The Bush Administration issued its first National Security Strategy in September 2002, a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States by al Qaeda. The document's Chapter V summarizes the Administration's approach to using force, known as the Bush Doctrine. It essentially reiterates, in four pages, presidential statements made over the months following 9/11, including the President's speeches before a Joint Session of Congress on 20 September 2001, before the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism on 6 November, his State of the Union Address on 29 January 2002, his remarks before the student body of the Virginia Military Institute on 17 April, and his address to the graduating class at the US Military Academy at West Point on 1 June. The Bush Administration now has in place a clear, declaratory use-of-force policy whose objective is stated in Chapter V's title: "Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction."

This article identifies and examines the Bush Doctrine's major tenets, and then assesses the doctrine's strengths and weaknesses within the context of the Administration's prospective attack on Iraq.

The Threat

The Bush Doctrine rests on a definition of the threat based upon what it sees as the combination of "radicalism and technology"--specifically, political and religious extremism joined by the availability of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In his West Point speech, President Bush declared:

The gravest danger to freedom lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile technology--when that occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a catastrophic power to strike great nations. Our enemies have declared this very intention, and have been caught seeking these terrible weapons. (1)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has subsequently and repeatedly spoken of the emergence of a "nexus between terrorist networks, terrorist states, and weapons of mass destruction... that can make mighty adversaries of small or impoverished states and even relatively small groups of individuals." (2)

The Bush Doctrine identifies three threat agents: terrorist organizations with global reach, weak states that harbor and assist such terrorist organizations, and rogue states. Al Qaeda and the Taliban's Afghanistan embody the first two agents. Rogue states are defined as states that:

...brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers; display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party; are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes; sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject human values and hate the United States and everything it stands for. (3)

The key attributes are regime aggressiveness and the search for WMD, especially nuclear weapons, which are far more efficient engines of mass slaughter than chemical and biological weapons. (4)

This definition of rogue states seems to be modeled on Iraq, although Iran is a much greater purveyor of international terrorism, and North Korea, the third "axis of evil" state, is believed to have already acquired nuclear weapons capacity. North Korea has, however, pursued a foreign policy of moderation in recent years, at least until its October 2002 confession that it had resumed its nuclear weapons program in contravention of a 1994 agreement to suspend it. The Bush Administration has nonetheless sought a diplomatic solution via the enlistment of pressure from Tokyo and Beijing on Pyongyang. There has been no talk of war against North Korea, even though Pyongyang has a far more advanced nuclear program than Iraq's, and even though Kim Jong Il is, if anything, more unpredictable than Saddam Hussein. (5) The Bush Administration apparently credits North Korea with relatively benign intentions; in the case of Iraq, however, it has come very close to equating capabilities and intentions-i.e., inferring inten t to use WMD offensively by virtue of their very existence in Iraq. For example, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has declared that the "unrelenting drive to possess weapons of mass destruction brings about the inevitability that they will be used against us or our interests." (6)

A key feature of the Bush Doctrine's postulation of the threat is its conclusion that Cold War concepts of deterrence and containment do not necessarily work against WMD-seeking rogues states and are irrelevant against terrorist organizations. "In the Cold War," states the National Security Strategy, "we faced a generally status quo, risk-averse adversary.... But deterrence based only on the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nations. ... Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy." (7) This judgment echoes President Bush's earlier remarks in his West Point speech: "Deterrence, the promise of massive retaliation against nations, means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend." And, "Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." (8) (In contrast to containment of communism, which was aimed at its territorial expansion, containment of Iraq since 1991 has targeted Saddam's territorial and nuclear ambitions. It is therefore "vertical" as well as "horizontal.") Thus, according to the Bush Doctrine, rogue states are a double threat; they not only seek to acquire WMD for themselves but also could transfer them to terrorist "allies."

