The Bush Doctrine and the War on Terrorism

Global Responses, Global Consequences

Mary Buckley, Robert Singh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781134206254
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The presidency of George W. Bush has been widely regarded as having occasioned one of the most dramatic shifts in the history of American foreign policy. The US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the declaration of a 'war on terrorism' and the enunciation of a 'Bush Doctrine' of unrivalled military power, 'regime change' for 'rogue states', and preventive and pre-emptive war together generated unprecedented divisions in the international community.

In this edited volume, leading international experts analyze the nature and scale of the global transformation wrought by the Bush foreign policy in three clear parts:

• part one examines the extent of the Bush administration's break with prior American foreign policy.
• in Part two, region and country-specific experts assess the responses to the Bush Doctrine and the interaction of domestic and international politics that shaped these. They explore how governments, political parties, the media and public opinion react to US foreign policy and assess the implications for domestic, regional and international politics.
• part three examines the likely long-term implications of the Bush Doctrine in relation to a set of major thematic issues including: war and peace; the global economy; human rights and the UN.

Providing a balanced and dispassionate assessment of continuity and change in American foreign policy, national/regional responses to it, and the impact of US foreign policy on a set of 'big picture' discrete issues, this book is essential reading for scholars and researchers of international relations and contemporary history.

1 Introduction

Mary Buckley and Robert Singh

When huge world ‘events’ take place, scholars subsequently reflect upon their meaning for global politics, their comparative historical importance and the extent to which the world has significantly changed, remains the same, is somehow ‘qualified’ or ‘altered’ in the short, medium or long term or confronts greater threats of instability than before. Themes of rupture, revolution, reform, continuity, stability, threat, balance of power, alliances and types of polarity are revisited in the light of what has just occurred. Existing approaches to international relations such as liberalism, realism, neo-realism, rationalism, constructivism, Marxism and post-modernism also come under the critical spotlight for re-evaluation. Examples of such key international events since l940 include the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in l941, the exploding of atomic and then hydrogen bombs by the US and Soviet Union, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Soviet intervention in Hungary in l956 and Czechoslovakia in l968, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Gulf War of 1991, NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon by al-Qaeda on 11 September 2001, and a string of subsequent ones in Madrid, London and Bali, with more feared.

That leaders formally adopt sets of principles or ‘doctrines’ to make explicit how they wish to deal with issues of state security and responsibility after such events is neither new nor surprising. In setting out the principles that underpin a state’s international relations, the public declaration by political leaders of a doctrine serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it reflects and reinforces the values, beliefs and preferences of a particular domestic audience, setting out the goals, ends and means by which a state seeks to chart its course in the world. On the other, it speaks to an international audience of allies, adversaries and neutrals, making clear what the state’s leadership wishes to achieve, how it seeks to do this and what, in turn, other states should expect from its behaviour. Doctrines therefore represent more than mere political rhetoric or symbolic statements of passing academic interest and marginal practical consequence. Such statements of grand strategy represent promissory notes and warnings alike, elevated far above the day-to-day interactions of foreign relations or the opaque communications of diplomats.

To issue a doctrine, then, places a powerful burden on the proponent. Not only may the doctrine’s content prove controversial or misguided, but its intent may be misunderstood at home and abroad. Moreover, setting out a doctrine is not synonymous with implementing it, and its practical application may be deeply problematic. In setting out one’s principles at face value, the danger arises of appearing two-faced if the principles outlined in such a statement are breached, dishonoured or applied in a selective, partial or biased fashion. It is hardly surprising, then, that neither scholars of international relations and foreign policy analysis nor practitioners agree on the utility of such grand declarations of statecraft. For some, foreign policy is a highly fluid, unpredictable and events-driven enterprise, one that demands pragmatism rather than inflexible adherence to doctrinal principles. The ship of state is rarely able to sail smoothly without being buffeted by unexpected forces that require adaptation and revision of its charted course. Setting out an unwavering route in advance therefore appears at best misguided, at worst utterly self-defeating. For others, however, making explicit the central compass by which the state will proceed is a surer way of advancing. In the case of a particularly – even uniquely – influential nation-state, especially, the expectations that its leaders can set for others can induce a greater sense of stability, predictability and clarity in interstate relations. To fail to announce a doctrine would be to leave the international arena dangerously unclouded by principle and precedent.

