President Bush has assumed office at a time when the United States possesses unrivaled political, military, and economic power. Thankfully, most Americans understand that the United States has a duty to lead the world. A key challenge facing the President is whether he can convert this general internationalist sentiment into a foreign policy that enjoys bipartisan backing. This is so in times of real crisis, but in truth foreign policy debates rarely are immune from partisan politics. Even during the Cold War, when a consensus favored containment of Soviet communism, there was often sharp disagreement about the means to that end, such as whether to support a particular guerrilla movement abroad or fund a particular weapons system at home.
Debate is essential to our democracy.
But I remain hopeful that we can avoid divisive partisan fights. The premier threat to U.S. security is the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction. We must forge a new strategy of containment, focused on the danger that nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and the missiles to propel them, could be used by terrorists or rogue states. This threat requires a multi-pronged response. The key test for bipartisanship revolves around our nuclear doctrine.