World View: A World of Liberty and Law; Our own founders focused on the 'combined blessings of order and liberty'. Elections cannot be the only tool in our toolbox to promote democracy.

Byline: G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter (G. John Ikenberry Anne-Marie Slaughter are codirectors of the Princeton Project on National Security, which brought together almost 400 national-security experts over the past two and a half years to develop a bipartisan national-security strategy aimed at the coming decades. They are the coauthors of the project's final report, "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: U.S. National Security Strategy in the 21st Century.")

The recent fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks marked not just a day of infamy but, in a profound sense, brought to a close the post-9/11 era. For five tumultuous years, the United States has seen itself--and the world--through the prism of these attacks and the ensuing "war on terror." Now it is time to look forward, to shape America's national-security strategy not for the post-cold-war era or the post-9/11 era, but for the 21st century.

National security in the 21st century looks more like a Rubik's Cube than a game of chess. As much as Americans might prefer a world with one big threat and one simple formula for fighting it--Islamofascism as the successor to Nazism and communism--that is just not the world we live in. The rise of China, the risk of global pandemics, nuclear proliferation, transnational terrorism, environmental catastrophe--these are only some of the interconnected dangers and challenges we must face. On 9/11 the United States was focused on China. After 9/11 we swiveled and looked to the Middle East instead. But while we are watching Al Qaeda and Iraq we could get equally blindsided tomorrow.

An effective national-security strategy in the 21st century must build an infrastructure of capacity and cooperation to meet whatever comes at us, so we may respond quickly and flexibly. It must invest our time and money in technology, diplomacy, institutions and policies that have maximum impact and multiple uses. It must be guided by an overarching concept, but one that offers a positive vision of the world and concrete policies for achieving that vision rather than a fear-based response to a specific threat. That vision is a world of "liberty under law": a world of stable democracies able to provide their citizens both order and liberty, and of effective international institutions able to build democracy over the long term, safeguard human rights, and use force when necessary to uphold international law.

How do we get there? First, the United States should drop the idea of fighting a global war against Islamofascism. This conception of the terrorist threat squeezes all ...