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Although the Cold War is over, 19th century notions of peace and security continue to influence policy: 'If you want peace, prepare for war'.

The current Western security posture is one of elite societies maintaining the status quo in an increasingly divided and environmentally constrained world, through economic and political dominance, backed up by military power.

Today, massive military forces, including nuclear weapons, are being modernised to serve as the ultimate guarantee of security.

James Woolsey, the former Director of the CIA in the Clinton administration, characterised the changing security environment facing the United States as one in which the US had slain the dragon (of the Soviet Union) but now faced a jungle full of snakes.

Unfortunately, this would be an accurate description of current American security attitudes. Despite its status as the sole superpower, the US deeply fears that its economic and political interests will be subject to numerous and unpredictable threats from a variety of states and sub-state actors (or so-called 'rogue' states and terrorists).

Militarism

Confronted by this 'jungle full of snakes', the Bush administration has been reviewing its military strategy, as militarism seems to be the only response it can muster. Despite differences between the political elite and the military over strategy and configuration, the changes announced last week in Washington do not amount to a fundamentally different military force.

Although Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had earlier dropped the decade-long military requirement to fight and win two major wars simultaneously, a doctrine that determined the size and capabilities of the US military, nuclear deterrence remains a core strategy.

Rumsfeld has proposed the building of missile defences and a high-tech military force, capable of maintaining a global presence in peacetime and achieving rapid deployment and long-range strike capability to meet new threats from terrorism, computer warfare and proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

One significant change in strategy relates to a reduction in US forces stationed overseas, who will no longer be required to have the capability of 'swiftly defeating an enemy's effort with minimum reinforcement', possibly indicating a military less geared to operating overseas.

Nevertheless, the US will continue to maintain and enhance its ability to project force anywhere in the world and to intervene whenever and wherever it is necessary to protect its interests. The air force will have 'global reach', using strategic bombers, cruise missiles, and air-based and space-based surveillance and reconnaissance, making it possible to fight 'smart wars at a distance', with little risk to American lives.

Defence policy will be driven by a missile defence system to counter missiles and weapons of mass destruction, backed up by a reliance on modernised nuclear forces. The militarisation of space is deemed necessary for continued military superiority and 'full spectrum dominance of the battleground', on land, sea, air and space.

This build-up of military power and the militarisation of space over the next 30 years is likely to create volatile situations and provoke a response from other states feeling insecure and threatened in a unipolar world, dominated by the US as the keeper of a 'violent peace'.

It would seem that Pearl Harbour and Vietnam have so traumatised the American psyche and coloured its foreign and defence policies, that the US is determined never again to be caught unprepared or suffer the casualties of a prolonged ground war.

Trauma has led to paranoia and overkill. The experience has not generated new thinking or a belief that the peaceful resolution of conflict is a better option than the old, failed military solution.

America is yet to be convinced that militarism is not an appropriate model for ensuring human security in the 21st century.

Unilateralism

A new debate is going on in Washington about strategic arms control treaties. The argument is that there is no need for further bilateral disarmament negotiations with Russia, a post-Cold War friend.

Instead of being hampered by treaties, it is argued that the US should determine the number of nuclear weapons it needs and make unilateral reductions to a level compatible with its security. It is felt that Russia would follow suit as it can no longer afford to maintain its large nuclear arsenal.

Such talks in progress are also linked with a US proposal to move away from nuclear numbers and mutual vulnerability to amending or abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to allow for a US national missile defence system.

By neutralising the relatively smaller nuclear arsenals of countries like China and a weakening Russia, missile defence will destabilise the entire structure of strategic arms control and disarmament, and ignite a new nuclear arms race. It is opposed by Russia and China, and does not even have the support of America's allies and friends, except Australia and India.

There is substantial evidence that the Bush administration prefers to pursue unilateralism and not to be limited by treaties and arms control agreements. Such a policy carries the risk that it could undermine arms control and make the US-Russian nuclear relationship less predictable, less stable and less verifiable.

America's allies and most other states see such agreements and treaties as part of a long process to reverse the arms race and curb nuclear proliferation.

In a short period of six months, the Bush administration has succeeded in giving a new meaning to unilateralism, unsettling US allies as well as Russia and China:

- Proposing the exploration for oil in an environmental sanctuary in Alaska.

- Rejecting a draft protocol to strengthen the enforcement of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

- Renouncing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and proposing to resume nuclear testing.

- Reneging on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

- Objecting to UN proposals to curb international trafficking in small arms.

New security paradigm

The 1991 Gulf War and the 1994 Zapatista revolt in Mexico illustrate components of the trend in international insecurity that together amount to a paradigm shift. The Gulf War was essentially a resource war, fought over the control of Persian Gulf oil. The Zapatista revolt is an example of an anti-elite rebellion, triggered by the growing wealth-poverty divide.

In the coming decades of the 21st century, factors most likely to influence the development of conflict are the impact of globalisation on the wealth-poverty divide, environmental constraints on development, climate change, diminishing strategic resources, increasing pressures from mass migration, and the spread of military technologies, not least, missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Anti-elite action from within the marginalised majority and politically motivated paramilitary action indicate a serious lack of structure and culture for dialogue, within the context of middle power states unwilling to accept Western hegemony.

The Western perception that the status quo can be maintained by military means is an approach that is not only unjust and ethically unacceptable, but is also not even sustainable in military terms, given the vulnerabilities of urban-industrial states to political violence and asymmetric warfare.

It follows that it is necessary to develop a new security paradigm, based on policies likely to enhance peace and limit conflict, by reversing socio-economic polarisation, enforcing sustainable economic development and environmental protection, controlling weapons and missile proliferation, and reducing militarisation.

Exceptionalism

It is essential to learn from the experience of the Cold War and fashion a new security paradigm from those lessons. The Bush administration is attempting to establish rapport with other governments, but hard line unilateral initiatives and withdrawal from or rejection of international agreements and global rules are not helping.

The US has a record of cooperation and progressive leadership in the past that lighted the darkness of international relations and enhanced the quest for peace and justice. It cannot now turn away its face and live in the unreal world of exceptionalism.

DR RONALD McCOY is president of the Malaysian Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Society (MPPNW) which will be holding a public forum to mark Hiroshima Day on Aug 6 at the 30th Floor, Dewan Bandaraya, Jalan Raja Laut, Kuala Lumpur at 4.30pm.