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The Bush Doctrine
From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
"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.
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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. Later
it came to include additional
elements, including a policy of
preemption, 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. 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. |
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"My
fellow Citizen's, for the last
nine days, the entire world has
seen for itself the state of the
union and it is strong.
Tonight we are a country
awakened to danger and called to
defend freedom.
Our grief has turned to
anger and
anger to resolution.
Whether we bring our enemies to
justice
or justice to our enemies,
justice will be done"
-President George W. Bush
September 20, 2001 |
Overview
The September 11, 2001 attacks were
planned and executed by Osama bin Laden
and other members of Al Qaeda, a
terrorist group that was then based in
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Bush decided
soon afterward 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."
Later, two distinct schools of thought
arose in the Bush Administration
regarding the critical policy question
of how to handle 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 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.
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.
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