In the American case, the public declaration of doctrines long predated the republic’s ‘rise to globalism’ in the post-1945 era. As early as 1823, the Monroe Doctrine warned European powers not to meddle in the continental sphere of the Americas, the province of the US alone. In the years following World War II, few presidents resisted the temptation to issue clear messages to ally and adversary alike as to what they could expect from the US. On 12 March 1947, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed that ‘it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures’. Although aimed rhetorically against totalitarian regimes, the Truman Doctrine generalized America’s particular commitments to Greece and Turkey to a global promise to resist Soviet expansionism wherever it appeared, thereby setting out the principles of containment that would guide US policy for the next 44 years. The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 pledged the US to defend the Middle East against ‘overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by International Communism’, while the Nixon Doctrine sought to bolster influential regional powers in order to advance containment and maintain international order by proxy. The Reagan Doctrine reaffirmed the American commitment not simply to contain but to roll back communism around the globe through assisting guerrilla groups, the president stating in January 1985 that the US would defend ‘freedom and democracy [on] every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua’. Even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton proclaimed doctrines that bore their names. That the president occupies a unique position in having the legitimacy to speak both to and for the American nation adds particular force to the issuing of such sweeping public declarations.

Nor is the phenomenon of issuing doctrines distinctively or uniquely American. What was known in the West as the Brezhnev Doctrine of l968 made clear that the Soviet state had the responsibility to ensure that no communist party lapsed into a ‘one-sidedness’ that damaged socialism in their own country or another. An article in Pravda on ‘Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries’ made clear that leaderships who valued autonomy and independence reneged on international obligations.¹ Alexander Dubcek’s ‘Prague Spring’ was unacceptable to Brezhnev’s views on bloc solidarity and communist monopoly power. Brezhnev perceived developments in Czechoslovakia as threatening to the norms and values of the Soviet state and to the Warsaw Pact. From the Politburo’s perspective, action was necessary and tanks were sent in to overthrow Dubcek and to reinstate ‘normalcy’ Soviet-style. Leaders elsewhere reacted with varying degrees of condemnation, criticism, passive acceptance and support.

Doctrines – no more than specific foreign policies – are therefore rarely complete ruptures with, or comprehensive rejections of, the past. Nor need they arise fully formed or be proclaimed with pristine clarity at the outset of a new political leadership. Although the Truman Doctrine is conventionally regarded as the fundamental point of departure for the Cold War, for instance, it can be better seen as the ultimate expression of the strategy of the ‘patience and firmness’ that had been initiated several months previously. The Eisenhower Doctrine was not proclaimed until the first year of Ike’s second term in office. The Reagan Doctrine, similarly, although effectively operative from 1981, was not articulated as such in public until 1985. In the Carter and Clinton cases, the declaration of a doctrine did not occur until their penultimate year in office. As such, the identification of a grand strategy and its relationship to a doctrine can sometimes muddy rather than clear the analytical waters. Similarly, the Brezhnev leadership’s formal declaration of the international obligations of socialist states came four years after Brezhnev became General Secretary of the CPSU, but made explicit what had long been the Soviet intention regarding its fraternal allies.

The Bush Doctrine thus takes its place in an extended family of grand statements of global purpose. Although neither President George W. Bush nor the leading figures in his administration have publicly referred to it as such, it was unsurprising in the aftermath of 9/11 that a new foreign policy doctrine should be formulated. Bush immediately and viscerally understood the events of 9/11 as unacceptable and vile, necessitating a clear declaration to both the American people and the world as to how best to respond to the perpetrators of such a heinous attack and how, thereby, to make the US secure for the future. Following a series of landmark speeches that crystallized and advanced the re-evaluation of US policies, the National Security Strategy (NSS) of September 2002 was the result. Therein, the four pillars of the Bush Doctrine were set out: the maintenance of American military primacy; the embrace of preventive war as a supplement to traditional deterrence; the war on terrorism; and democratization. More than any prior declaration by an American administration, however, the enunciation of this doctrine generated intense and widespread international controversy. The varied responses to the Bush Doctrine in distinct regions of the world, and the profound consequences of the doctrine for key features of the international system, form the central focus for this book.

That political leaders across the globe reacted in different and complex ways to the NSS of September 2002 and to the subsequent US-led war in Iraq in 2003 was predictable. Multifactoral explanations best account for why leaders behave the way that they do at a given point in time. Necessary variables include the political preferences of the particular government, historical and/or prevailing elite and mass attitudes towards the US, membership or aspiring membership of regional organizations, geo-politics, the structure of the world system, economic interests, views of the role of the United Nations (UN) and domestic political pressures. The chapters that follow analyse the ways in which leaders across regions and public opinion across states reacted to developments from 2002 to early 2005. Most illustrate how the interests of the state, as defined by its leaders, were in the forefront of decision-making. While approaches across these contributions are not uniform, included here to prompt debate, realist and neorealist perspectives nonetheless predominate in the chapters on specific regions. These are written mainly by area specialists steeped in the histories, politics, societies and languages of the systems they study. It is notable that the responses to the Bush Doctrine around the world, while mostly negative, did exhibit significant differences and were more complex than popular commentaries often suggested. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, that the contributions in this volume are themselves reflective of distinct interpretations of the merits and flaws in the US approach to the world under Bush.

Before examining international reactions to the Bush Doctrine, Robert Singh in Chapter 2 outlines the Doctrine’s origins and its relationship to 9/11, the defining event of the first decade of the twenty-first century. He argues that the Doctrine represents an intellectually coherent and distinctive marriage of Wilsonian idealist ends and muscular realist means. Its implementation, however, remains at best partial. Although the war in Iraq in 2003 demonstrated once again the supreme military capabilities of the US, the subsequent failures of the occupation graphically and gravely damaged American standing in the world. While the fundamental principles of the Bush Doctrine remain firmly in place as the lodestar of US foreign policy for Bush’s second term, a combination of domestic and international factors powerfully constrain the likelihood of its practical implementation and, in particular, the prospect of a second preventive war by the US.

Bush’s first-term policies placed strain on the transatlantic alliance that, if not without precedent, threatened a major rupture of lasting consequence. In Chapter 3, Donald Hancock and Brandon Valeriano contend that governance by centre–right coalitions in Western Europe was the ‘decisive variable’ behind support for the Bush Doctrine in the cases of Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Portugal and the Netherlands. Ideology, however, was not a sufficient predictor, most notably in the contrasting cases of France under President Jacques Chirac – strongly opposing US action in Iraq – and the UK under Tony Blair. In the authors’ view, Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US accounted for ‘New Labour’ Prime Minister Tony Blair’s unswerving backing. It is worth noting, however, that unease in the Labour Party ran high, with former Foreign Secretary and then Leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, resigning over the war and Development Secretary Clare Short eventually speaking out critically against war, along with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalist Party. There was a view that it was only the government’s misinterpretation of intelligence reports, taken earlier on trust by politicians across the spectrum, that gave Blair the decisive vote in the Commons that he needed. Certainly, debate among grass roots members was lively and acrimonious, and opposition to Iraq was a key reason behind Labour’s loss of seats in the general election of 5 May 2005. Nuances specific to each state and European sensibilities fashioned responses. But, in affirming the existence of a ‘post-modern’ Europe, Hancock and Valeriano echo Robert Kagan’s view of a Venusian continent sharply differentiated from a Martian America (Kagan 2003).

That notion, however, can be contested not only in terms of the divisions both across and within West European states but also in relation to Eastern Europe. The recent history of the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and the looking Westwards of states from Poland to Ukraine was an important factor in shaping the nature of support for Bush in Central and Eastern Europe. George Blazyca discusses in Chapter 4 how the historic fear of Russia underpinned governmental loyalty to the US, especially in Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Polish President Aleksandr Kwasśniewski was also prompted to act, committing 2,400 troops to Iraq by the end of 2003, out of an interest in acquiring international prestige and contracts for post-war reconstruction. Blazyca discusses the relevance of the EU accession to decisions made in this region and observes the lack of public debate in the Polish press about the wisdom of war and troop commitments.

Much of the pro-US stance of East European governments can be explained by the legacy of the Cold War. Ironically, however, American relations with Russia were arguably improved by the Bush Doctrine’s war on terrorism. In Chapter 5, Mary Buckley analyses the impact of terrorism inside Russia on support from President Putin for the war on terror, alongside the government’s concern about what in the Bush Doctrine constituted ‘good offence’. Putin and his ministers supported weapons inspectors in Iraq but not war, as did public opinion. Citizens, however, felt more positive about the USA in general than about the occupation of Iraq. Historic friendships with Iraq and Iran also affected reactions in Moscow, as did self-interest for oil contracts – the latter clouded by alleged corruption. It was Kazakhstan, not Russia, that sent troops from the region. Buckley also explores Russian security interests in Central Asia and the relevance to the region of Russia’s partial displacement, the extent of military coordination, weak state capacity, terrorism in Uzbekistan and recent upheavals in Kyrgyzstan.

