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BACK TO : The Bush Doctrine - Key Speeches & Analysis
Paul Schroeder on Bush Doctrine 
HISTORY Bush doctrine 'betrays America's ideology,' historian argues Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor (217) 333-2177; a-lynn@uiuc.edu 10/1/02 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Before the United States attacks Iraq, Americans should consider the principle the Bush administration is using as it moves closer to war, because "It is hard to grasp and impossible to exaggerate how novel, sweeping, dangerous, and subversive of world order and peace that principle is," a historian says. According to Paul W. Schroeder, a distinguished scholar of international politics, the Bush principle or doctrine - that the United States has the right and duty to take all steps necessary, including pre-emptive war, to prevent weapons of mass destruction from being developed by regimes it considers evil and hostile, and that it will act as its duty and its own best judgement dictate - is "imperialist in the strictest, most objective definition of the term." "It asserts unilaterally the right of the United States to determine for many countries of the world the most vital questions of their national interests, security and place in the international system. It would justify almost any war launched anywhere by any state against any other state considered an unacceptable threat." Bush's principle also "betrays America's ideology," which on balance has been anti-imperialist, and could undermine its world leadership, which has endured since World War II "because it concentrated on fashioning enduring alliances and promoting cooperation rather than gaining empire," Schroeder said. Schroeder, an emeritus professor of history and political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the Bush doctrine reflects the administration's bipolarity. In domestic affairs, it is "profoundly conservative." But in foreign affairs, it is "radical": believing that "one's own cause represents a pure, unalloyed good; that the enemy of that good is clear, identifiable and precisely located; that it can be rooted out and destroyed by force; and that great benefits will arise from its destruction." Such a policy reflects "neither the historic beliefs of liberalism in the possibilities of peaceful change through law, institutions and international cooperation, nor the classic insights of conservatism in foreign policy. That is, it fails to recognize the ineradicable sources of conflict in international relations; the fact that rooting out evil may destroy more good than evil; the inevitability of gradual change, especially when war and violence force the pace; the vital necessity of international rules, mutually accepted practices and legitimating principles; and above all, the awareness that most evils cannot be rooted out, but must be held in check, endured, managed, lived with and outlived." The United States and other nations in recent history have survived much worse threats than Iraq and triumphed - "not by military force, or still less by pre-emptive war, but by defensive preparedness, durable alliances and friendships, patience, willingness to be influenced and restrained by friends, and a reliance on the superiority of our institutions, principles and way of life to prevail," Schroeder said. His comments appeared in an invited piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zietung. |