principle –preemptive war. If the United States believes that a nation posed a possible future threat to its security, it had the right to attack before such a threat materialized.

In the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, respect for the United States sank to a low ebb in the Islamic World. In June 2009, President Obama traveled to Egypt to deliver a speech aimed at repairing American relations with the world’s one billion Muslims, severely damaged by the war and the sense that many Americans identified all Muslims with the actions of a few terrorists. Entitled “A New Beginning,” it acknowledged past American misdeeds and promised to respect Islamic traditions and values rather than trying to impose American ideas on the Muslim world. But he also reminded his audience of the importance of principles like democracy or equal opportunity for women, widely denied by Islamic governments the Middle East. How to promote these values without being seen as an outside power seeking to impose its will on others would remain a challenge for the Obama Administration and its successors.

Answer the following questions:

1. How does Obama’s speech repudiate the National Security Strategy?  In other words, what does the National Security Strategy say, and how does Obama reverse some of these claims?  Be sure to cite specific examples from each document.