From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bush Doctrine is name given to a set of guidelines first unveiled by President George W. Bush in a speech given on June 1, 2002. The policies, taken together, outlined a broad new phase in US policy that would place greater emphasis on military pre-emption, military superiority ("strength beyond challenge"), unilateral action, and a commitment to "extending democracy, liberty, and security to all regions". The policy was formalized in a document titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published on September 20, 2002. The Bush Doctrine is a marked departure from the policies of deterrence and containment that generally characterized American foreign policy during the Cold War and the decade between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11.

The Bush Doctrine provided the policy framework for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

President Bush comments during a news conference, claiming that the United States will support the government in Lebanon, after Hezbollah's month-long battle with Israel.

The term "Bush Doctrine" initially referred^{[citation needed]} to the policy formulation stated by President Bush immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks that the U.S. would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". The immediate application of this policy was the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001. Although the Taliban-controlled government of Afghanistan offered to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden if they were shown proof that he was responsible for September 11 attacks and also offered to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan where he would be tried under Islamic law, their refusal to extradite him to the U.S. with no proof or preconditions was considered justification for invasion. This policy implies that any nation that does not comply with the US instructions concerning their stance against terrorism would be seen as supporting it. On September 20, 2001, in a televised address to a joint session of Congress, Bush summed up this policy with the words, "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Unlike the initial "harboring terrorist" formulation of September 2001, which clarified rather than altered long-standing U.S. policy, the new statements marked a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. The new policy was fully delineated in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States issued on September 20, 2002 [1]. It included these elements:

The Bush Doctrine argues for a policy of pre-emptive war in cases where the US or its allies be threatened by terrorists or by rogue states that are engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction. The policy of pre-emption represents a rejection of deterrence and containment as the principal foundations of U.S. foreign policy because, it is argued, terrorists cannot be deterred in the same way as states.

In discussions of this aspect of the Bush Doctine, the terms "preventive war" and "pre-emptive war" are sometimes used interchangeably, although they represent very different strategies. A pre-emptive war occurs when a state believes an attack to be imminent (for example, the enemy is gathering troops on his border) and launches an attack to get the first strike. A preventive war, on the other hand, occurs when a state launches an attack on another state that is not currently a threat, but may become one at some point in the future. By these definitions the 2003 war in Iraq was waged as a preventive measure.

A doctrine of preventive war is historically difficult to sustain for two reasons. First, it is aggressive, which makes domestic and especially international support for the doctrine difficult to sustain, and causes hostility against the intitator. Second, it requires sound intelligence to justify wars before any concrete threat has materialzed. Such intelligence is difficult to obtain on a regular basis.

• The duty of the US to pursue unilateral military action when acceptable multilateral solutions cannot be found. Like the policy of pre-emption, this aspect of the Bush Doctrine reflects a belief that grave threats require decisive action, regardless of world opinion. Given the share of world power enjoyed by the U.S., this aspect of the Bush Doctrine is least surprising from a historical perspective, since hegemons have often sought to act as they see fit.

Another source of unilateral action under conditions of hegemony is the collective action problem. Because the hegemon already provides public goods like international security assistance, other states have few incentives to spend resources on these projects - a free-rider problem. Thus Clinton's foreign policy advisors discovered that their policy of security cooperation may have unintended elements of unilateralism, as in Bosnia. Unilateralism can thus stem not only from an arrogant foreign policy, but from the structural distribution of power in the system, regardless of the domestic regime or type of leader.

President Bush discusses his preemption policy with leaders of Congress. In a clockwise fashion, starting with the President, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD), House Minority Leader Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), Senate Minority Leader Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Vice President Dick Cheney listen on. All the Congressional leaders have left their respective posts.

• The policy that "United States has, and intends to keep, military strength beyond challenge," indicating the US intends to take actions as necessary to continue its status as the world's sole military superpower. This resembles a British Empire policy before World War I that their navy must be larger than the world's next two largest navies put together. This aspect of the Bush Doctrine argues that global peace and stability require the US to assert itself around the world. Since the US also has a special role as the world's peacekeeper, the same global rules that it seeks to establish do not apply to it. Thus, for example, the US can develop and update its nuclear capabilities even as it argues against nuclear proliferation because it has a special duty to maintain peace, according to this aspect of the doctrine

• A policy of actively promoting American versions of democracy and freedom in all regions of the world. Bush declared at West Point, "America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves -- safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life."

This aspect of the Bush Doctrine is least expected from a powerful hegemon, since such countries traditionally seek to maintain stability and the status quo instead of pursuing regime change, by force if needed. It does, however, fit into a long history of democracy promotion in US foreign policy, and dovetails with the belief that because democraices don't fight each other, democratic promotion can thus increase security. At the same time, Administration actions since 2001 have shown that the US is sometimes willing to trade democracy for stability and support, as in the cases of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

However, it is often pointed out that "actively promoting American versiosn of democracy and freedom in all regions fo the world" is imperialism in itself, as America follows the historic pattern of an empire extending its own systems as far as its armies can reach. Notable examples include South Korea and Japan.

