The new Bush Doctrine has two components, a reactive one, and a preventive and proactive one; it holds that under some circumstances the United States has the right to wage preemptive war. What are the likely costs and consequences of this bold and controversial policy?

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. --Winston Churchill, 1936

ike all great oratory, Churchill's words have a timeless quality. Echoing down the decades, they seem as relevant today as when he spoke them. Like a Rorschach inkblot, however, their meaning tends

President George W. Bush addresses the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2002, calling for tough action against Iraq.

to change depending on the reader's perspective. For those who resent America's creeping hegemony or revel in its defeats, Churchill's words capture the rationale for September 11, 2001: America had grown arrogant, invulnerable, and disinterested, and the terrorist attacks that felled the twin towers and charred the Pentagon were an exclamation point to years of bitter frustration.
        Churchill's words paint a much different picture for George W. Bush and indeed for many Americans. For them, his words explain not what has already transpired but what is yet to come--a long-overdue period of consequences for America's enemies. Nowhere is this sentiment clearer than in the so-called Bush Doctrine. Like the Truman Doctrine, which set America's course at the outset of the Cold War, and the Reagan Doctrine, which hastened the end of the Cold War, the Bush Doctrine promises to redefine America's role overseas, reshape international law, and reorder the globe. Like those other foreign-policy doctrines, the Bush Doctrine holds forth great opportunity and great risk.

Preventive Medicine

he Bush Doctrine actually has two distinct, but not separate, parts. To borrow the terminology of medicine, one part is rehabilitative and reactive--that is, it is aimed at correcting a preexisting condition. The other is preventive and proactive. Like a regimen of vitamins, this second half of the Bush Doctrine aims at preventing disease.
        The doctrine's reactive component was unveiled during the president's address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. "From this day forward," Bush explained, "any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." Although it represented a subtle change in U.S. policy, no one really had a problem with the Bush Doctrine in this, its fetal, stage. Most observers concluded that Bush was aiming his rhetoric--and America's military might--at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which he indeed was.
        However, Bush and his national-security team were also laying the groundwork for something far more revolutionary than simply rolling back terrorist organizations and the states that harbor and fund them.

Soviet Mig-23:The Soviets were able to field sophisticated weapons during the Cold War.

In early 2002, the president began to outline the doctrine's proactive component, premised on preventive self-defense. "The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons," Bush declared in the 2002 State of the Union. In his landmark address at West Point five months later, he warned that defeating those regimes and protecting America in an age of terror will sometimes require "preemptive action." By autumn, with the release of the administration's new national security strategy, the doctrine was complete: "As a matter of common sense and self-defense," the document explained, "America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed."
        This full-grown version of the Bush Doctrine has drawn heavy criticism from friend and foe alike. Erstwhile allies condemn Washington for using terrorism as a pretext for the creation of an American empire. Enemies predict that once applied, the Bush Doctrine will engulf the entire Middle East in an uncontainable war.
        With the carnage of September 11 as a backdrop and the threat of nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks on the horizon, Bush has been unmoved by the criticism. The doctrine that bears his name is now being put to the test: In Afghanistan, which once harbored and sheltered al Qaeda, we see its reactive-rehabilitative component; and in Iraq, which sponsors terrorist groups while arming itself with plutonium, plague, and poison, we will soon see its proactive-preventive component. Bush recognizes that his doctrine will be ineffective unless both parts remain fused.

