Universidad Mayor de San Andrs Culture and Civilization

Lingstica e Idiomas Bush Doctrine

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Bush Doctrine
The Bush Doctrine is name given to a set of foreign policy guidelines first unveiled by
President George W. Bush in his commencement speech to the graduating class of West
Point 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.

Initial formulation: No distinction between terrorists and those

who harbor them

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
preconditions was considered justification for invasion. This policy implies that any nation
that does not take a pro-active 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."

Broader formulation: a muscular foreign policy

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:

Preemption

A policy of preventive war, should 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 right of self-defense should be extended in order to authorize pre-emptive attacks

against potential aggressors cutting them off before they are able to launch strikes against
the US.

Unilateralism

The duty of the US to pursue unilateral military action when acceptable multilateral
solutions cannot be found.

Univ. Harry Tapia Yana 706-59849 Summer Course

Lic. Otoniel Plaza 2007
Universidad Mayor de San Andrs Culture and Civilization
Lingstica e Idiomas Bush Doctrine
_________________________________________________________________________
Strength Beyond Challenge

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.

Extending Democracy, Liberty, and Security to All Regions

A policy of actively promoting 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."

With more troops comes a great responsibility to liberate all!

Roots of the Bush Doctrine

Paul Wolfowitz and the Defense Planning Guidance text of 1992

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 pre-
emption or unilateralism.

The debate within the Bush administration

In the months 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.

Comparison with previous US foreign policy

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).

Univ. Harry Tapia Yana 706-59849 Summer Course

Lic. Otoniel Plaza 2007
Universidad Mayor de San Andrs Culture and Civilization
Lingstica e Idiomas Bush Doctrine
_________________________________________________________________________
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 Aidids
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.

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.

Implications of the UN Charter for the Bush Doctrine

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."

Univ. Harry Tapia Yana 706-59849 Summer Course

Lic. Otoniel Plaza 2007
Universidad Mayor de San Andrs Culture and Civilization
Lingstica e Idiomas Bush Doctrine
_________________________________________________________________________
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.

Criticisms of the Bush Doctrine

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Some legal scholars reject the Bush doctrine.[1] There are many others as well who criticize
the Bush Doctrine, suspicious of the increasing willingness of the US to use military force
unilaterally. 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]

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.[2] 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 is concerned only with self-
defence, but is simply re-interpreting the acceptable time horizon for a perceived threat. In
other words the threat does not need to be imminent before self-defensive actions can be
performed. Yet this is a dangerous change since it means that the doctrine can be used to
justify any invasion of any sort 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 favoured
nation" status, the People's Republic of China, a Communist nation which most in the West
feel to have an unfree and abusive government. The Bush Doctrine, has, thus far, only been
applied to certain countries: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

Univ. Harry Tapia Yana 706-59849 Summer Course

Lic. Otoniel Plaza 2007
Universidad Mayor de San Andrs Culture and Civilization
Lingstica e Idiomas Bush Doctrine
_________________________________________________________________________
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, which
supports and advocates the dominance of world affairs by the United States and many in
the Bush Administration are, or have been, involved in the PNAC.

Patrick J. Buchanan[3], 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 (although obviously not in the context of the Bush
Doctrine) include former US President Abraham Lincoln. In an 1848 letter to his law
partner, William Herndon, Lincoln criticized then US President 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

Alternative Definitions of the Term

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.

Univ. Harry Tapia Yana 706-59849 Summer Course

Lic. Otoniel Plaza 2007