Making matters worse, argues the White House, the threat is not just undeterrable--it is also imminent, requiring urgent responses. Less than two months after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared, "We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain weapons of mass destruction." (9) In his subsequent State of the Union Address, he further stated that "time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not standby, as peril draws closer and closer." (10) At West Point, he warned, "If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long." (11) His National Security Strategy declares simply, "We cannot let our enemies strike first." (12) National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice underscored the Administration's sense of imminent danger, telling CNN on 8 September 2002 that the risk of waiting for conclusive proof of Saddam Hussein's determination to acquire nuclear weapons was too great because "we don't want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud," (13) a metaphor President Bush subsequently repeated.

In summary, the Bush Doctrine postulates an imminent, multifaceted, undeterrable, and potentially calamitous threat to the United States--a threat that, by virtue of the combination of its destructiveness and invulnerability to deterrence, has no precedent in American history. By implication, such a threat demands an unprecedented response.

The Response

The judgment that we are dealing with enemies who are prepared to "strike first," "to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States," (14) who "would [not] hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction if they believed it would serve their purposes," (15) inevitably dictates a policy of what the Bush Administration has chosen to call "anticipatory self-defense." (16) The policy is billed as a strategy of preemption. In his West Point speech, President Bush announced that the "war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act." (17) The National Security Strategy declares that the "United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security," and given the risk of inaction against enemies prepared to strike first, "the Unit ed States will, if necessary, act preemptively." (18) The National Security Strategy goes on to say, "Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat--most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing for attack." However, "We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries." Because rogue states know they can't win with conventional weapons, "they [will] rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction--weapons that can be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning." (19)

The Bush Administration does not regard preemption as a substitute for traditional nonmilitary measures such as sanctions and coercive diplomacy or for proactive counterproliferation and strengthened nonproliferation efforts. Preemption is an "add-on" tailored to deal with the new, non-deterrable threat. But the question does arise as to whether "preemption" best characterizes the new policy. The Pentagon's official definition of preemption is "an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent." (20) In contrast, preventive war is "a war initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve great risk." (21) Harvard's Graham Allison has captured the logic of preventive war: "I may some day have a war with you, and right now I'm strong and you're not. So I'm going to have the war now." Allison went on to point out that this logic was very much behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, "and in candid mom ents some Japanese scholars say--off the record--that [Japan's] big mistake was waiting too long." (22)

The difference between preemption and preventive war is important. As defined above, preemptive attack is justifiable if it meets Secretary of State Daniel Webster's strict criteria, enunciated in 1837 and still the legal standard, that the threat be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation." (23) Preemptive war has legal sanction. (24) Preventive war, on the other hand, has none, because the threat is neither certain nor imminent. This makes preventive war indistinguishable from outright aggression, which may explain why the Bush Administration insists that its strategy is preemptive, although some Cabinet officials have used the terms interchangeably.

The problem, at least with respect to Iraq, is the lack of convincing evidence, at least publicly available evidence, that an Iraqi WMD attack on the United States, its allies, or its friends, is imminent. Such an attack seems inherently implausible because it would invite, via devastating retaliation, the destruction of Saddam Hussein, his regime, and even Iraq itself. And, ironically, notwithstanding the White House's dismissal of deterrence as insufficient against rogue states, the Administration has reportedly warned the Iraqi dictator that he and his country face "annihilation" if he uses his WMD against another country. (25) The threat was generically repeated in the Administration's December 2002 National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, which declared that the United States "reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force--including through resort to all our options--to the use of WMID against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies. (26) Presumably, these th reats would not have been made absent some level of confidence in deterrence. Perhaps the Administration's very campaign of threatening an attack on Iraq is designed to reinforce deterrence. Yet deterrence requires the deterree to believe that he will not be attacked if he does not commit the act to be deterred. If he is convinced that we are coming anyway, is not deterrence undermined?

If an Iraqi attack is not imminent, and indeed is deterrable in any event, then does not a US attack on Iraq become a preventive war based on an assumption of the inevitability of hostilities and the desire to strike before the military balance becomes less favorable (i.e., before Saddam gets nuclear weapons)? The Bush Administration's statements and actions with respect to Iraq point strongly to a conviction that war is inevitable, and its declared willingness to start a war with Iraq is based on the Administration's stated judgment that time is not on the American side. In his address to the nation from Cincinnati on 7 October 2002, Bush asked the question, "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today, and we do, does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" The President went on to assert that Iraq could be "less than a year" away from building a nuclear weapon, and that if allowed to do so, "a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression . . . to dominate the Middle East . . . [and] to threaten America" by "pass[ing] nuclear technology to terrorists." (27)

There may indeed be a case for starting a war, even a preventive war, with Iraq, but we should be clear on the traditional distinction between preemptive attack and preventive war. On the other hand, perhaps the National Security Strategy is right in insisting on the need to revisit that traditional distinction in the face of undeterrable non-state enemies armed with WMD. "Perhaps the gulf between preemption and prevention," observes Michael Walzer, "has now narrowed so that there is little strategic (and therefore little moral) difference between them."28 Moreover, against Iraq at least, the United States has an established record of preventive military operations. As noted in 1994 by Richard Haass, who is now head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, the "Desert Storm coalition's attacks against Iraqi unconventional warfare capabilities inside Iraq involved preventive employment of force; the capabilities targeted were not yet in a state of development to affect the course of [the Gulf War]." (29) Indeed, by the time Desert Storm was launched, Kuwait's liberation--a certainty--had become incidental to the larger aim of preventing future Iraqi aggression by destroying Iraqi WMD capacity and gutting Iraq's conventional military capabilities. Kuwait could have been liberated without striking targets in Iraq, albeit at probably significantly greater cost. (30)

But assume, for the moment, that the traditional distinction between preemption and preventive war does apply, and that Iraq does pose a threat that justifies preemptive attack. Any preemptive attacker must have overwhelming evidence of the enemy's intention of imminent attack as well as a capacity to launch swift and decisive strikes--strikes that quickly and conclusively preempt the expected offensive military actions. Intentions, of course, are notoriously difficult to gauge, and precisely because of this reality there is an innate tendency to ascribe intentions from capabilities. Note has been made of the Bush Administration's equation of Iraqi capabilities and Iraqi intentions. But intentions to do what? There is no question that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons and would love to have nuclear weapons. But for what purpose? The Bush Administration argues that he is itching to use them against the United States and its allies and friends. But could he not be seeking his own deterrent? In Israel and the United States he faces two nuclear-armed adversaries; would not having his own nuclear weapons make his enemies think twice before attacking him--as well as offset Iraq's greatly weakened conventional forces? And can we speculate that this is the real reason why the Bush Administration wishes to attack him before he gets nuclear weapons? Middle East expert Stephen Zunes contends that "any Iraqi WMDs that may exist are under the control of a highly centralized regime more interested in deterring a US attack than in provoking one." (31)

The Bush Doctrine: Five Observations

The Bush Doctrine has sparked great controversy at home and abroad. Some critics see it as further testimony to American unilateralism and arrogance; as the triumph within the Bush Administration of a neo-conservative agenda aimed at ensuring a permanent American primacy in the world. Others regard it as a reckless setting of a dangerous precedent that other states will exploit to mask aggression. Still others see the doctrine as simply a construct to justify an attack on Iraq. Proponents of the Bush Doctrine contend that a threat revolution is under way which requires new approaches to using force. The 9/11 tragedy, they argue, was a warning of worse--much worse--things to come if the United States remains in the reactive posture it assumed during the Cold War. The stakes, they claim, are as high as they were during the Cold War, but we are now dealing with enemies who do not care whether they live or die. As with many controversial topics, both supporters and critics exhibit strengths and weaknesses in the ir arguments.

What follows is an examination of their argumentation via five observations pertaining to the Bush Doctrine and the threatened American attack on Iraq.

* The threat of WMD proliferated among suicidal or otherwise undeterrable terrorist groups is new, real, and potentially catastrophic, but the Bush Administration's primary focus on regime change in Iraq may be a focus on the periphery rather than the heart of the threat.