The Blair Doctine?

ccording to Gordon Sullivan, former deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Army, "Good doctrine describes how a nation intends to fight in war and, by doing so, guides how it organizes, trains and equips its military forces. That is, in fact, the purpose of doctrine."¹ When Harry Truman unveiled his postwar doctrine during an address to Congress in 1947, he described how America would fight the Cold War and laid the foundation for an organizing principle that guided the nation's military procurements and deployments for almost half a century. Likewise, when Reagan articulated his aid-to-anticommunists doctrine in the early 1980s, he was reflecting his determination to challenge the Soviets throughout the Third World--and his willingness to devote considerable economic and military resources to the effort.
        We cannot yet calculate the political-military effectiveness of the Bush Doctrine, but we can conclude that it does satisfy the technical definition of "good doctrine." Bush has described how the United States intends to fight in a post--September 11 world, and that vision is guiding how U.S. forces are being organized, trained, equipped, and deployed. The president's European critics notwithstanding, the Bush Doctrine is not a case of rhetoric defining policy. Rather, it is the Bush administration's response to a transformed security environment. Bush is not alone in recognizing this transformation. In fact, he arguably wasn't even the first to advocate a new doctrine to respond to it. A full week before Bush outlined the first phase of his doctrine, British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared in a speech to the House of Commons, "Those that harbor or help [terrorists] have a choice: either to cease their protection of our enemies, or be treated as an enemy." Foreshadowing the proactive elements of the Bush Doctrine, he warned that terrorists and their sponsors "would, if they could, go further and use chemical or biological or even nuclear weapons of mass destruction." As a consequence, Blair continued, "we need to rethink dramatically the scale and nature of the actions the world takes to combat terrorism." Sounding positively Churchillian, he concluded his remarks with an ominous footnote: "We have been warned by the events of 11 September. We should act on the warning."
        Blair never mentioned "preemptive strikes" or "preventive war," which are apparently the diplomatic equivalents of four-letter words, but he didn't have to. His speech connected the dots from terrorist groups to terrorist states--and from September 11 to a future deformed by a nuclear-armed alliance of the two. Sometimes the solution is so obvious that it need not be spelled out.
        While on the subject of words unspoken, a brief detour through etymology may be helpful in clarifying the rationale and aims of the Bush Doctrine. "Preemptive war" and "preventive war" are often used interchangeably. When it comes to the Bush Doctrine, however, the latter may be more accurate. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, the term preemptive means "marked by the seizing of the initiative." Preventive, on the other hand, is defined as "undertaken to forestall anticipated hostile action." It implies "taking advance measures against something possible or probable." The difference is subtle but important. The Bush Doctrine aims not to surprise rogue regimes and win back the initiative lost on September 11 (as if that is even possible now), but to prevent these regimes from striking America yet again, acquiring weapons of mass destruction and using, selling, or sharing them.

Waiting for War

o the critics, this is a radical departure from the traditional American way of war. Perhaps this is understandable, given the long shadow cast by World War II--a war the United States entered only after being attacked. America's entry into and prosecution of World Wars I and II became the template for war. Under this reading of U.S. military history, the United States weathers an initial attack, assumes the "strategic defensive" to gather sufficient forces for retaliation, and then takes the war to the enemy in a series of decisive battles.²
        This reactive way of war was shaped as much by the country's unique geographic position as by its first president. Surrounded by wilderness, vast oceans, and passive neighbors, the United States could steer clear of the wars that roiled Europe and the rest of the world. As George Washington observed during his farewell address, "Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course." The men who followed him heeded his advice. In the nineteenth century, John Quincy Adams echoed Washington: America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," he intoned. In the twentieth century, it was Woodrow Wilson: "Every man who really loves America," he explained as

