[Al Arabiya Latest] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States is still powerful, but must apply its power in fresh ways as the U.S. administration unveiled a new national security strategy."We are no less powerful, but we need to apply our power in different ways," the chief U.S. diplomat said.
"We are shifting from mostly direct exercise and application of power to a more sophisticated and difficult mix of indirect power and influence," Clinton said.
In what she has long called "smart power," she said the United States has to "balance and integrate" all of the elements of U.S. power -- defense, diplomacy and development -- but also including economic power and the "power of our example."
She said it also requires slow and patient diplomacy.
New national security strategy
Under the new national security strategy, President Barack Obama rejected George W. Bush's doctrine that made a "war on terror" the driving force of U.S. power, framing a pragmatic foreign policy for a world bristling with threats.
Obama also steps back from the former president's concept of pre-emptive war to head off looming danger, and cites national security implications of economic meltdowns and global warming.
The doctrine, to be unveiled later Thursday, also holds warnings for Iran and North Korea, focuses on homegrown extremists who turn to Islamic radicalism in America and warns of the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
The document, obtained by AFP, contains an evolution of Obama's pro-engagement policies after 16 months in power, a period that brought the idealism of his campaign into conflict with harsh realities of geopolitics.
It describes a world thick with evolving threats and seeks to reframe U.S. foreign policy after two bloody wars and a crippling global financial crisis.
It projects a tough, hardnosed assessment of American interests and the use of U.S. power, and lays out a dizzying array of threats from cyber warfare to health epidemics to ethnic wars to inequality.
"To succeed, we must face the world as it is," the document states, turning the page on Bush-era dreams of remaking the global order in America's image and recognizing the rise of new global powers.
The document lays out a sweeping new paradigm for U.S. foreign policy, using the tools of diplomacy, economic renewal, development aid, military might and education.
It calls for tough engagement "without illusion" with U.S. foes like Iran and North Korea, but warns they face deepening isolation if they continue to spurn U.S. advances and do not bow to pressure to throw open their nuclear programs.
Military action
The document also preserves the U.S. right to launch unilateral military action, but does so in more restrictive terms than those used by the former Bush administration.
It also seeks to widen the scope of U.S. foreign policy, which became dominated by a doctrinaire "war on terror" following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and led to the war in Iraq, after the invasion of Afghanistan.
"We will always seek to delegitimize the use of terrorism and to isolate those who carry it out," said the document, the product of intense internal deliberations during the 16 months of the Obama administration.
"Yet this is not a global war against a tactic -- terrorism or a religion -- Islam."
"We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners."
The plan notes that for more than a decade, Washington has been involved in a struggle against a "far-reaching network of violence and hatred."
It says Washington must now help Pakistan fight extremism, strengthen Afghanistan and complete a responsible exit from Iraq.
In his last national security strategy in 2006, Bush targeted terrorism as a concept much more specifically, declaring boldly "the war on terror is not over."