Understanding Bush Doctrine
Robert Jervis: A realist
perspective
 Carter Doctrine
• The United States would use military force
if necessary to defend its interests in the
Persian Gulf region.
 Reagan Doctrine
• The support of anti-communism
movements
 Bush, Sr Doctrine
• the use of overwhelming force only after
other options have been exhausted and
only when vital national interest is at stake
 Clinton Doctrine
• less definitive policy that supported
intervention, militarily if need be, when
American interests or values, including
grave human rights violations, were at
stake – help to spread democracy
throughout the globe
 Bush, Jr Doctrine
• Preemptive actions
A. The Basic elements of Bush Doctrine:
1. The type of political regime adopted in
any state affects its behavior in foreign
policy
2. The view that great threats that can be
defeated only by new and vigorous
policies, in which preventive war is a
major component of such policies
3. A willingness to act unilaterally when
necessary; and,
4. The United States needs to assert its
primacy in world politics in order to keep
peace and stability in the world
B. Democracy and Liberalism
 Democracy can be adopted in any
society: In this sense the Islamic culture
is just like any other culture that is
compatible with democracy
 Iraq will be a model for the rest of the
Middle Eastern countries in the
democratization process
 The Problems of democratization process
in the Middle East:
 Would a democratic Iraq be stable?
 Would an Iraq that reflected the will of its
people recognize Israel or renounce all
claims to Kuwait?
 Would a democratic Palestinian state be
more willing to live at peace with Israel
than an authoritarian one, especially if it
did not gain all of the territory lost in 1967?
 September 11 gave Bush Administration a
good opportunity to restructure its influence
and agenda in the world politics
C. Threat and Preventive War
 Deterrence is no longer a good policy in the
post September 11 attacks
 Preventive war is a necessary strategy in
the war on terrorism and in the war against
states that developed WMDs


I.
II.
III.
Examples of preventive wars in the past:
Israel attacks against Iraq in early 1980s
Problems of Preventive wars
The Problem of predicting threats and
attacks
The lack of accurate intelligence
The Problem of repeating the same
scenario in other cases
D. Preventive war strategy justifies
unilateralism
 Why North Korea is an exception in this
strategy?
 “the Bush administration walked away from
the Kyoto treaty, the International Criminal
Court, and the protocol implementing the ban
on biological weapons rather than try to work
within these frameworks and modify them.
The United States also ignored European
criticisms of its Middle Eastern policy ”
E. Maintaining American Hegemony
 As a hegemonic power, the United States has
the right to behave in a different way than
other states
 Sustaining a high level of military spending
that will guarantee the supremacy of
American military
 The use of force on behalf of other countries
so they will not need to develop potent
military establishments of their own