Bush Doctrine

President Bush makes remarks in 2006 during a press conference in the Rose Garden about Iran's nuclear ambitions and discusses North Korea's nuclear test.

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002.

Central to the development of the Bush Doctrine is its strong influence by neoconservative ideology, and it is considered to be a step from the political realism of the Reagan Doctrine. The Reagan Doctrine was considered key to American foreign policy until the end of the Cold War, just before Bill Clinton became president of the Unites States. The Reagan Doctrine was considered anti-Communist and in opposition to Soviet Union global influence, but later spoke of a peace dividend towards the end of the Cold War with economic benefits of a decrease in defence spending. The Reagan Doctrine was strongly criticized by the neoconservatives, who also became disgruntled with the outcome of the Gulf War and United States foreign policy under Bill Clinton, sparking them to call for change towards global stability through their support for active intervention and the democratic peace theory. Several central persons in the counsel to the George W. Bush administration consider themselves to be neoconservatives.

Development

Elements of the Bush Doctrine were evident in the first months of Bush's presidency. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer used the term in February 2001 to refer to the president's increased unilateralism in foreign policy, specifically regarding the president's decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty.

The doctrine was developed more fully in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when President Bush declared that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor terrorist groups as terrorist states themselves. In an address to the nation on the evening of September 11, Bush stated his resolution of the issue by declaring that "we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

This policy was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and has since been applied to American military action against Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan. This presented a foreign-policy challenge, since it was not the Taliban that had initiated the attacks, and there was no evidence that they had any foreknowledge of the attacks.

In a series of speeches in late 2001 and 2002, President Bush expanded on his view of American foreign policy and global intervention, declaring that the United States should actively support democratic governments around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the threat of terrorism, and that the United States had the right to act unilaterally in its own security interests, without the approval of international bodies such as the United Nations. This represented a departure from the Cold War policies of deterrence and containment under the Truman Doctrine and post-Cold War philosophies such as the Powell Doctrine and the Clinton Doctrine.

The main elements of the Bush Doctrine were delineated in a National Security Council document, the National Security Strategy of the United States, published on September 20, 2002. This document is often cited as the definitive statement of the doctrine. It was updated in 2006 and is stated as follows:

It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense.

Overview

Two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the question of how to handle countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea ("Axis of Evil" states). Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, as well as US Department of State specialists, argued for what was essentially the continuation of existing US foreign policy. These policies, developed after the Cold War, sought to establish a multilateral consensus for action (which would likely take the form of increasingly harsh sanctions against the problem states, summarized as the policy of containment). The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower. President Bush ultimately sided with the Department of Defense camp, and their recommendations.

These principles are sometimes referred to as the Bush Doctrine although the term is often used to describe other elements of Bush policy and is not universally recognized as the single concept. Among the signers of the Project for the New American Century's (PNAC) original Statement of Principles were a number of people who later gained high positions in the Bush administration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

Out of the National Security Stategy, four main points are highlighted as the core to the Bush Doctrine: Preemption, Military Primacy, New Multilateralism, and the Spread of Democracy. The document emphasized preemption by stating: "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few." and required "defending the United States, the American people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our borders."

Another part of the intellectual underpinning of the Bush Doctrine was the 2004 book The Case for Democracy, written by Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer, which Bush has cited as influential in his thinking. The book argues that replacing dictatorships with democratic governments is both morally justified, since it leads to greater freedom for the citizens of such countries, and strategically wise, since democratic countries are more peaceful, and breed less terrorism, than dictatorial ones.

Criticism

Critics of the Bush Doctrine are suspicious of the increasing willingness of the US to use military force unilaterally. Some published criticisms include Storer H. Rowley’s June 2002 article in the Chicago Tribune, Anup Shah’s at Globalissues.org, and Nat Parry’s April 2004 article at ConsortiumNews.com.

Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson argue that it reflects a turn away from international law, and marks the end of American legitimacy in foreign affairs..

Others have stated that it could lead to other states resorting to the production of WMD’s or terrorist activities. This doctrine is argued to be contrary to the Just War Theory and would constitute a war of aggression. Patrick J. Buchanan writes that the 2003 invasion of Iraq has significant similarities to the 1996 neoconservative policy paper A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

According to Buchanan and others the Bush Doctrine is a radical departure from former United States foreign policies, and a continuation of the radical ideological roots of neoconservatism.. The founder of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, and other strong influencers of neoconservatives, like James Burnham, were former active supporters of Trotskyism before forming the neoconservative ideas. The neoconservative foundation for the Bush Doctrine lies in a revulsion against countercultures, according to Irving Kristol. Critics of neoconservatism have described neoconservatism as a type of political radicalism.Scholar Kevin B. MacDonald claim: "The current situation in the United States is a really an awesome display of Jewish power and influence." On the contrary, in his article In Praise of the Bush Doctrine, Norman Podhoretz opens with: "It has been said - by me, among others - that George W. Bush bears a closer political resemblance to Ronald Reagan than to his father."

