An old Soviet joke described the Kremlin's approach to policy under Leonid Brezhnev as "pull the curtains and pretend the train is moving". The US National Security Strategy just issued by the Bush administration expresses the same general philosophy.

It would seem, to judge by this document, that the train of US official thinking has not moved for four years. For this NSS basically restates, in somewhat milder language, the notorious National Security Strategy of 2002. This is in spite of the fact that the analysis and strategy set out then have -- to put it mildly -- not been borne out by subsequent events.

This NSS is the product of long and heated debates within the Bush administration, especially over the wording of the passages directed at Russia and China. It therefore represents a kind of lowest common denominator of the thinking of the administration.

What is even more worrying, however, is that in most respects this document also represents the thinking of most of the leadership of the Democratic party. Some Democrats will no doubt attack the NSS for its evasion of any serious discussion of intelligence failures with regard to Iraq, and of any discussion at all of the institutional failures reflected in US errors there. And, of course, they will be quite right.

However, on most key issues of future policy, and going by recent speeches from the presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh, these mainstream Democrats would not differ significantly from the administration. These areas of broad de facto consensus include approaches to the Iran nuclear question, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, relations with Russia and China and the spreading of US-defined "democracy". Indeed, as with the recent controversy over Dubai gaining "control" of US ports, so with regard to Russia and even Iran, there has been a certain strategy on the part of the Democrats of trying to outflank the administration by being even more hardline.

On preventive war, the language of this NSS has been softened somewhat compared with 2002. However, as then, the document continues deliberately and perniciously to use the language of "pre-emption" when it clearly means "prevention". This is especially menacing in connection with the hysterical language used towards Iran.

The rhetoric is similar to that used about Iraq in the run-up to war there -- but with far less excuse. Iran's nuclear programme -- although entirely legal -- is certainly problematic and should be strictly controlled. But unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran has never in modern times launched an aggressive war against a neighbour and for a decade now has not been credibly accused of sponsoring a terrorist attack. As to the NSS criticisms of Iranian "tyranny", this exemplifies the hypocrisy that undermines US claims to be spreading "democracy" in the Middle East -- for along with its elements of theocratic authoritarianism, Iran also has more elements of representative democracy than any of America's key Muslim allies in the region.

Preventive war against Iran would therefore be a monstrous act by any standard. The right to pre-emptive war against visibly imminent attack has always been asserted by the US and every other state. Preventive war against possible future dangers represents a deeply menacing revolution in international affairs. It is also ridiculous to suggest, as this NSS does, that the US should claim this right, without other states following suit.

In rejecting proposals for preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union and China in the early 1950s, President Harry Truman put it well: "The only thing you prevent by war is peace." President Dwight Eisenhower followed his lead. Instead, during the cold war the US successfully relied on its nuclear power to deter any Soviet attack. As the NSS makes clear, deterrence remains a central part of US strategy, which explains why there is not even a formal bow towards a future reduction in the number of US nuclear weapons. Equally important, a US belief in Israel's need to deter its neighbours has made successive US administrations turn a blind eye towards Israel's possession of nuclear weapons.

But now Washington and Tel Aviv want it both ways. They want simultaneously to possess nuclear deterrents and to prevent other states from developing the nuclear forces they are supposed to deter. It is impossible to base any legal, consensual or stable international order on such an intellectually and morally incoherent foundation.

Anatol Lieven is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. This article originally appeared in the Financial Times, March 19, 2006, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.