Tracing the history of the doctrine back through the Department of Defense it appears the first full explication of the doctrine was the initial "final draft" version of the internal Defense Planning Guidance guidelines written by Paul Wolfowitz, then in the role of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, in 1992. When the guidelines, commonly termed the Wolfowitz Doctrine, were leaked to the press and a controversy arose, the George H. W. Bush White House ordered it re-written. The revised version did not mention preemption or unilateralism.

In the events following September 11th two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the critical policy question of how to handle potentially dangerous 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 during the long years of 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, 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 (also described as the neoconservatives), and their recommendations form the basis for the Bush Doctrine.

A doctrine permitting preventive war can be seen as a change from the practice of limiting preemptive strikes to the destruction of specific targets as a means of self-defense, and from focusing on the doctrine of deterrence (for instance, the Cold War policy of mutually assured destruction).

President Bush makes remarks during a press conference in the Rose Garden about Iran's nuclear ambitions and discusses North Korea's nuclear test. Bush made clear that the United States will not tolerate either a nuclear Iran or North Korea.

Preemptive military action to destroy specific targets, short of war, has long been a part of American practice. The Bush Administration, in its September 2002 National Security Strategy[2] paper wrote, “The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.” The unilateral US blockade and boarding of Cuban vessels during the Cuban Missile Crisis[3] was a limited use of pre-emptive military force, as were the attack on Somali leader Mohamed Farah Aidid’s meeting-place in Mogadishu in 1993; four days of US bombing of Iraqi weapons facilities in 1998; and the cruise-missile destruction of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in August 1998, which was at that time thought to be in the control or service of Osama bin Laden. Many argue that these preemptive ideas stem back to President John Quincy Adams, who had General Andrew Jackson lead a strike on (and kill) many natives, escaped slaves, and two British subjects in the Florida territory.

While previous preemptive actions have been justified on the basis that the threat was imminent, the Bush Administration's view, as stated in the strategy paper[4] is that "military preemption" is legitimate when the threat is "emerging" or "sufficient," "even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

Supporters of the Bush Doctrine argue that the previous policy of deterrence assumes that a potential enemy is a coherent and rational state that would not launch an attack that would likely result in its own destruction, the core of the concept of mutually assured destruction, which helped keep an uneasy peace between the US and the Soviet Union for more than four decades after World War II. The Bush Doctrine takes the view that the potential results of the use of a weapon of mass destruction are so grave that preemption is warranted, especially when such weapons could be acquired by hostile armed groups "whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness".

The Bush Doctrine is seen by advocates as an appropriate response to revised concepts of asymmetric warfare, in which a militarily inferior power or an insurgent movement claims the right to use normally prohibited tactics, such as attacks on civilian targets and other actions prohibited by the laws of war, while assuming that the superior power will still be bound by them. Its detractors claim that the policy:

• Is indistinguishable in practice from the Nazi doctrine of 'Might is Right'.
• Was applied in haste to justify a war which Bush was anxious to start for internal political reasons.
• Completely ignores any likely response from the rest of the world. Polarization and increased militarism are two possible responses, with the US being increasingly seen as an oppressive and belligerent dictator.

With respect to the 2003 War in Iraq, a pre-emptive strike was launched, leading to argument over whether the strike was more of a preventive war than a pre-emptive attack.

Critics of the Bush doctrine argue that the United Nations Charter has been ratified by the United States, thereby making it a treaty binding of the US government as domestic law. Therefore, they say, the doctrine is in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter, which states, "All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered."

Supporters of the doctrine quote Article 1 of the UN Charter: "To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace."

Critics note the use of the term "collective measures" invalidates this defense of the doctrine. Further, they claim, the United Nations is not a world government, the US is a sovereign nation with a Constitution that specifies the war powers of both the President and the Congress and is the supreme law of the US. As Article 2 of the UN Charter states: "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." Also, under the UN Charter any war either not in response to an imminent military (self-defense) or sanctioned by the UN is a war of aggression.

With particular regard to the Iraq War, both supporters and critics find further support in Article 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, which lay out the gradual approach to "threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." Article 42 states that should the peaceful sanctions provided for by Article 41 be "inadequate or proven to be inadequate", the Security Council may authorize the use of military force. Critics contend that, since no Security Council Resolution authorized the use of force against Iraq, article 42 cannot be used to give legitimacy to the war. Critics further claim that, under Article 51, the exercise of the right of self-defense is the only situation in which Member States have the right to engage in war without a mandate from the Security Council. Only in that specific case is unilateral action accepted by the Charter, and even in that situation the Member State has the duty to report the actions it has taken to the Security Council. This is one of the chief arguments of the critics of the Bush Government against the legality of a "pre-emptive war".

However, supporters claim that no new Security Council resolution was needed, and that the war was legal under the Security Council resolutions passed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. They claim that the Saddam Hussein regime violated not only the conditions of the ceasefire that put an end to that conflict, but also several resolutions passed by the Security Council in the postwar period, and that the use of force became automatically justified under the original resolution that allowed for the use of force.

