Princeton Project on National Security Set to Lead U.S. Foreign Policy

Business Wire, Sept 27, 2006

Report Cites Most Prolific Threats to U.S. National Security, Offers Sweeping Changes to Foreign Policy

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The Princeton Project on National Security, an effort spearheaded by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, today unveiled a bipartisan national security strategy for the United States in a report titled Forging a World of Liberty Under Law. The report addresses the most potent threats to U.S. national security throughout the next several decades including: global terror networks; the proliferation and transfer of nuclear weapons; instability in East Asia; the Middle East; global pandemics; and energy.

Forging a World of Liberty Under Law is the result of a two-year collaboration of more than 400 individuals from both political parties, privately and publicly held corporations, national and international educational institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations and media outlets. The top six recommendations held in the report include:

    1)  The United States must address multiple threats, not just one;

    2)  Focusing on "Islamo-Fascism" is a strategic mistake that
        strengthens America's enemies - the global war on terror must
        be replaced by a global counterinsurgency focusing on global
        law enforcement, intelligence and special operations;

    3)  Sweeping reforms are due for international institutions,
        including democratizing the U.N. Security Council, setting up
        a concert of democracies, and transforming the nuclear
        non-proliferation regime;

    4)  The United States should build democracy around the world not
        by jumping immediately to elections, but by bringing countries
        up to PAR - Popular, Accountable, Rights-regarding government;

    5)  The United States must maintain a robust defense by sustaining
        the military predominance of democracies, update doctrines of
        deterrence and retain the option of preventive uses of
        military force, but only as a last resort under strict
        controls; and

    6)  A gas tax should be introduced to wean the United States off
        its dependence on oil.

"We need to build an infrastructure of capacity and cooperation that tackles anything that comes at us - from another terrorist attack to an avian flu pandemic that could kill millions," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security. "We no longer have the luxury of concentrating on one single, well-defined enemy."

"These dangers arise against a background of enormous shifts in the landscape of the international system. It is time to unite our country and our allies, while dividing our enemies - rather than the other way around," said G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security.

The Princeton Project also convened and published the findings of seven working groups that addressed different aspects of national security, including: grand strategy; state security and transnational threats; economics and national security; reconstruction and development; anti-Americanism; relative threat assessment; and foreign policy infrastructure and global institutions.

"The Princeton Project is the most comprehensive and systematic effort in recent years to formulate a national security strategy for the 21st century," said Peter Bergen, CNN Terrorism Analyst and co-chair of the Princeton Project working group on state security and transnational threats.

About the Princeton Project on National Security

With support from the Ford Foundation, a generous gift from Mr. David Rubenstein, and under the stewardship of honorary co-chairs George Schultz and Tony Lake, the Princeton Project on National Security is a bipartisan effort to strengthen and update the intellectual underpinnings of the U.S. national security strategy. A complete report of the Princeton Project on National Security, including its contributors can be obtained at www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns.>

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