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BACK TO : The Bush Doctrine - Key Speeches & Analysis
America's Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine by Todd Gitlin 
America's Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine With barely a debate, the Bush doctrine has set out a radically new -- and dangerous -- role for the United States. Todd Gitlin January/February 2003 On September 20, the Bush administration published a national security manifesto overturning the established order. Not because it commits the United States to global intervention: We've been there before. Not because it targets terrorism and rogue states: Nothing new there either. No, what's new in this document is that it makes a long-building imperial tendency explicit and permanent. The policy paper, titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" -- call it the Bush doctrine -- is a romantic justification for easy recourse to war whenever and wherever an American president chooses. This document truly deserves the overused term "revolutionary," but its release was eclipsed by the Iraq debate. Recall the moment. Bush, having just backed away from unilateralism long enough to deliver a speech to the United Nations, was now telling Congress to give him the power to go to war with Iraq whenever and however he liked. Congress, with selective reluctance, was skating sideways toward a qualified endorsement. The administration had fended off doubts from the likes of George Bush Sr.'s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and retreated from its maximal designs (at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays), giving doubters, and politicians preoccupied with their reelection, reasons to overcome their doubts and sign on. The Bush White House chose this moment to put down in black and white its grand strategy -- to doctrinize, as it were, its impulse to act alone with the instruments of war. Hitching a ride on Al Qaeda's indisputable threat, the doctrine generalizes. It is limitless in time and space. It not only commits the United States to dominating the world from now into the distant future, but also advocates what it calls the preemptive use of force: "America will act against emerging threats before they are fully formed." The United States has many times sent armed forces to take over foreign countries for weeks, years, even decades. But the Bush doctrine is the first to elevate such wars of offense to the status of official policy, and to call "preemptive" (referring to imminent peril) what is actually preventive (referring to longer-term, hypothetical, avoidable peril). This semantic shift is crucial. When prevention of a remote possibility is called preemption, anything goes. CIA caution can be overridden, Al Qaeda connections fabricated, dangers exaggerated -- and the United States will have a doctrine to substitute for international law. The Bush manifesto displays bluster, romance, and illogic in equal measure. Premise: America is fundamentally righteous. "In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage." This will be news to much of the world, but never mind. An imperial strategy is justified because there is in the world but "a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise" -- a model that, surprise, the United States embodies. (As for success without freedom or democracy or free enterprise, what about China? As for free enterprise and democracy of a sort without success, what about Argentina?) Conclusion: Whatever America does will be right -- pursuing terrorists, preemptive war, free trade, whatever. Nuance be damned. For all the boilerplate about national differences, the doctrine's key concern is clear: If all the world speaks American values (though sometimes in funny local accents), why shouldn't everyone dance to our tune? |