A U.S. Marine and an Anti-Taliban fighter kneel in prayer before going on a mission against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Europe marched into the Great War, "will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality."
        Not until the missile age, when Soviet rockets could strike any patch of U.S. soil, did American leaders think anew. By then, the United States no longer had the luxury of waiting for war. Instead, America was left with an unpalatable--and for it, an unprecedented--choice: forge an entangling alliance to serve as a first line of defense or wage preventive war to remove the threat. Washington's advice no longer made sense in a world of atom bombs and ICBMs.
        In the same way, the security doctrines of the twentieth century don't make sense in the twenty-first. Lincoln's words to Congress in 1862 take on new meaning in this age of terror: "The dogmas of the quiet past," he concluded, "are inadequate to the stormy present." Quite unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist states and substate groups of the twenty-first century respect neither America's might nor the atom's power. To wait for them to strike again is to invite something much worse than September 11. Simon Serfaty, a research fellow at the Center for Security and International Studies, puts it this way: "Wherever there are capabilities to do evil, it must now be assumed that there may be a will, and wherever there is a will, there is a risk that is no longer acceptable and must be, therefore, preempted."³
        As a matter of stated U.S. policy, preventive war may represent something new, but historically and conceptually it is anything but new. In the seventeenth century, Sir Francis Bacon argued that "a just fear of an imminent danger, though no blow be given, is a lawful cause of war."⁴ As Michael Walzer explains in Just and Unjust Wars, preventive war can be a legitimate expression of national policy. "A state under threat," he writes, "is like an individual hunted by an enemy who has announced his intention of killing or injuring him. Surely such a person may surprise his hunter, if he is able to do so." It's hard to construct a better metaphor for America's position in relation to today's terrorist predators. According to Walzer, since preventive war is launched not at "the point of imminent attack, but at the point of sufficient threat," it is always a matter of judgment.⁵
        The United States is not the first nation to arrive at that latter point. Great Britain, along with France, landed there in the mid-1930s. As a backbencher, Churchill tried to prod two successive prime ministers into preventive action. "Germany is arming fast," he warned, lamenting the fact that "no one proposes preventive war to stop Germany from breaking the Treaty of Versailles."⁶ It could have been done. "Britain and France," writes British historian Paul Johnson, "might conceivably have contained Hitler in 1933--34, had both been resolute and willing to act."⁷ Lacking the foresight to take that step and put Bacon's words into practice, Churchill's predecessors averted their gaze from the storm gathering just across the Channel. By recasting the ongoing dispute between Washington and Baghdad as an outgrowth of the latter's numerous cease-fire violations rather than a personal vendetta, Bush cleverly drew a parallel between post--Gulf War Iraq and pre--World War II Germany.

From Berlin to Belgrade

till, we need not rely on British MPs or seventeenth-century philosophers for historical justification of preventive war. Throughout the twentieth century, American political leaders did what was necessary to protect U.S. interests and territory--even if it meant contemplating, threatening, or waging preventive war.
        In 1999, for example, President Bill Clinton used the principles of preventive war to justify the U.S.-led bombardment of Slobodan Milosevic. "We act to prevent a wider war," he explained, "a war we would be forced to confront later--only at far greater risk and greater cost."
        In June 1994, the Pentagon developed plans for a preemptive strike against North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility. "We were within a day of making major additions to our troop deployments to Korea," recalls Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry. Foreshadowing today's debate over the Bush Doctrine, a 1994 report from the Congressional Research Service warned that such "counter-proliferation" by means of military force "would raise constitutional and international legal questions."
        Clinton wasn't the first to discuss preventive military action. In 1948, high-level Pentagon officials proposed preemptive atomic strikes on Moscow during the Berlin blockade. According to historian Arthur Schlesinger, the Pentagon brass also drew up plans for a massive preemptive assault against Vietnam in 1954, an assault openly contemplated by President Dwight Eisenhower. "Opposition by Congress and by the British killed the idea," Schlesinger observes. A year later, when mainland China threatened Taiwan, Eisenhower considered the use of atomic weapons to prevent a communist invasion and preserve Washington's strategic edge in the region.⁸ President John Kennedy nearly launched a preventive war against Cuba in 1962. In fact, the current debate over the legitimacy, morality, and necessity of preventive war echoes the words spoken by Kennedy's cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis. "We don't know what they're capable of," Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sighed during one meeting, concluding that "we must assume there will be nuclear warheads" involved. Later, McNamara warned that if the president chose the preventive option, the United States should be prepared to build a post-Castro government--and should expect the war to spread. Joint Chiefs Chairman Maxwell Taylor cautioned that even a massive preemptive strike wouldn't ensure the elimination of every missile. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy worried about how the allies would react. Secretary of State Dean Rusk assured the president that the American people would "undertake great danger ... if they have a feeling that you've done everything that is reasonably possible." Exposing a sad misreading of history, Attorney General Robert Kennedy scribbled a note to his brother that read: "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor." After returning from a secret meeting with Eisenhower, CIA Director John McCone reported that, true to form, the former president recommended "all-out military action ... go right to the jugular."⁹
        Kennedy was ready to do exactly that. At the height of the crisis, fully one-eighth of the U.S. Air Force was airborne at any given time. Hundreds of warplanes were redeployed to civilian airports. All told, more than thirteen hundred bombers were lined up on runways across the southeastern United States, many of them loaded with nuclear weapons. For the first time in history, the Pentagon shifted its military-readiness status to Defense Condition 2, the highest state of readiness short of war itself.
        Intriguingly, America's preparations for preventive war that autumn began long before Soviet missiles arrived in Cuba. In February 1962, a full eight months before U-2 reconnaissance flights confirmed the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Pentagon developed a plan for what can only be described as an all-out preventive war. Dubbed

