Understanding the Bush Doctrine

PERHAPS the most threatening document of our time is the U.S. National Security Strategy of September 2002. Its implementation in Iraq has already taken countless lives and shaken the international system to the core. In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world. As Colin Powell explained, the NSS declared that Washington has a "sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations that possess weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq. The obvious reason for invading Iraq is still conspicuously evaded: establishing the first secure US military bases in a client state at the heart of the world?s major energy resources. As old pretexts collapsed, President Bush and his colleagues adaptively revised the doctrine of the NSS to enable them to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or programmes to develop them. The "intent and ability" to do so is sufficient. Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to attack. [more ]