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Where to with the Bush Doctrine? |
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"America is unlikely to retreat into an isolationist cocoon – the Republic is too far gone for that, though figures suggest that Americans are more enthusiastic about trimming back global commitments than they have been in decades."
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Crystal ball gazing is not always a recipe for solid political commentary, but at the end of the Bush administration, one of its most hazardous creatures, the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is unlikely to endure. This, of course, is not something the staffers of the American Enterprise Institute believe. A piece by Thomas Donnelly argues quite the opposite: “The Bush Doctrine, which is likely to shape U.S. policy for decades to come, reflects the realities of American power as well as the aspirations of American political principles.” [1] The same can be said for the combative editor-at-large of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, who has been badgering the Bush administration to expand the doctrine well beyond its means. The neoconservative fantasy of forced democratisation and regime change has proven corrosive not merely to America’s own institutions (the marginalisation of the State Department, for instance). It has assaulted the international framework of peace and security with a vengeance. The United Nations, an imperfect, fault-ridden creature, could never fulfil its objectives without US support. But being the main target of neoconservative opprobrium, it came in for the greatest weathering of all. But the greatest weathering has perhaps been reserved for the fabled hyperpuissance of the United States. A Sketch A sketch of sorts on what the Bush Doctrine is in order. Most will be familiar with what prompted its formulation: a direct response to terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaeda operatives, prompting President Bush to draw “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” In addition to embracing measures of pre-emptive strike against states and terrorist networks, the policy went the distance in relegating the role of multilateral diplomacy to a lowly second tier, along with international institutions, in favor of unilateral force and regime change. The invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on March 20, 2003, ostensibly to disarm it of “weapons of mass destruction” was the most blatant form of this doctrine. Finally, and this is something most neoconservatives would prefer to suggest as the most important limb of all, the doctrine is suggested as an antidote to moral relativism in international affairs. Forced democratisation in the form of regime change is not such a bad idea. The Birth of Unilateralism Having jettisoned the foreign policy of containment which dominated the establishment since 1946, the followers of the Bush doctrine turned US foreign policy on its head. Containment and deterrence had been the cornerstones of US global strategy for decades. These principles were forged in the opening shots of the Cold War. “World communism is like a malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue,” argued the United States’ Charge D’Affaires in Moscow, George F. Kennan. His remedy against a government driven by a “neurotic” mindset of insecurity and paranoia was one, to continue the biological metaphor, of studious, careful quarantine. Over time, the Soviet system would implode, the victim of its own contradictions. [2] The very idea of using pre-emptive war, while far from unprecedented in international relations (Frederick the Great of Prussia, for one, was not averse to it), is not one that sits comfortably with the trajectories of American history. A common practice tended to be that of “passive defense”, an approach in which the US would manipulate the opposing party into firing the first salvo. The US-Mexican war of 1846 was one such example. [3] The end of the Cold War did not merely produce the now defunct historical triumphalism of Francis Fukuyama; it also produced a hegemonic reflex amongst some members of the administration of Bush’s father. [4] Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, for one, wanted a dramatic revision of US goals. Cheney urged the United States to adopt a hegemonic strategy that would prevent any rival superpower from ever emerging again. His views, along with those of Department of Defense staffers (and neoconservatives) I. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, yielded the Defense Planning Guidance Draft (1992), favoring the use of force against any future threats which might affect the US, its allies or “disrupt international relations.” The US had to “show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” When needed, unilateral action had to be taken as the US had to be “postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.” [5] While the DPG was excoriated and sent back to the drawing board for a dramatic rewrite, the authors took refuge in the frenetic scribbles of the Project for the New American Century, penning various letters and documents through the course of the Clinton administration, hoping to win its favour. Again, the Bush doctrine was foreshadowed at stages by the authors. Those dark urges for using unilateral action, the use of force to overthrow foreign regimes, specifically that of Saddam Hussein’s again surfaced. [6] On January 29, 2002 in his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush articulated the building blocks of the doctrine. The U.S., in waging a global “war on terror”, would target international terrorist networks and prevent the acquisition of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons by terrorists and enemy regimes. States like Iran, Iraq and North Korea, along with non-state networks, constituted “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” On June 1, 2002, President George W. Bush told graduates in a speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point that traditional doctrines of deterrence had to be shelved when considering stateless terrorist networks. Threats could not simply wait to “fully materialize”. They had to be pre-empted and eliminated. The National Security Strategy of the United States, published on September 20, 2002, solidified the dramatic alteration in outlook. US foreign policy was said to pivot on three cardinal points: a doctrine of unrivalled military supremacy, the notion of pre-emptive war, and a willingness to employ unilateral action in the event that multilateral cooperation could not be achieved. This dramatic re-orientation was actuated by a change in approaching terrorist networks and state sponsors of terrorism, otherwise known as rogue states. The United States could not longer rely on a “reactive posture” given the “goals of rogue state and terrorists”. Rogue states and terrorists were one and the same thing. “Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics remain wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents; whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness.” Retaining the Doctrine? Given the disastrous application of the Bush Doctrine to American power and prestige, one would assume that shelving it would be a formality. One of the initial promoters of it, Fukuyama, has recanted elements of his neocon convictions, to such an extent he has openly backed Barack Obama for the White House. [7] He has labelled the current neoconservative obsession as Bolshevik-Leninist. Others aren’t quite so certain that the doctrine has passed its use-by date. A few commentators have already suggested that the Bush doctrine should not die an agonizing death with the president’s retreat to his ranch. Elements of a supposedly dangerous doctrine should be appropriated for a new politics that reflects “American values” though this does sound worryingly like a Bush doctrine in updated dress. Attempts, for one, have been made at normalising this radical shift. The American Enterprise Institute has been particularly busy on that score, arguing that the Bush doctrine merely continued the trajectories begun by the Monroe Doctrine and that of President Truman. [8] In truth, the war on Iraq commenced was less pre-emptive than preventative, a distinction the Bush Doctrine does little to clarify. In 2006, Norman Podhoretz insisted that reports of the death of the doctrine were exaggerated. He insists that the primary drive of the doctrine is democratisation, that it remains the noble dream of US foreign policy. Importantly, moral relativism has been a key and necessary casualty of the doctrine. [9] Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has also suggested that the Bush Doctrine be retained in some form, but more importantly, that it remains ingrained in American appraisals of the world. Autocracy and despotisms may well be returning to the global landscape, and America must ready itself. [10] In many ways, he is not far off in suggesting that the Bush Doctrine is not vastly different from previous American projects of hegemony. [11] Liberalism, for one, has been the justification for many an American intervention. Even if British historian Niall Ferguson feels that the US should be outed (an “empire” no less), Kagan prefers the mistaken self-restraint of “hegemony”, the necessary travails that come with vast power in the face of autocratic opponents. Fukuyama has suggested that Kagan, along with fellow neoconservative William Kristol, are modern Leninists, in so far as they believe “that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will.” [12] Most striking of all is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s urgings in Foreign Affairs on what she calls “a uniquely American realism”. For Rice, this is merely a composite of realism and idealism. There, the Secretary of State, who was once on the outer of the circle that formulated the Bush Doctrine, urged the retention of American preponderance on the global stage. American “national interests” involved “democratic state building”. “We must be willing to use our power for that purpose – not only because it is necessary but because it is right.” [13] While Rice does cite the usual missives on free trade as a tool of democratisation (after the global financial meltdown, the “free” element might have to be scrapped), there is an implicit assumption that the US will continue to employ its force in the exercise, should the need arise. In truth, even these figures recognise the damage wrought by the doctrine’s indifference to international institutions and multilateral conventions. America is unlikely to retreat into an isolationist cocoon – the Republic is too far gone for that, though figures suggest that Americans are more enthusiastic about trimming back global commitments than they have been in decades. Even within the Bush administration’s second term, Rice was already wriggling into some form of “transformational diplomacy” – a term somewhat obtusely used to describe the need to consider non-military aspects of US foreign policy. Fukuyama, not to be outdone in this whole affair, has urged his own version which is not far off Wilsonian internationalism, but again, the America impress of force used in the name of moral value against aggression is unavoidable. He, for instance, remains a stern critic of the United Nations (neocon habits die hard), which he sees as void of any legitimacy. He would rather bolster a “multilateral world”. The Bush Doctrine may well be on life support, but no one is willing to turn the button off. Binoy Kampmark was Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge and history lecturer at the University of Queesland. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com .
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