{"id":1680,"date":"2005-07-01T09:00:10","date_gmt":"2005-07-01T13:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2011-03-21T13:47:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T17:47:02","slug":"issue_46-2_cui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2005\/07\/issue_46-2_cui\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bush Doctrine and Neoconservatism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Abstract:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>On  June 1, 2002, in an address at West Point, U.S. President George W.  Bush announced a new set of foreign policy principles that has come to  be known as the \u201cBush Doctrine.\u201d The doctrine consists of three basic  elements. First, the United States would no longer rely solely on \u201cCold  War doctrines of containment and deterrence,\u201d but would instead pursue a  strategy of preemptive intervention in order to \u201ctake the battle to the  enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they  emerge.\u201d Second, the United States would concentrate on exporting  democracy, since \u201cthe requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa,  Latin America, and the entire Islamic world.\u201d Finally, the United States  would maintain its military supremacy beyond challenge, \u201cthereby making  the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting  rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.\u201d In September 2002, the  Bush administration released the National Security Strategy of the  United States, which formalized these three elements of the Bush  Doctrine: preemptive strike, promotion of democracy, and military  supremacy.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>It was widely reported in the Western press that the  Bush Doctrine had strong roots in the neoconservative school of thought  in the United States. Early drafts of former Deputy Secretary of Defense  Paul Wolfowitz\u2019s report Defense Planning Guidance contained the three  basic elements of the Bush Doctrine as early as 1992. In 1997, Dick  Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and Robert  Kagan founded the Project for the New American Century.\u00a0 In August 18,  1997, Irving Kristol, the father of William Kristol and U.S.  neoconservatism, predicted the rise of the neoconservative ideology in a  Wall Street Journal article entitled \u201cThe Emerging American Imperium\u201d:<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One  of these days, the American people are going to awaken to the fact that  we have become an imperial nation, even though public opinion and all  of our political traditions are hostile to the idea. It is no  overweening ambition on our part that has deaned our destiny in this  way, nor is it any kind of conspiracy by a foreign policy elite. It  happened because the world wanted it to happen, needed it to happen, and  signaled this need by a long series of relatively minor crises that  could not be resolved except by some American involvement.<em><br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<em>In  light of the similarity of their views, it does not seem surprising  that George W. Bush awarded Irving Kristol the Presidential Medal of  Freedom on July 9, 2002.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>The preemptive strategy articulated by  the Bush administration is not a recent creation. Rather it has ancient  roots reaching as far back as the Roman Empire and was a key Roman  Imperial tactic that Cicero forcefully advocated:<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How can you  believe that the man who has lived so licentiously up to the present  time will not proceed to every extreme of insolence, if he shall also  secure the authority given by arms? Do not, then, wait until you have  suffered some such treatment and then rue it, but be on your guard  before you suffer; for it is rash to allow dangers to come upon you and  then to repent of it, when you might have anticipated them . . .<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>The  similarity between the sentiments expressed by Cicero in the above  passage and the Bush administration\u2019s recent rhetoric allude to the idea  that there are some Classical scholars among the neoconservatives.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Many  scholars have since explored the far-reaching implications of the Bush  doctrine, but few have addressed the doctrine from a Chinese  perspective. How have Chinese intellectuals perceived and responded to  the Bush Doctrine? Naturally, there are many divergent viewpoints, but  the main perspective can be easily identified. Chinese scholars have  emphasized the continuity of the Bush Doctrine with President Clinton\u2019s  foreign policy, and consider the Bush Doctrine as the culmination and  maturation of the United States\u2019 post\u2013Cold War grand strategy.<\/em><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 1, 2002, in an address at West Point, U.S. President George W. Bush announced a new set of foreign policy principles that has come to be known as the \u201cBush Doctrine.\u201d How have Chinese intellectuals perceived and responded to the Bush Doctrine? Naturally, there are many divergent viewpoints, but the main perspective can be easily identified. Chinese scholars have emphasized the continuity of the Bush Doctrine with President Clinton\u2019s foreign policy, and consider the Bush Doctrine as the culmination and maturation of the United States\u2019 post\u2013Cold War grand strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[37,59,41],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives","tag-americas","tag-asia-pacific","tag-foreign-affairs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-r6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}