With its fire-first rhetoric, the Bush Doctrine's pro-active-preventive component has generated most of the headlines.

Operation Mongoose, it aimed at wiping out Castro and his regime. On September 20, three weeks before the missiles were deployed, the Senate passed a resolution supporting military action in Cuba. A week later, the Air Force completed plans for a massive preemptive strike. On October 2, McNamara drafted a memo detailing six possible justifications for military action against Cuba, one of which was any evidence that missiles or other offensive weapons that could threaten the United States were deployed on the island. (McNamara's words will sound familiar to anyone who has heard the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq.) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in fact deployed such weapons, but he ultimately blinked and dismantled them, enabling Kennedy to stand down his invasion forces.
        Israel didn't have that good fortune five years later. In June 1967, after Egypt put its armed forces on high alert, expelled peacekeepers from a key buffer zone, and signed a military pact with Syria and Jordan, the Israeli military launched perhaps the most famous and successful preventive war in history. The Israelis routed the pan-Arab armies in six days, and, because they faced an imminent, mortal threat, they had every right to do so.

Consequences

hat was true of an encircled Israel in 1967 is true of a hunted America in 2003. As Bush argues in his national security strategy, "In the Cold War, weapons of mass destruction were weapons of last resort. ... Today, our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice." That is why the United States has both the right and responsibility to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. If America does not, no one else will. Indeed, no one else can. For good or ill, this period of consequences promises to change the world and the United States.
        With its fire-first rhetoric, the Bush Doctrine's proactive-preventive component has generated most of the headlines. What has been largely overlooked is the expansive nature of the doctrine's reactive-rehabilitative component: Even now, it is being applied in such disparate places as Afghanistan, Djibouti, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, and Georgia--places where governments are friendly but feeble, places Washington cared little about prior to September 11. U.S. engagement in these forgotten corners of the world is a by-product of Washington's belated recognition that global terrorism doesn't just sprout up spontaneously. Like a poisonous weed, it grows where it is allowed to grow. Some governments simply lack the capacity to uproot it. Those governments will be supported by the Bush Doctrine, just as Greece and Turkey were buttressed by the Truman Doctrine. Governments that nurture terrorism, like Afghanistan's Taliban, will be choked and smothered by the Bush Doctrine. Governments that deal in terror and weapons of mass destruction, like Iraq, will become the targets of preventive war. In Serfaty's words, the Bush Doctrine "offers redemption with a second chance for those who repent. But most ominously, it is also a doctrine that promises punishment for sinners and evil-doers."¹⁰
        Saddam Hussein's Iraq is just one of many targets. Beyond Baghdad lie Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia. This is not to say that preventive war is inevitable in each of these countries. