TERÖRLE SAVAŞTAN BÜYÜK GÜÇLER MÜCADELESİNE GERİ DÖNÜŞ

Abstract

In this article, selected documents of American national security strategy (NSS) in the 2000-2018 period are analyzed in the light of Stephan Walt’s “balance of threat” concept. Year 2000 was chosen as the starting point since 9/11 terror attacks correspond to a historic turning point in U.S. foreign policy, and the last NSS concerned is NSS 2017, prepared by the Trump administration. National Defense Strategy (NDS) documents are also taken into consideration, to further clarify the dominant trends in policy making. The aim of the article was to plot the evolution of key concepts and guiding principles in the NSS documents. It is seen that there has been a conceptual shift in the NSSs after the Cold War, where no great power existential threat was perceived, and the new threat definition was based on the Global War on Terror (GWOT). This new approach dominated the first NSSs of the new millennium, after the 9/11 terror attacks. However, in the last NSSs, there has been a return to the previous, threat-based approach, where competitor nation-states such as China and Russia are explicitly mentioned. It is concluded that there has been a conceptual return to the classical sense of great power competition.