SO PUTTING a bull’s-eye on the administration’s aims as spelled out in the NSS is the best place for the anti-war movement to focus its energies. Attacking the NSS will unite various elements within the peace movement and garner powerful new allies with substantial media and political presence. Here’s how such a strategy can be broken down.

1) Feed the anti-war base. Given that the anti-war movement’s core assessment of the administration’s unilateral rush to war was absolutely correct, the movement can retain its energy by focusing on Bush’s overall foreign-policy aims — and avoid fragmenting over narrower questions such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or overwhelming issues such as globalization. The NSS argues that pre-emption is a central component of US policy. Discredit the Bush administration’s blueprint and you discredit the policy’s various particulars — in the Middle East, for example, or in advancing a global-trade regime stacked against poorer nations.

2) Retain the peace movement’s allies. Among the most striking elements of the recent anti-war movement were its power and influence among American churches. Of the major Christian churches in the US, only the Southern Baptists supported the invasion of Iraq. The lack of church support was embarrassing to the Bush administration, but US churches did not aim to embarrass a popular sitting president. Rather, their concerns centered on their interpretation of the looming US-led attack on Iraq — and the NSS emphasis on pre-emption — as a violation of the terms of a just war.

In papers prepared for a December symposium at the US Institute of Peace on whether an Iraq war would qualify as a just war, both Gerard Powers (director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) and George Hunsinger (professor of theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary) articulated the religious grounds on which the NSS’s presumption toward pre-emption should be rejected. Powers noted that " justifying preventative war (as the NSS defines it) would represent a sharp departure from just-war norms. " He concluded that going to war on such a basis " could set a precedent and justify a strategic doctrine that would weaken existing moral norms in unnecessary and inappropriate ways. "

If anything, Hunsinger’s indictment of pre-emption is even stronger. He summed up his paper this way: " I have argued that the ‘preemptive’ war proposed against Iraq would not be a last resort; that it would lack a sufficient cause, making it little more than a war of aggression; that it would not be a success in any meaningful sense of the term; and finally that it would wreak havoc on a civilian population already tortured by war and sanctions. In particular, I have stressed that the doctrine of preemption, if activated, portends a descent into international barbarism. "

The anti-war movement would do well to harp on the immorality of the doctrine — and keep organized religious opposition to it active.

3) Recruit intellectual firepower. The anti-war movement is not alone in its critique of the NSS. A number of think tanks have also offered strenuous criticism of the document and its doctrine of pre-emption. In addition to the intellectual firepower these think tanks add to the mix, they carry weight with lawmakers and others in public policy.

The Brookings Institution has issued no fewer than three policy assessments of the NSS. Its overall assessment observed that the NSS " sets forth ambitious, and laudable, objectives for the United States.... What the Strategy fails to deliver, however, is a coherent and concrete guide on how to achieve these objectives. " One of the Institution’s more-specific analyses of the NSS’s stance on preemption ( " The New National Security Strategy and Preemption, " by Michael E. O’Hanlon, Susan E. Rice and James B. Steinberg) almost revels in pointing out the dangers and contradictions of the new doctrine. The elevation of pre-emption, argue the authors, " reinforces the image of the United States as too quick to use military force and to do so outside the bounds of international law and legitimacy. " The analysis also argues that " advocating preemption warns potential enemies to hide the very assets we might wish to take preemptive action against, or to otherwise prepare responses and defenses. In this tactical sense, talking too openly about preemption reduces its likely utility, if and when it is employed. " The paper offers a third reason to demur on the doctrine, stating that " advocating preemption may well embolden other countries that would like to justify attacks on their enemies as preemptive in nature. "

Brookings has a reputation for being centrist or to the center-left of national debate. Yet other think tanks also question pre-emption. Ivan Eland, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, notes in a paper that " supporting preventative or preemptive action could shift the rules of the world order against peace and stability. Indeed, if other nations, such as India and Pakistan, adopted preemption as their official policy, the risk of nuclear war would actually rise. "

Eland also argues that the notion of pre-emption is prone to misunderstanding, observing that " in the absence of actual aggression against the United States, how will Washington prove that an attack might have happened? " The potential for global confusion, Eland continues, may lead to a spiraling cycle of armament by potential enemies and pre-emption by the United States. " The unintended consequence of interventionism, " concludes Eland, " could be more interventionism. "

4) Move from protest to politics. At a recent Brookings Institution forum on global governance, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Jessica Tuchman Mathews put in place what should be the final brick in the foundation of a post-Iraq anti-war movement. She singled out the NSS as " the key document " framing the Bush administration’s push for war on Iraq and what might come after it. " We never had the debate that was called for over pre-emption, for two reasons, " Mathews argued. For one thing, most people didn’t take it seriously as doctrine, and viewed it instead as a pretext only for going to war in Iraq. As a result, she observed, the NSS " got wrapped up and submerged in Iraq. " But it is now time to revisit the NSS, Mathews argued, for it " frames the debate for the people of the United States that we haven’t had. "

In a democracy, the only place where such debates can be turned into concrete action is the political arena. That means moving opposition from the streets to the halls of Congress, to the upcoming presidential debates, and to the ballot box itself.

As Mathews pointed out, the concept of pre-emption has received precious little debate in Congress. Much of the comment that has aired has been negative. In an October 7, 2002, speech on the floor of the US Senate, Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy noted Americans’ long history of rejecting pre-emptive doctrine:

Disregarding norms of international behavior, the Bush Strategy asserts that the United States should be exempt from the rules we expect other nations to obey.

I strongly oppose any such extreme doctrine, and I’m sure that many others do as well. Earlier generations of Americans rejected preventive war on the grounds of both morality and practicality, and our generation must do so as well. We can deal with Iraq without resorting to this extreme.

There is concern on the other side of the aisle as well. Shortly after the NSS was published, Republican senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska inserted a pointed barb at pre-emption into a speech he made at the Eisenhower Institute, in Washington, DC. " Emphasizing a doctrine of pre-emption or prevention, " Hagel noted, " which all sovereign nations already possess, risks undermining the international consensus on the necessity of these institutions and the progress we have made. "

WITH SOME SAVVY and resolve, the anti-war movement can force the Bush administration’s NSS onto the public agenda. Yet doing so will require unusual steadfastness and patience. Working the telephones to elected officials, reading up on the issue, and keeping pre-emption on the front burner of political and religious debate are not as immediately gratifying as marching. But the opportunity to attack the Bush administration’s blueprint for a continuous state of war in our name is clear and present. Focusing on the NSS’s dangers should be at the top of the anti-war movement’s agenda. Discrediting it as viable policy, and eventually vanquishing it altogether, is something the movement can accomplish — and in doing so make America and the world a much safer place.