In my book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004), I argued that the Bush Doctrine was less radical as a doctrine than was widely thought when it was promulgated.
The administration’s key document, the September 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, argued that because “deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or murderous dictator . . . constitute as grave a threat as can be imagined,” the President should, at his discretion, act preemptively to forestall any such threat, even if the threat was not imminent in the traditional sense of armies massing on borders. Many critics seized upon this as a dangerous new departure. Yet the idea of preemption had been asserted by more than one President during the cold war, and had been assumed by them all. The radical aspect of the Bush Doctrine was not so much the theory as the practice.
Even before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it became clear that the White House intended to use the doctrine of preemption to justify violating the national sovereignty of certain “rogue regimes” and using military means to neutralize perceived future threats, preferably by changing those regimes. In Empire: The Rise and Fall of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003), I had expressed some doubts as to whether the United States had the economic, military, and political capabilities to make a success of what was, in all but name, an imperial undertaking. Unlike many critics of the Bush administration, I did not dismiss the project as morally wrong. On the contrary, I argued that there were a number of regimes around the world that were likely to cease sponsoring terrorism, acquiring nuclear weapons, or murdering their own people only as a result of effective foreign intervention. My qualms have all along related to the ability of the United States successfully to execute such interventions.
I have no doubt that the 2002 National Security Strategy was right in its diagnosis of the dangers posed to the United States. Nor do I doubt that a preemptive strike to avert the use of weapons of mass destruction against American targets would be legitimate. But I would add two qualifications.
First, terror networks are a proven threat even when they do not have WMD. Second, it now seems clear that Saddam Hussein did not pose even a distant threat to the United States in 2003, though it was impossible to be sure of that at the time. As I contend in Colossus, the claims made by the American and British governments in connection with Iraq’s WMD capability and links to al Qaeda lacked credibility. There were good reasons for overthrowing Saddam, but these were not among them.
Is, then, the United States more secure today than in 2000? From the point of view of U.S. military personnel, it is less secure, in the sense that they are much more likely to be killed or wounded by hostile action than during the 1990’s. How far this increased risk is outweighed by the reduced threat from a jailed Saddam is not clear.
On the other hand, we cannot know the degree to which actions taken by the Bush administration in Afghanistan, Iraq, and—perhaps more importantly—in the American homeland have reduced the ability of organizations like al Qaeda to attack the United States. My hunch is that another 9/11-type attack could happen even while this President is still in the White House; there are too many ways for terrorists to enter the country and operate undetected, and too many targets to protect. There is also good reason to think that the disruption of al Qaeda’s leadership structures has been compensated for by the formation of new cells and the recruitment of new operatives, notably in Europe. This may turn out to be one of the most important unintended consequences of the invasion of Iraq.
The longer-range prospects of the Bush Doctrine are bleak. The next President will need to come up with a national-security strategy that commands much greater legitimacy abroad. It might make more sense in the future to keep the doctrine of preemption tacit.
Are there particular aspects of American policy that I would change immediately? Secretary of State Rice has already made the single most important change that I would have recommended to the administration last year, namely, to revive the art of diplomacy. The United States came perilously close to less-than-splendid isolation in 2004, not least because the administration came to believe its own rhetoric about the viability of “acting alone” (another component of the National Security Strategy). But success in Iraq cannot be achieved with the support of Tony Blair alone. The resources needed to contain the burgeoning civil war in Iraq must come from outside as well as inside the English-speaking world.
As for what the editors call the Bush Doctrine’s “expansive vision of America’s world role and the moral responsibilities of American power,” I revert once more to the wording of the National Security Strategy. I am all for “actively work[ing] to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.” The same goes for promoting “the rule of law; limits on the absolute power of the state; free speech; freedom of worship; equal justice; respect for women; religious and ethnic tolerance; and respect for private property.” But a further defect of the National Security Strategy was its assumption that doing these things would necessarily enhance American national security. On the contrary: the more the United States represents itself as a messianic force spreading freedom around the world, the more resentment it will arouse; see the history of the British empire, passim.
NIALL FERGUSON is a professor of history at Harvard, a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
