The Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike: Application and Implications During the Administration of President George W. Bush
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Author | Sanjay Gupta |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512107085611 |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Political Science Review (2008), Vol. 29, No. 2, 181–196
DOI: 10.1177/0192512107085611 © 2008 International Political Science Association
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore)
The Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike:
Application and Implications During the
Administration of President George W. Bush
Sanjay Gupta
Abstract. During the Iraq war, the Bush administration justified its pre-
emptive military strike against Iraq on grounds of national security. The
strike, carried out under the administration’s National Security Strategy,
asserts the right of the USA to take unilateral military action against
rogue states and terrorist organizations so as to prevent or mitigate a
presumed attack by such nations or organizations against the United
States. However, the administration’s action has been widely criticized as
not being in conformity with international law, customary law, and UN
Security Council resolutions. The doctrine’s implications are serious as
it may encourage other states, such as India, to take unilateral action
against their adversaries. The failure of the UN to prevent US aggression
against Iraq has also given rise to the suggestion that the UN is redundant
in such circumstances, a view seen by US and Indian foreign policy
ideologues as a favorable development.
Keywords: • Pre-emptive strike • Weapons of mass destruction
• National security • US foreign policy • Bush doctrine
In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, the Bush administration raised the issue of
launching a pre-emptive military attack on Iraq in order to defend the United
States from the growing threat of terrorism. President George W. Bush, in a speech
given to the graduating class of West Point on June 1, 2002, contended that given
the “nature and type of threat posed by Iraq,” the USA had a legal right to use
force “in the exercise of its inherent right of self defense, recognized in Article
51 of the UN Charter” (Bush, 2002). Given that the USA had not been previously
attacked by Iraq, that contention raised controversies about the permissible scope
of the pre-emptive use of force under international law. He declared that the
USA would reserve the right to attack any nation pre-emptively that it deemed
182 International Political Science Review 29(2)
to be a threat to its own national security and interests. A few months later, the
administration formalized the speech in a document entitled The National Security
Strategy of the United States of America (White House, 2002).
The document represents a set of foreign policy guidelines outlining a new
phase in US foreign policy that would henceforth place a greater emphasis on
military pre-emption, military superiority, unilateral action, and a commitment to
“extending democracy, liberty, and security to all regions” (White House, 2002).
It heralds a marked departure from the policies of deterrence and containment
that has generally characterized American foreign policy since the Cold War. The
document, also referred to as the “Bush doctrine,” served as the policy framework
for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The strategy outlined in the document is couched in forceful language and
demonstrates a resolute determination to counter the enemies of the USA and
its allies with a heavy hand. It says, “given the goals of rogue states and terrorists,
the US can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past ... we
cannot let our enemies strike first. As a matter of common sense and self-defense,
America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed”
(White House, 2002: 14).
The document asserts that the world changed drastically on September 11, 2001
and that thereafter the USA was confronted with new challenges: “The proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist networks, armed with the agendas
of fanatics and ... new threats are so novel and so dangerous that we should not
hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting
pre-emptively” (White House, 2002: 6). The administration’s aggression against
Iraq and its determination to use the doctrine of pre-emptive strike against its
potential enemies has come to generate an intense international debate. This
foreign policy initiative of President Bush has become controversial as it marks
the beginning of a new phase of American hegemony-seeking in world affairs.
However, before analyzing the validity of the US action against Iraq, it is worth
mentioning that pre-emptive strikes are not new to international politics. Various
nations resorted to this strategy during the 19th and 20th centuries. Under US
President Madison, for instance, a pre-emptive strike was employed during the
1812 war in Spanish Florida. This was shortly followed by the Monroe Doctrine
that aimed at pre-empting renewed European military intervention in the entire
western hemisphere under the notion that it was the destiny of the USA to expand
westward. In 1898, the United States launched a pre-emptive attack on a Spanish
fleet in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War (Sagan, 1989).
During the Cold War, this strategy was again utilized by the USA, which engin-
eered the covert (for example, Guatemala and Iran) and overt (for example,
Grenada) overthrow of regimes it believed were facilitating the spread of Soviet
power and influence in the region. US intervention in Vietnam was justified as
a means of preventing other Asian countries from falling to communism. It was
again seen in action during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy
warned at the time that “we no longer live in a world where only the actual firing
of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute
maximum peril” (Purdum, 2002).
In 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt and other Arab
states claiming its attack was defensive in nature and necessary to forestall an
Arab invasion. Both the UN Security Council and the General Assembly rejected
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