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 term used to describe the foreign policy doctrine of United States president George W. Bush, enunciated in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It may be viewed as a set of several related foreign policy principles, including increased unilateralism in foreign policy and an expanded view of American national security interests. Foreign policy experts argue over the meaning of the term "Bush Doctrine," and some scholars have suggested that there is no one unified theory underlying Bush's foreign policy. Jacob Weisberg identifies six successive "Bush Doctrines" in his book The Bush Tragedy, while former Bush staffer Peter D. Feaver has counted seven. Other foreign policy experts have taken the term to mean Bush's doctrine of preventive war, first articulated in 2002, which holds that the United States government should depose foreign regimes that represent a threat to the security of the United States, even if such threats are not immediate and no attack is imminent. This policy was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Certain 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. However, the doctrine was articulated 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. 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.

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.

Overview

Within the first two weeks following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush announced to the public its allegation that the attacks had been planned and executed by Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that was further alleged to have been based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. President Bush decided soon after the 9/11 attacks that the proper response was not just military attacks against Al Qaeda bases, but deposing the Taliban altogether and installing in their place a U.S.-friendly government. 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 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."

File:GeorgeBush DukeJournal Cover.jpg

The Bush Doctrine has garnered widespread media attention and critical analysis. Photo of George Bush addressing NATO, from the cover of the Duke Journal of Public Affairs.

Later, 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 Advisor 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 pre-emption 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.

Criticisms

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.. It is also argued that the Bush Doctrine is too ideological and not pragmatic enough. There are further criticisms of the neoconservative foreign interventionism ideology.

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.

See also

• Command responsibility
• Foreign policy doctrine
• Iraq Liberation Act
• Jus ad bellum
• Powell Doctrine
• Clinton Doctrine
• The One Percent Doctrine
• United States Presidential doctrines
• War on Terrorism

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

• 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