ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins, content and contested meanings of the ‘Bush Doctrine’. Although the Doctrine has never been formally articulated as such by President George W. Bush or his foreign policy principals, its four key elements – preventive war, confronting the nexus of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and catastrophic terrorism, ‘regime change’ for ‘rogue states’ and democracy promotion – have become familiar themes in Bush's public rhetoric. These themes were outlined at length in the landmark speeches and publications of his first term in office (most notably, the State of the Union addresses of 2002 and 2003, the West Point address of June 2002 and the National Security Strategy (NSS) document published in September 2002). The NSS arguably represents as succinct and clear a statement of the Doctrine in its multifaceted dimensions as any US government publication that has sought to codify a broad foreign policy approach in a single document. After securing re-election in November 2004, the key themes of the Doctrine were also strongly reaffirmed in Bush's second inaugural address and State of the Union speech in 2005.
