Bush Doctrine

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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.
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.[1] 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.[2][3][4] 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.[5]

Contents

[edit] Overview

The September 11, 2001 attacks were planned and executed by Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda (as bin Laden himself has affirmed several times in videotaped messages, after initial public denials in late 2001). Al Qaeda was a terrorist group that was then 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 democratic 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."[6]

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, former 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 form the basis for the Bush Doctrine.

The Bush Doctrine echoes many of the ideas of the neoconservative Washington, D.C. think tank Project for the New American Century, which was founded in 1997. PNAC, in its founding "Statement of Principles", stated the "need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad"; the following year, it called for deposing Saddam Hussein. Among the signers of PNAC's original Statement of Principles were a number of people who later gained high positions in the Bush administration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.[7] The Bush Doctrine is summed up in the National Security Strategy released in 2002. In it, Bush lays out eight different points on how his administration would handle foreign policy. They include: champion aspirations for human dignity, strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against the US and its friends, work with others to defuse regional conflicts, prevent the enemies of the US from threatening it, its allies and friends with weapons of mass destruction, ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade, expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy, and develop agendas for cooperative action with the other main centers of global power.[5] 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.[8]

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.[9] 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.

[edit] Criticisms of the Bush Doctrine

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,[10] Anup Shah’s at Globalissues.org,[11] and Nat Parry’s April 2004 article at ConsortiumNews.com.[12] 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.[13]. It is also argued that the Bush Doctrine is too ideological and not pragmatic enough. Others have stated that it could lead to other states resorting to the production of WMD’s or terrorist activities.[14] This doctrine is argued to be contrary to the Just War Theory and would constitute a war of aggression.[15][16] Patrick J. Buchanan[17] 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.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Editorial Observer; President Bush and the Middle East Axis of Ambiguity, Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, April 13, 2002
  2. ^ Edwards Rejects the "War on Terror", Mike Allen, Time Magazine, May 2, 2007
  3. ^ First Things First, Mark Levin, ...and another thing (National Review blog), August 16, 2006
  4. ^ Confronting Iraq, Susan Page, USA Today Education, March 17, 2003
  5. ^ a b National Security Strategy of the United StatesNational Security Council, September 20, 2002.
  6. ^ Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation, September 11, 2001
  7. ^ Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles, June 3, 1997
  8. ^ Keir A. Lieber and Robert J. Lieber, ["The Bush National Security Strategy" http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1202/ijpe/pj7-4lieber.htm]
  9. ^ What the president reads, John F. Dickerson, Time, January 10, 2005
  10. ^ Critics Say Bush Doctrine Might Provoke 1st Strike
  11. ^ Globalissues.org The Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes; A Global Pax Americana
  12. ^ The Bush Doctrine's Vietnam Paradox
  13. ^ Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, "The Sources of American Legitimacy," Foreign Affairs (November/December 2004), pp. 18-32
  14. ^ Richard Falk, "The New Bush Doctrine," The Nation July 15, 2002.
  15. ^ Neta C. Crawford, Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War
  16. ^ Jeffrey Record, The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq
  17. ^ Patrick J. Buchanan, Whose War?, The American Conservative, March 24, 2003

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).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] 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
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