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June 4, 2002 12:50 p.m. A Fighting Doctrine Important new steps in the Bush doctrine.

f wars were fought with doctrines rather than guns, the Bush administration would have wrapped up the war on terrorism by now.

At West Point on Saturday, Bush again achieved doctrinal excellence with a speech that pushed his thinking forward a few important steps — making the case for preemptive U.S. action against rogues and taking some not-very-subtle shots at the Saudis.

This is a sign that, as a logical and intellectual matter, the war is widening rather than shrinking (as some NRO-niks, including myself at times, have worried). Now, all that is left is actually acting on it.

There are two main sources of "hard" power (weapons, cash, etc.) for our enemies. One is weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which is why the war on terrorism had also to become a war against the WMD capability of rogues (as I wrote back on Dec. 3). Bush made this step in his State of the Union address this year.

But you can't have a war on WMD unless you have a robust operational doctrine of preemption. Because once your enemy has a well-formed WMD capability it may be too late to do anything about it.

We can see this dynamic at work in the debate over Iraq, as U.S. generals are reluctant to take out Saddam partly because he has biological and chemical weapons that could prove a real problem to our troops in the field.

This is exactly why Bush said "time is not on our side" in his State of the Union address. Every day that Saddam has to strengthen his bio and chem capability, and maybe get a nuclear one as well, increases his power and decreases ours.

Preemption, as soon as possible, is the only way out of this dynamic.

At West Point, Bush made it clear that this is his policy going forward, and that arms control is not the answer: "We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." Exactly.

The other source of power, besides WMD, for our enemies is oil. The administration has not flushed out any clear thinking on how to deal with OPEC, but at least seems to be taking steps to dismantle it in practice.

I suspect the most important things about Bush's latest summit with Putin were not nukes or NATO but oil, oil, and oil.

Some sort of understanding with Russia on oil will be a big step toward dimishing the market power of OPEC. The U.S. also needs vigorously to pursue the development of other important oil markets, whether it's the Gulf of Mexico or, as I argue in the current issue of NR, West Africa.

The administration's handling of Russia actually provides a good analogy for what should be happening with regard to OPEC, the Saudis, and the entire Middle East. About three years ago the administration had a very clear vision how the Cold War had ended, and how, therefore, its flotsam — the ABM Treaty, the START agreements, etc. — could be cast aside.

The administration saw much more clearly than anyone else — especially the foreign-policy establishment that railed about a new "arms race" — that the old status quo had died, and set about meticulously shaping something new: missle defense, a unilateral reduction in U.S. arms (the Bushies had to give on this a little bit, inking a more formal deal with Putin), and a real partnership with Russia.

This is an almost textbook example of how to build a new world order. It should be a model for how the administration approaches the Middle East and its stale, corrupt status quo exemplified by Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Even if the administration hasn't clearly intellectualized what should replace the current Middle East, it is groping toward a break with the current order.

This is why these lines were so important in Bush's West Point speech:

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes.

A truly strong nation will permit legal avenues of dissent for all groups that pursue their aspirations without violence. An advancing nation will pursue economic reform, to unleash the great entrepreneurial energy of its people. A thriving nation will respect the rights of women, because no society can prosper while denying opportunity to half its citizens. Mothers and fathers and children across the Islamic world, and all the world, share the same fears and aspirations. In poverty, they struggle. In tyranny, they suffer. And as we saw in Afghanistan, in liberation they celebrate.

This passage is a simmering bomb lit under the Saudis and the other corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East. I've never been much for a global crusade for democracy, but fighting for pluralism, markets, and civil societies makes some sense — especially when it would serve to unseat the regimes that are the chief supporters of anti-Western Islamic militancy.

And in case the Saudis didn't get the message, Bush included this nice zinger: "Other nations oppose terror, but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror — and that must change."

So, the West Point speech renews my optimism: I think that we're going to topple Saddam's regime, and that it will be the first step toward creating a new Middle Eastern geopolitical order. I'm not sure Bush would quite agree with this if you asked him about it today, but it's where his doctrine is headed. Let's hope he follows.