ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will attempt to explain why many liberal democracies in Europe and Asia rejected George W. Bush’s Doctrine of preemptive warfare in the war on terror. Even when governments tried to stay on good terms, such as in Japan and Britain, their own publics grew increasingly critical of Bush. In the first section, I will show that there was a “deep background” to this rejection. Early in the 1999–2000 presidential primary and election campaign, European, Canadian, and Asian leaders and elites formed unusually negative opinions about Bush. These were followed by negative impressions of his platform, the advisors whom he appointed, and his first year of foreign policy, which was seen as unilateralist and obstructionist. The second section of this chapter will examine the rejection of the immediate policy decisions during the post-September 11, 2001 period and how the gap between Bush and most foreign publics and many governments actually deepened, even though there was an initial wave of sympathy for the losses Americans suffered on that fateful day. Still, Bush’s “war on terror,” his “with us or with the terrorists” language, the argument that terrorists, rogue states, and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had blended into a new “nexus” threat leading to his “axis of evil” pre-Doctrine, made most of the other liberal democracies very uncomfortable.