The Bush Administration is absolutely right in identifying the possibility of a 9/11 with nuclear weapons as the gravest threat to American security today. Every possible effort, including preemptive attack, should be made to forestall this threat's materialization. Al Qaeda seeks our destruction and is inherently Undeterrable. We have been at war withal Qaeda since 9/11 (which renders preemption moot), and we are committed to continued military operations against that enemy and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan until we are satisfied that we can leave that country strong enough to prevent its relapse into a haven for al Qaeda.

Why, then, does the Bush Administration seek to start a second war against Iraq? Why, reportedly, just one day after 9/11, did Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggest in a National Security Council meeting that the al Qaeda attacks be used as a pretext for a US attack on Iraq? (32) Many commentators have observed that Saddam Hussein represents unfinished business of the first Bush Administration, and that Saddam Hussein did sponsor a plot to assassinate President George W. Bush's father. But what is the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda? President Bush declared in late September 2002 that "you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terrorism. They're both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive." He added that the "danger is that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world." (33)

But the Administration has presented no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and no convincing evidence of an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden may hate the United States, but the former is a secular dictator on the Stalinist model who has never hesitated to butcher Muslim clerics, whereas the latter is a religious fanatic who regards secular Arab regimes as blasphemous. Other than hatred of the United States, they do not have a common agenda, (34) though the history of international politics is replete with very strange bedfellows (e.g., Hitler and Stalin, and then Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt).

As for the Administration's asserted threat of a revenge-motivated Saddam Hussein's transfer of WMD to al Qaeda, there is no evidence that such a transfer has been made, even though Hussein has had chemical and biological weapons for years. Moreover, the Administration has not addressed the question of whether the Iraqi dictator could ever be certain that he could make such a transfer without a trace of evidence. And even if he could be certain on that score, would he not also have to worry that the Bush Administration would consider anal Qaeda WMD attack to be prima facie evidence that such a transfer had been made? There is also the issue of control. Saddam Hussein and his regime are about absolute political control because control means survival. How likely is it, therefore, that Saddam, a Stalin-like paranoid and megalomaniac who has a long record of repressing radical Islamists in his own country, would transfer his own hard-earned WMD to an Islamist terrorist group beyond his control? (35)

If there is a plausible scenario of Iraqi first use of WMD, including indirectly via transfer to a terrorist group, is it not in response to an American attack on Iraq that placed Saddam in the position of certain doom, thereby removing any "deterrent" obstacles to taking down as many of his enemies as possible on the way to his own extinction? During the Gulf War, Saddam pre-delegated orders to Iraqi Scud batteries to launch biological- and chemical-armed missiles at Tel Aviv if the coalition forces advanced on Baghdad. (36) President Bush himself has acknowledged that an "Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures." (37) A CIA assessment concluded that Saddam, if convinced that a US attack could not be deterred, might "decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking large numbers of victims with him." (38) At a minimum, Saddam would target Israel and t hereby guarantee his posthumous fame among many in the Arab world. Thus, would not a US attack on Iraq make Saddam's first use of WMD a self-fulfilling prophesy? (All of this assumes, of course, both a US decision for war and the survival, despite UN reinspection efforts that began in December 2002, of deliverable Iraqi WMD.)

And if the aim of the Bush Doctrine is to prevent the marriage of terrorism and WMD, should it not concentrate first and foremost on destroying the vast and poorly secured stocks of WMD in the countries of the former Soviet Union? Unlike Iraq, al Qaeda is a truly transnational organization with cells in at least 60 countries. As such, and given its impressive financial resources, al Qaeda seems well positioned to exploit opportunities posed by the presence of so much loosely protected WMD, to say nothing of securing the services of impoverished former Soviet WMD scientists. Yet, inexplicably, the Bush Administration has sought to cut the very Nunn-Lugar funding designed to enable Russia to destroy its great stocks of WMD.