Obama's National Security Strategy: Shifting Priorities and Approach
This paper examines the key elements of the Obama Administration's developing national security strategy by analyzing public statements, particularly Secretary of State Clinton's June 2009 speech, and comparing them with the 2006 Bush administration strategy. The analysis identifies five major policy areas: weapons of mass destruction, counterterrorism, the war in Iraq, climate change, and global economic recovery. While some themes persist from the previous administration, the paper demonstrates that the Obama approach emphasizes negotiation and diplomatic engagement over the unilateral military methods of its predecessor, reflecting a fundamentally different philosophy in addressing international security challenges.
- Introduction: Context and Framework: Setting up analysis of emerging Obama security strategy
- Nuclear Weapons and Counterterrorism: Reordered Priorities: WMD and terrorism as top priorities with institutional restructuring
- Iraq and Regional Stability: Post-war Iraq and troop withdrawal as strategic focus
- Economic Recovery and Global Cooperation: Global economic revival replacing free-market globalization agenda
- Climate Change: Elevated Priority: Climate change elevated from secondary issue to independent strategy pillar
- Democracy, Human Rights, and Diplomatic Engagement: Promoting democracy through negotiation rather than military intervention
- Conclusion: Strategy and Implementation: Summary of five major strategy elements with emphasis on different approach
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What makes this paper effective
- Uses primary source material (Secretary Clinton's June 2009 speech) as an organizing framework to infer administration priorities before the official strategy was released, providing concrete evidence of stated policy goals.
- Employs systematic comparison between the 2006 Bush strategy and emerging Obama priorities to highlight philosophical shifts in approach, particularly from unilateralism to multilateralism.
- Addresses methodological transparency by acknowledging the absence of an official document and explaining how conclusions are drawn from speeches and administrative actions, demonstrating intellectual honesty.
- Structures analysis around five discrete policy domains (WMD, terrorism, Iraq, economics, climate), making complex foreign policy accessible and evaluable.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs comparative policy analysis across administrations, using documented statements and prior strategic documents to infer future policy directions. Rather than speculating, the author grounds analysis in Clinton's explicit enumeration of priorities and demonstrates how each theme relates to previous strategic documents while highlighting departures in implementation philosophy. This approach—inferring strategy from official rhetoric and contextualizing it within historical precedent—models how policy analysis can work when formal documents are unavailable.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing its analytical constraint (no official strategy document yet published) and identifies Clinton's speech as the primary evidence source. It then works through six substantive policy areas in sequence, each following a pattern: identifying the policy area, noting its presence in the 2006 strategy, and explaining how the Obama approach differs in emphasis or method. The conclusion synthesizes these five elements into a cohesive characterization of the emerging strategy. This structure emphasizes continuity with past concerns while highlighting the methodological and philosophical differences that distinguish the new administration.
Introduction: Context and Framework
The Obama Administration's approach to national security represents a departure from its predecessor in both strategy and implementation. A key difference between the Bush 2006 National Security Strategy and the emerging Obama strategy lies in how each administration prioritizes and addresses the same fundamental challenges. While an official National Security Strategy document from the Obama Administration had not yet been published at the time this analysis was prepared, the main attributes of the strategy became evident through speeches and administrative actions.
Given the absence of an official document outlining the Administration's main concerns, available information comes primarily from public statements and policy decisions. One particularly significant statement was Secretary of State Clinton's speech in June 2009, in which she outlined the administration's core strategic objectives. She stated:
"We want to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent their use, and build a world free of their threat. We want to isolate and defeat terrorists and counter violent extremists while reaching out to Muslims around the world. We want to encourage and facilitate the efforts of all parties to pursue and achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. We want to seek global economic recovery and growth by strengthening our own economy, advancing a robust development agenda, expanding trade that is free and fair, and boosting investment that creates decent jobs. We want to combat climate change, increase energy security, and lay the foundation for a prosperous clean-energy future. We want to support and encourage democratic governments that protect the rights and deliver results for their people. And we intend to stand up for human rights everywhere." (Reveron, 2009)
This statement serves as an important outline of the emerging security strategy, identifying the administration's core priorities and proposed methods for addressing them.
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