The other great power that demonstrated a marked ambivalence towards the Bush Doctrine was China. In Chapter 6, Rex Li examines alarm among Chinese leaders at what they perceived as an ‘arbitrary expansion’ of the USA’s war on terror and a belligerent American unilateralism intent upon reshaping the world. The Bush Doctrine was interpreted in Beijing as a shift in strategy that ran counter to international law and the UN Charter, although Chinese leaders did criticize terrorism. Concerns run both ways. Li discusses how the Bush administration is worried about the nuclear capabilities of an ascendant China and sees it as a strategic rival, unlike Japan. North Korea’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty also antagonized Washington, a matter of immediate concern to the US, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Li explores the complexities of North-East Asian security, including the issue of Taiwan. He argues that the case of Japanese support was starkly one of maintaining the Japan–US strategic relationship, which was further strengthened after Cold War loyalties by documents signed in l996 and l997. Although Article 9 of its Constitution prevents Japan from taking part in military operations, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was keen to despatch non-combat troops, despite criticisms from 54 per cent of Japanese citizens.

As with China, Japan and the other states and regions considered in this volume, national self-interest predominates in reactions in India and Pakistan – but with different outcomes due to both history and geo-politics. In Chapter 7, Samina Yasmeen charts how similar mixed responses in India and Pakistan suited the similar goals of both parties. Elites in both states wanted to see improvements in their national relations with the US. Yet they hesitated to make strong commitments to the Iraq war because of criticisms of unilateralism and support for multiculturalism. Yasmeen traces idealist and realist strands in Indian responses to the Bush Doctrine, strongly shaped by its adversarial relationship with Pakistan, and goes on to explore criticisms in Pakistan at a time when foreign policy had undergone a major shift to support the US war on terrorism. Here, the strongest criticism of the Bush Doctrine was that it was that it was part of a strategy to neutralize ‘strong’ Muslim states, thus with profound and potentially destabilizing implications for Pakistan itself.

The area most immediately affected by the application of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq was the Middle East, which was far more unsettled by the Iraqi invasion than the prior US intervention in Afghanistan. In Chapter 8, Anou-shiravan Ehteshami assesses the complexities of the region and analyses various distinct responses. He argues that, whereas Bush’s drive for democ- ratization was generally criticized as neo-imperialism, the US war on terror also provided an opportunity for leaders to curry favour with Bush in order to obtain US backing for defeating Islamic-inspired violence at home. This pattern developed in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen, alongside a defensiveness about the war on terror. Ehteshami traces the fear of preventive strikes against Iraq and how leaders in Jordan, the Arab League and even those unfriendly to Iraq – namely Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – issued warnings of disastrous consequences to Bush. He goes on to examine different emphases in the responses across the region. Ehteshami stresses, however, how the notion of ‘Islamic terrorism’ was condemned outright with no-one linking it to Islam.

In stark contrast to Eastern and Western Europe, and shared with India, Pakistan and the Middle East, much of the continent of Africa is wracked by acute problems of poverty, AIDS and questions of basic survival. For most African leaders and citizens, the Iraq war was not their most pressing concern, although many nonetheless publicly condemned terrorism. Critics of war viewed economic development and an end to poverty as a surer way of preventing terrorism. In Chapter 9, Robert D. Grey addresses some of the complexities of US relations with African states and observes how, while Ethiopia and Eritrea joined the ‘coalition of the willing’, Libya and Sudan were perceived in Washington as supporters of international terrorism and, in Africa, it was thus feared that they were possible targets for the US in its war on terror. Whereas Europeans lacked any fear that states in their region might become US targets, with al-Qaeda...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Bush Doctrine
• 3. Western Europe
• 4. Poland and Central Europe
• 5. Reactions In the Russian Federation and Security In Central Asia
• 6. North-East Asia
• 7. India and Pakistan
• 8. The Middle East: Between Ideology and Geo-Politics
• 9. Africa
• 10. Australasia
• 11. International Security
• 12. The Global Economy
• 13. The United Nations
• 14. International Law and Human Rights In a Pre-Emptive Era
• 15. United States Unilateralism In a Multilateral Legal Order
• Bibliography