There is also criticism on the Bush Doctrine practices related to their sociopsycological effects saying they create a culture of fear. Author Naomi Klein wrote in her book The Shock Doctrine about a recurrent metaphor of shock, and claims - amongst critical response - in an interview that the Bush administration has continued to exploit a "window of opportunity that opens up in a state of shock" as a support for their foreign and domestic policies with synergistic effects on economy, politics and sociopsychology. Alex Gourevitch wrote in his n+1 journal article The Politics of Fear, that "in conditions when conventional political ideologies fail to inspire, there is a temptation to resort to the politics of fear" and "even if the declining fortunes of the war on terror give the appearance that the politics of fear itself is on the wane, another campaign may be reviving it."

President Bush often talks about his belief in compassionate conservatism. In his Claremont Institute article Democracy and the Bush Doctrine, Charles R. Kesler wrote, "As he begins his second term, the president and his advisors must take a hard, second look at the Bush Doctrine. In many respects, it is the export version of compassionate conservatism."

See also

• Foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration
• Clinton Doctrine
• Jus ad bellum
• Powell Doctrine
• The One Percent Doctrine
• United States Presidential doctrines
• War on Terrorism
• Foreign policy of the United States

References

18. Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E. kanet, eds., From Superpower to Besieged Global Power: Restoring World Order after the Failure of the Bush Doctrine (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).

External links

• Edward A. Kolodziej, Getting beyond the Bush Doctrine, Center for Global Studies, December, 2006.
• Roger Speed & Michael May, Dangerous Doctrine, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2005.
• Jeffery Record, The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq, Parameters, Spring 2003. (html version)
• Chip Pitts et al., War, Law, and American Democracy , OpenDemocracy.net, October 25, 2006.
• George W. Bush et al., The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002
• Defense Policy Guidance 1992-1994
• Patrick Tyler. U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop A One-Superpower World, New York Times, March 8, 1992.
• http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050318nms.pdf

Books

• Weisberg, Jacob The Bush Tragedy, Random House, 2008. ISBN 978-1400066780
• Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War, New York & London, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517338-4
• Bennett, William J. Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, New York, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2003. ISBN 0-385-50680-5
• Chernus, Ira Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers, 2006 ISBN 1-59451-276-0
• Dolan, Chris J. In War We Trust: The Bush Doctrine And The Pursuit Of Just War, Burlington, VA, Ashgate, 2005. ISBN 0-7546-4234-8
• Dolan, Chris J. and Betty Glad (eds.) Striking First: The Preventive War Doctrine and the Reshaping of U.S. Foreign Policy, New York & London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 1-4039-6548-X
• Donnelly, Thomas The Military We Need: The Defense Requirements of the Bush Doctrine, Washington, D.C., American Enterprise Institute Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8447-4229-5
• Gaddis, John Lewis Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01174-0
• Grandin, Greg Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, New York, Metropolitan Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8050-7738-3 [1]
• Hayes, Stephen S. The Brain: Paul Wolfowitz and the Making of the Bush Doctrine, New York, HarperCollins, Forthcoming (2007?). ISBN 0-06-072346-7
• Kaplan, Lawrence and William Kristol The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, San Francisco, Encounter Books, 2003. ISBN 1-893554-69-4
• Kolodziej, Edward A. and Roger E. Kanet (eds.) From Superpower to Besieged Global Power: Restoring World Order after the Failure of the Bush Doctrine, Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8203-3074-7
• Shanahan, Timothy (ed.) Philosophy 9/11: Thinking about the War on Terrorism, Chicago & LaSalle, IL, Open Court, 2005 ISBN 0-8126-9582-8
• Smith, Grant F. Deadly Dogma, Washington, DC, Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, 2006. ISBN 0-9764437-4-0
• Tremblay, Rodrigue The New American Empire, West Conshohocken, PA, Infinity, 2004, ISBN 0-7414-1887-8
• Woodward, Bob Plan of Attack, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0-7432-5547-X
• Wright, Steven. The United States and Persian Gulf Security: The Foundations of the War on Terror, Ithaca Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0863723216