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Abstract
The foreign policy of states determines the way they behave in the international arena. Accurate analysis of official foreign policy documents of a country is helpful in that it shows what the international priorities of a country are at specific periods. This article reviews the U.S. National Security Strategy documents published in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2015 from the perspective of the perception of threats to the U.S. security and perception of the U.S. role in the world. It tries to study the differences and similarities between the Bush and Obama administrations in this regard using a Neoclassical Realist framework. The results show that the Obama administration identified a wider range of threat sources to U.S. national security while providing less detailed solutions to them. Also, as democracy promotion abroad ceased to be a priority in 2015, compared to 2002 and 2006, counterterrorism continues to be at the top of U.S. security agenda. In line with Neoclassical Realism, creation of an international order under U.S. leadership is an important priority mentioned in the NSS of 2015.
Keywords: foreign policy, grand strategy, international system, neoclassical realism, U.S. National Security Strategy.
1.Introduction
National security and its preservation are among the most crucial responsibilities of nation-states. The common practice of most states to determine important national security priorities, is to develop documents that define national security, refer to their perception of threats, and numerate suggested ways to preserve national security. Policymakers develop strategy by identifying national interests, prioritizing goals to achieve them, and arraying instruments of national power in their attainment (Reese, 2013: 2). Being a global power, the United States' way of defining its national security priorities affects world politics.
The article will review four U.S. National Security Strategies, two of which were published during the George W. Bush administration in 2002 and 2006, and the other two under Barack Obama in 2010 and 2015. It will use the main assumptions of Neoclassical Realism to see how similar or different the two presidents' strategies were regarding the role played by the U.S. in the international environment. It makes use of a descriptive method. Data is mainly driven from the texts of the U.S. NSS of 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2015, but the analysis also uses...