The UK, who entered the Iraq war as allies of the US, had considered the issues of legality separately, and had come to the conclusion that the proposed war was not legal. Advice to this effect was provided by the Attorney-General Baron Goldsmith in the run-up to the war, but this advice was then controversially reversed just in time for the invasion. The deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned over this issue when the war began.

Many criticize the Bush Doctrine, suspicious of the increasing willingness of the US to use military force unilaterally.^{[citation needed]} Critics believe that requiring any country (including the United States) to obtain international support before undertaking offensive military action is necessary to prevent the escalation of conflicts and the dominance of one nation over others.^{[citation needed]}

President Bush congratulates Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her inauguration as Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg looks on. Many Bush foreign policy critics cite Rice's elevation to Secretary of State as an arrival of pragmatism and soft tone words for adversaries such as Iran and North Korea.

In addition, many criticisms have arisen around the doctrine's assertion that the United States will never allow any potential adversary -- a term which is unlikely to exclude many states -- to develop the military capability of challenging the US as the world's sole superpower^{[citation needed]}.

This doctrine is argued to be contrary to the Just War Theory and would constitute a war of aggression.^[1] Though the classical formulation envisages causes other than that of a defensive war, many theorists today are extremely reluctant to accept any cause other than a defensive war as satisfying its criteria.^{[citation needed]}

The main argument against these criticisms is that the doctrine redefines self-defense by simply reinterpreting and expanding the acceptable time horizon for a perceived possible threat. In other words, the possible threat can be months, or even years (i.e. Iran), away while self-defensive actions can be performed. Yet this is a dangerous change, as it suggests that the doctrine may be used to justify any invasion under a veil of pre-emptive strike [5].

The Bush Doctrine has also been criticized for its purported "active promotion of democracy and freedom," as the United States deals with oppressive dictators on a regular basis. This includes the United States' most populous trading partner, with "most favored nation" status, the People's Republic of China, a Communist nation which most Westernized nations believe to have an unfree and abusive government. The Bush Doctrine has, thus far, only been applied to particular countries: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (the Axis of Evil).

Also, many critics have noted the similarity between the countries in the Axis of Evil and the goals of the conservative think-tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which supports and advocates the dominance of world affairs by the United States. Many in the Bush Administration are, or have been, involved in the PNAC.

Patrick J. Buchanan^[2] 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.

Historical critics of preventive war include former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. In an 1848 letter to his law partner, William Herndon, Lincoln criticized then U.S. President James K. Polk's preventive war against Mexico:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.... If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us," but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't."

Abraham Lincoln

The Bush Doctrine can also refer to President Bush's refusal to engage in dialogue with adversaries. Author Jerome Corsi uses this sense when he criticizes the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the United States negotiate with Iran and Syria, calling such a move the "end of the Bush Doctrine." This may indicate a new sense of the term, or simply one other element of the doctrine as it is commonly understood.

1. ^ http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S1537592703000021
2. ^ Patrick J. Buchanan, Whose War?, The American Conservative, March 24, 2003

• The One Percent Doctrine
• Command responsibility
• Jus ad bellum
• War of aggression
• War on Terror

• OpenDemocracy debate on the Bush Doctrine
• 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)
• Grant F. Smith, Dogma #1 Strike 'First', Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, March 2006.
• 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.

• 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 [6]
• 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
• 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

United States Foreign Policy

Doctrines: Presidential doctrines: Proclamation of Neutrality • Monroe Doctrine • Roosevelt Corollary • Truman Doctrine • Eisenhower Doctrine • Kennedy Doctrine • Johnson Doctrine • Nixon Doctrine • Carter Doctrine • Reagan Doctrine • Clinton Doctrine • Bush Doctrine Other doctrines: Lodge Corollary • Containment • Domino theory • Rollback • Stimson Doctrine • Kirkpatrick Doctrine • Weinberger Doctrine • Powell Doctrine • Rumsfeld Doctrine • Wolfowitz Doctrine Bilateral relations: Transatlantic relations, NATO and ANZUS: Anglo-American relations • United States-Australia relations • Canada-United States relations • Franco-American relations • German-American relations • Greek-American relations • Swedish-American relations • Turkey-United States relations Sub-Sahara Africa: United States-Côte d'Ivoire relations East Asia: Japanese-American relations • North Korean-American relations • Sino-American relations • South Korea-United States relations • Taiwan-United States relations Latin-America: Cuba-United States relations • Ecuador-United States relations • United States-Venezuela relations Middle East: United States-Iran relations • Israel-United States relations Other relations: Belarusian-American relations • Indo-U.S. relations • U.S.-Pakistan relations • Russo-United States relations International organizations: United States and the United Nations

v • d • e George W. Bush
Life and politics	Early life · Professional life · Military service · First term as U.S. President (2001-2005) · Second term as U.S. President (2005-) · Administration
Terms and policies	Foreign policy · Domestic policy · Bush Doctrine · Economic policy  · Compassionate conservatism
Perceptions	Public perception · Bushisms · Criticism · Movement to impeach · Fictionalized portrayals · As the subject of books and films