WASHINGTON – The Washington Post — President Barack Obama will formally present a new national security strategy early next year, identifying his foreign policy priorities for the remainder of his time in office, the White House said Friday.
The new policy document will be the second of Obama’s administration and will likely update the previous one, released in May 2010, in several important areas. Those include policies for fighting the next phase of the war against al-Qaida, the shift of national security resources to Asia and a plan to manage declining defense budgets amid fiscal strain.
The administration will present another strategy paper on how it intends to achieve the policy ambitions to be outlined in the new national security doctrine sometime in the spring, Obama told Congress in a letter made public Friday.
The new strategy is being drafted at a time when Obama continues to face questions over his counterterrorism policy, particularly the use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the U.S. military withdraws from that region.
Disclosures over the scope of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping practices have also placed Obama at odds with some foreign leaders, including U.S. allies, and prompted him to pledge reforms in the way intelligence gathering is conducted.
The new security strategy will likely reflect some of those proposals and expand on administration plans in the Asia-Pacific region as the U.S. shifts from a war footing in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to new diplomatic and economic initiatives.
Click to enlarge
