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Sign In or Create an Account. Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume The Bush Doctrine. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Select Format Select format. In , Department of Defense officials Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby wrote a proposal for a new American military and political strategy.
They concluded that containment and deterrence had become obsolete with the end of the Cold War. They also argued for three revolutionary ideas:.
This proposal sparked great controversy. President Bush ordered his secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, to revise the strategy and remove the points about pre-emptive and unilateral action. When Bill Clinton became president in , he continued the policy of containment and deterrence.
In , Iraq expelled U. Around this same time, a group of national defense critics began to publicly argue for the forced removal of Saddam Hussein because of his potential use of weapons of mass destruction.
Called "neo-conservatives" by the press, the group included Libby, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and other members of the former Reagan and Bush administrations. When George W. Bush became president in , he appointed Rumsfeld secretary of defense and Wolfowitz as one of his deputy defense secretaries. Vice President Dick Cheney appointed Libby his chief of staff. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, and Cheney formed the core of neo-conservative influence on national security matters within the Bush administration.
The neo-conservatives wanted to revive the strategy proposed by Wolfowitz and Libby in They also pushed for the United States to confront hostile regimes and "militant Islam. Following the devastating terrorist attacks in , Wolfowitz and the other neo-conservatives pressed for an immediate attack on Iraq.
On September 12, , after a sharp debate within the Bush administration over what to do about Iraq, the president addressed the United Nations. He warned that disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction banned by the U. In early November , the United Nations adopted a U.
It stated that Iraq was in "material breach" of previous U. Iraq agreed to comply, and inspectors returned.
In their time in Iraq, the inspectors issued three reports, saying that they had not found weapons of mass destruction, but also saying that Iraq needed to be more cooperative. Citing Iraqi lack of cooperation as a material breach of the U. When it saw that the Security Council was not going to approve the new resolution, it withdrew it.
The United States decided to act with a "coalition of the willing" a group of allies to remove Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The coalition included Great Britain and 29 other nations.
On March 20, , the coalition forces, consisting mainly of U. The war lasted several weeks and toppled the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. Reflecting the long-held views of Wolfowitz, Libby, and other neo-conservative thinkers, the new strategy became known as the "Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine downgrades containment and deterrence in favor of pre-emption. This is the idea that in a world of terrorist organizations, dangerous regimes, and weapons of mass destruction, the United States may need to attack first.
According to the Bush Doctrine, rogue states threaten American security today. These nations are hostile to the United States and are developing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
The new security strategy calls for the United States to stop rogue states before they are able to threaten or use these weapons against us. The National Security Strategy notes that international law allows nations to take pre-emptive action against a nation that presents an imminent threat.
It also states that the United States has long followed this policy. Critics agree, but say that the Bush administration is pursuing a policy of preventive war, not pre-emptive war. A pre-emptive war is one against an enemy preparing to strike right away.
A preventive war is one against an enemy that will pose a danger in the future. The distinction is important, say the critics, because preventive war is illegal under international law.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Navy, has gone down in history as a date that will live in infamy. Article 2 4 governs the use of force, generally prohibiting it. This will become of importance later in the analysis as the Bush doctrine itself is brought into focus.
However the main importance of Article 2 4 in this context, is how it interacts with Article Article 51 allows for the use of force between one state and another, in violation of the general terms of Article 2 4 but only in immediate self-defence. This was clearly intended to overwrite the old customary laws and provide a legal framework for the use of force in those situations where it was the only recourse for a state.
To take a restrictionist position, Articles 51 and 2 4 comprehensively govern the use of force. This is clearly alluding to the reality that states, individually or collectively will react to protect their sovereignty, and can do so legally.
It must be noted that there is only provision for legal self defence when there is an armed attack. The provision of preemption is not included outwardly, but the use of the phrase inherent right can be said to point towards the already established customary laws governing self-defence.
That inherent right therefore points to the proportionate use of force in self-defence and as detailed already, allows for preemptive action if the danger is instant and overwhelming — such as a situation where troops are about to cross a border or missiles are launched but have not yet struck their targets.
The key however is in the last sentence, where it is made clear that any such action is only permissible until the Security Council itself acts. Self-defence is to be immediate and reactionary, done purely for survival until the collective security of the United Nations comes into play.
The Security Council therefore assumes the burden of enforcing world peace and settling disputes, in theory. However in reality, this has proven far from the truth. The question of sovereignty is a central issue in how the Bush doctrine challenges existing international law. Firstly it redefines its treatment of the sovereignty of other nations who it deems are harbouring terrorists, or may act as a future haven for terrorist groups. These states are to be treated with no distinction from the terrorists they supposedly harbour, giving the United States the right to invade them, reminiscent of The Caroline incident, to remove the threat to its own sovereignty from said terrorism The National Security Strategy of the United States of America [NSS] 5.
This brings into issue the second aspect of the redefinition of sovereignty. As already detailed, the defence for this change lies in the redefinition of sovereignty. This reading throws the Bush doctrine into murky water legally. If it removes all traditional limits to war by treating the enemy as if it has no limits, then it concedes that by fighting such an enemy you retain no limits yourself. This is clearly a problem when addressing international law.
The second key issue in the Bush doctrine is the use of preemptive force as a legitimate strategy of defence. Preemption in this context clearly outstretches its legal definition as it only applies to imminent threats and yet the West Point address and the national security strategy clearly establish that threats will be dealt with before they fully materialize. By including this ambiguity, the spectrum between prevention and preemption becomes compressed to the point where it is difficult to distinguish where one begins and the other ends Crawford This is important in itself, suggesting that there was a clear avoidance of using the term prevention — near comprehensively interpreted as illegal, whilst preemption is acceptable in both customary law, and through the inherent right of self-defence referenced in Article It must be noted that prevention in this sense does not originate within the Bush doctrine.
The importance of the Bush doctrine lies in the fact that this is the first time prevention has been encapsulated into foreign policy in such a concrete manner by a major state in the age of international law. Preventive force is nothing new, but it has always remained in the back pocket of national leaders, something that is done, but usually excused under other legal avenues. The fact that the phrase preemptive was used in place of what is essentially a strategy of preventive war does indicate that the Bush administration at least recognises the legal issues surrounding such a policy.
For international law this is a major challenge and a significant literature has proliferated around this issue. Additionally, the European Union produced a security strategy in , in which it openly embraced international law and rejected preemptive self-defence. This is an alarming point considering the nature of the doctrine and a damning blow to the credibility of international law as perceived by the Bush administration.
Feinstein and Slaughter suggest that the Bush doctrine does not go far enough. Taking the point of view that whilst usefully highlighting the inadequacy of the Charter, the Bush doctrine represents a chance to remould international law to include a duty to prevent which expands upon the responsibility to protect consensus, but applies it to such endeavours as permanently diluting sovereignty to allow the removal of weapons of mass destruction from rogue states.
This theory is based on collective action however, not unilaterally focused measures and it is the wish of the authors that the United Nations would be expanded to enable it to take on this role Feinstein
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