"The Bush Doctrine As Hegemonic Discourse Strategy" (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Research, 2015
The international arena where the intercourse between and amongst sovereign states occur accommodates cooperation and competition but most often, it is characterized by conflicts. The ‘zero-sum’ nature of the international system actuates states to always design strategies and policies which ensure that their interests are protected at all times. It has always been that the state(s) with the preponderance of clout always sets the agenda on security hence, the ‘Bush Doctrine’ formally known as “the National Security Strategy of the United States” is therefore nothing other than a foreign policy design of the United States which seeks to sustain American global hegemony by obliterating all obstacles - of which terrorism is topmost. The Bush Doctrine, in order to achieve its set goals, makes use of pre-emption, unilateralism and the so- called extension of “freedom”. The Bush Doctrine was essentially a reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S, and it has sin...
Justifying the use of force in a post-9/11 world: striving for hierarchy in international society
2008
Two major wars have been fought by the United States military since the attacks of 9/11. 1 This article will argue that the major justifications of these actions offered by the administration are based on appeals to both the national interest and, more importantly, a claim about the moral purpose of the nation-of one particular nation: a claim of national morality congruent with, but more significant than, traditional US exceptionalism. The article is divided into three parts. The first examines the justifications made by President Bush for the war in Afghanistan, and the second, his justifications for the Iraq War; the third discusses the implications for the international system of the nature of both sets of justifications. I will argue that they represent a significant shift in presidential discourse since 1990 towards the attempted establishment of a hierarchy based on a particular moral and security doctrine about the role of the United States in world politics. Of course, President Bush had to justify the interventions made in Afghanistan and Iraq to both domestic and international audiences, pointing to values or norms in order to secure legitimacy for the actions undertaken. Justifications for war often take one of two forms. They may point to accepted norms or values held by the audience; or they may be the means by which a political elite seeks to enhance and/or devalue certain norms or values in the eyes of its intended audience. Justifications do not exist in a vacuum and must relate to existing values-in this case, both those held in the United States and those held internationally. As Lawrence Freedman argues, 'Justifications for war habitually draw on normative arguments, on expectations about how governments should behave towards their own people, and on how human beings and states should behave towards each other.' 2 While motivation for any discourse is important (but very problematic to establish), it is the nature of the public statements that is important for this article. Before it can be asked what the motivation is for a particular justificatory discourse, or whether a discourse is restrained by norms already accepted in international * My thanks to input from members of the Chatham House workshop from which this special issue emerged for comments on earlier drafts. 1 This article draws on two of the four chapters of my PhD dissertation, 'Justifications for, and the practice of, war: continuity or change in US military intervention 1990-2003? An English School analysis of the use of force in international relations',
Principles Under Pressure: Just War Doctrine and American Antiterror Strategy After 9/11
Approaches, Levels, and Methods of Analysis in International Politics, 2006
I n the study of international relations today, the willingness to cross theoretical and methodological boundaries is often a sign of mature scholarship, as is the willingness to engage a diverse nonacademic audience that includes policy makers and practitioners. Few in the discipline have crossed as many of these boundaries, and with such good effect, as Bruce Russett. One frequent crossing has been into the area of international ethics, especially the ethics of war and nuclear deterrence. Russett served as principal consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, participating in the drafting of their highly influential pastoral letter on the ethics of war in the nuclear era, The Challenge of Peace (1983). He has written on nearly every ethical problem encountered by the student of world politics: not only war and weapons, but also poverty, inequality, human rights, representation, female empowerment, and environmental degradation. In our field, social scientific inquiry may often appear dispassionate and detached from the pressing moral issues of our times, but social scientists need not be. Russett's boundary crossings demonstrate that very clearly (e.g., Russett 1989, 2001).
Journal on the Use of Force and International Law
This article revisits the Principles Relevant to the Scope of a State’s Right of Self-Defense Against an Imminent or Actual Armed Attack by Nonstate Actors published by Sir Daniel Bethlehem in the American Journal of International Law in 2012. As disclosed in documents revealed by WikiLeaks, the principles were the product of intergovernmental discussions led by the US to secure greater understanding of the jus ad bellum that had their origins in the controversial ‘Bush doctrine’ published in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America in 2002. In 2017, the UK Attorney General announced that the UK ‘follows and endorses’ Principle 8 of ‘The Bethlehem Principles’, as did Australia’s Attorney General. Principle 8 reflects an expansion of the right of anticipatory self-defence by providing a new standard of imminence to enable preventive military strikes against threats outside traditional conflict zones.