WMD Issues Lose Priority in State of the Union Speech
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush in his annual State of the Union address last night again conveyed promoting a global struggle against "tyranny" as his primary national security message, rather than preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and their allegedly allied regimes (see GSN, Feb. 3, 2005).
In his first three addresses, following the September 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, Bush's primary message had been that the United States was at risk from and must prevent catastrophic attack from terrorists or rogue nations using nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
In his first address in 2002, Bush called Iran, Iraq and North Korea "an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." That year, he called the prospect of a WMD attack "a grave and growing danger," in 2003, "the gravest danger," and in 2004, the "ultimate danger."
In his address last year, Bush expanded his vision of the principal U.S. security challenge into a global struggle to spread democracy and end tyranny. Last night he carried that message further, saying the United States is engaged in a "long war" to liberate the world from dictatorships and tyranny-seeking terrorists who also seek to acquire unconventional weapons.
"We accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed, and move this world toward peace," Bush said.
"Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy - a war that will be fought by presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. . Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom," he said later.
Bush listed the pursuit of "weapons of mass destruction" as one of several characteristics of tyrannical regimes. "Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Iran, he said, "is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons."
He did not, however, single out North Korea or any states other than Iran as presenting WMD concerns, nor did he discuss efforts to stop proliferation, as he had in previous such addresses. The focus of his speech was on what Bush portrayed as a historic global struggle on par with the Cold War.
While more than half the world lives in democratic nations, he said, "we do not forget the other half in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world require their freedom as well."
Bush called Iran "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people", and he said Tehran sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. He said the United States would welcome "a free and democratic Iran."
Parts of a Struggle
Bush portrayed terrorists as part of this global ideological struggle between freedom and tyranny.
Certain terrorists such as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, he said, "seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder. Their aim is to seize power in Iraq and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world."
Bush did not, though, as he had in his earliest addresses, address potential alliances between such terrorists and nations to deliver weapons of mass destruction. Terrorists and nondemocratic states were portrayed as separate elements of a threat in a global struggle over how the world should be governed.
"We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite," he said.
