A Critical Juncture: American Foreign Policy and Asymmetric Warfare; Strategic Insights, v. 8, issue 2 (April 2009) (original) (raw)
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A Critical Juncture: American Foreign Policy and Asymmetric Warfare
Strategic Insights, 2009
Asymmetric warfare is arguably the main threat facing the United States since the end of the Cold War. Gone are the years when America knew who its enemy was, and more importantly, knew where it was. With the Obama administration now in the White House, this is a crucial juncture in American foreign policy making. The following pages examine the body of scholarship on asymmetric warfare as it has been impacted by the three primary components of American foreign policy: unilateralism, preemption, and military hegemony. This article asks two central questions. First it inquires as to whether these three key components of America’s foreign policy, popularly known as the Bush Doctrine, have been more extreme under the administration of President George W. Bush than they have under previous administrations. The second question is whether the Bush Doctrine has increased asymmetric warfare in the form of terrorism—or whether it has been an effective policy against it. The article begins by examining the Bush administration’s foreign policy as outlined in both the 2002 and the 2006 National Security Strategy (NSS), investigating the history of each of the three primary components of the Bush Doctrine in America: unilateralism, preemption, and military hegemony—and reviewing the opinions of a number of scholars, security professionals, and journalists as to whether the impact of these initiatives reduced global asymmetric warfare in the form of terrorism or whether it incited more terrorist activity.
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...
"The Bush Doctrine As Hegemonic Discourse Strategy"
Even if preventive military counter‐terrorism may sometimes be ethically justifiable, it remains an open question whether the Bush Doctrine presented a discursively coherent account of the relevant normative conditions. With a view towards answering this question, this article critically examines efforts to ground the morally personifying language of the Bush Doctrine in term of hegemonic stability theory. Particular critical attention is paid to the arguments of leading proponents of this brand of game theory, including J. Yoo, E. Posner, A. Sykes, and J. Goldsmith. When examined in their terms, the Bush Doctine is best understood as an ethically hypocritical and shortsighted international discursive strategy. Its use of moralistic language in demonizing ‘rogue states’ for purely amoral purposes is normatively incoherent and discursively unsustainable. If it is a strategically rational piece of international communication, it seems designed to undermine globally shared normative meanings for the sake of short‐term unilateral military advantage.
The United States National Security Strategy under Bush and Obama: Continuity and Change
University of Tehran, 2017
The foreign policy of states determines the way they behave in the international arena. Accurate analysis of official foreign policy documents of a country is helpful in that it shows what the international priorities of a country are at specific periods. This article reviews the U.S. National Security Strategy documents published in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2015 from the perspective of the perception of threats to the U.S. security and perception of the U.S. role in the world. It tries to study the differences and similarities between the Bush and Obama administrations in this regard using a Neoclassical Realist framework. The results show that the Obama administration identified a wider range of threat sources to U.S. national security while providing less detailed solutions to them. Also, as democracy promotion abroad ceased to be a priority in 2015, compared to 2002 and 2006, counterterrorism continues to be at the top of U.S. security agenda. In line with Neoclassical Realism, creation of an international order under U.S. leadership is an important priority mentioned in the NSS of 2015.
JOURNAL OF THE NAVAL WAR COLLEGE, 2021
The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman's geopolitical theories, which sustained the grand strategy of the United States with the implementation of 1946 Truman Doctrine, are still relevant today after their termination. The results indicate that the intellectual matrixes were found in documents of the grand strategy of the United States in two moments. First, in 1992, in the George Herbert Walker Bush's government's Defense Planning Guidance document, formulated by the Pentagon, in February 1992. Second, they were found replicated 10 years after in the first term of President George Walker Bush, inaugurated in 2001. In the latter, the theoretical formulations repercussions were depicted in the official documents Quadrennial Defense Review (2001) and the National Security Strategy (2002). The article concluded that the authors' ideas remain valid to explain and interpret the actions of the United States' grand strategy in the international scenario.
Containment: Rebuilding a strategy against global terror
Acta Politica, 2009
Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency has been greeted with unusual enthusiasm throughout the world, not least because of hope for an end to the Bush Doctrine-with it's militarist unilateralism, its 'axis of evil' dogma, and 'you're with us or you're against us' vitriol. But what successor grand strategy should the world hope for? What alternative should the Democratic President implement? Ian Shapiro-whose earlier work spans all corners of political science, from democratic theory, to tax policy, to methods and philosophy of social science-forcefully answers these questions in his book Containment. Written more than a year ago as a critique of the Bush Doctrine and a not-sohidden manifesto for Democrats in opposition, Containment can now be read as a sort of open letter to a new Obama Administration that lays out a fully articulated anti-Bush Doctrine. However it is read, Containment provides as damning a critique of the Bush Doctrine as any in print, and in the same pages articulates a humane and politically astute alternative, drawing inspiration and direction from George Kennan's hallowed call for a new grand strategy at the dawning of the Cold War. Despite considerable shortcomings stemming from its polemical valence, Containment remains a must-read statement of American grand strategy, on the poverty of what was and promise of what could be. Shapiro begins with a thoughtful, if familiar, summary of the key distinguishing features of the Bush Doctrine: (1) its global rather than regional scope; (2) its clear emphasis on unilateralism rather than multilateralism; (3) its unabashed embrace of preventive military intervention rather than defensive or even pre-emptive action; (4) its explicit call for forcing regime change in some enemy states; (5) its rejection of third party neutrality; and (6) its declaration of permanent rather than delimited war. As Shapiro observes, these doctrinal features depart radically not only from past treatments of terrorism as criminal rather than fundamental national-security threats; they also depart from generations of US foreign policy, including ambitious internationalisms of the World Wars and the Cold War, not to mention traditional Republican isolationism or Bush's pre-September 11 realism ('I don't believe in nation-building').
2003
The tragic events of September 11, the increase in terrorism, and possible threats from countries that are capable of developing weapons of mass destruction, now make it imperative to develop a new security strategy to safeguard the United States. Americans are beginning to recognize the need for a vigorous debate about what that new strategy should be. Three approaches suggest themselves to us at the Council, each of which would lead our country in a different direction. In brief, these choices call for leveraging American dominance with preventive military action, creating stability by using American military superiority for deterrence and containment, and working toward a more cooperative, rule-based international system backed by American power that is used in genuine concert with U.S. friends and allies. We are still far from agreement on which of these approaches to pursue. So, instead of establishing a CFR Task Force and seeking an unlikely consensus, we decided to employ another Council vehicle, which we call a Council Policy Initiative (CPI). It is designed to foster debate by making the best case for each of the alternatives. We've tried the same approach on defense policy twice before: the first time in 1998, to address concerns about the readiness of our forces to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War world and again in 2002, in response to the new lineup of threats to homeland security after September 11. This third CPI builds on the defense strategies discussed in the previous two but also aims to define an overarching American national security policy to address the threats we face today. The debate now stirring over the best path for U.S. national security policy to take is particularly important at this time in American history. Its outcome will have a profound impact not only on the U.S. success in the war against terrorism, but also on N.B. Uncorrected Proofs vi transatlantic relations and the role of the UN in maintaining international peace and stability.