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The most striking feature about President Obama's new National Security Strategy (NSS) document is that there is very little new in it. True, the tone of the NSS is rather different from the Bush administration's implied preference for unilateralism, but even that change merely takes U.S. strategy back to the days of the Clinton administration and most of its predecessors. In short, the Obama NSS is warmed-over liberal internationalism.

The principal theme in this NSS is burden sharing. The United States, the document stresses, cannot afford to be the world's sole policeman. Washington needs partners who are willing and able to meet security challenges and help preserve global peace and prosperity.

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But administrations since the...