Obama Releases National Security Strategy

The U.S. can't go it alone, fight multiple long wars with undefined endings, or focus only on defeating terrorism to achieve its security goals, according to a new National Security Strategy from President Obama. The New York Times describes the outline as a dig at the Bush administration's plan, which placed less emphasis on international institutions and cooperation in handling threats. “The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” Obama writes in the document's introduction. “Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.” The document also broadens the scope of national security threats to include climate change, cyber threats, and dependence on oil, areas that were mostly ignored in Bush's first strategy paper in 2002. “It is a rather dramatic departure from the most recent prior national security strategy," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told the Times.