International Relations Theory Meets World Politics

The Bush Doctrine has been defined very differently by different scholars and commentators. The Bush administration itself has used the term narrowly, to describe “the policy that nations harboring terrorists would be treated as if they were guilty of terrorist acts.” ¹ Others define it almost exclusively in terms of preventive war. ² Robert Jervis and Robert Lieber identify the Doctrine with four more or less comparable components: the belief that domestic regimes—democracy vs. authoritarianism—drive a country’s foreign policy and thus a goal of democratizing other countries, especially in the Middle East; the perception that grave threats are best dealt with by vigorous measures like preemptive and preventive war; a commitment to multilateralism conditional on efficacy, as such, a stated willingness to act unilaterally; and a goal of maintaining U.S. primacy based on the belief that America has a unique role in causing international peace and stability. ³ For the purposes of this volume, the Bush Doctrine consists of four similar themes: the maintenance of U.S. primacy, selective multilateralism, stand-apart alliances, and democratization, especially in the Middle East. The doctrine was laid out in the administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), President George W. Bush’s 2002 speech at West Point, and his 2003 speech at the National Endowment for Democracy (the 2006 NSS amplifies and updates, rather than revises, the 2002 NSS). ⁴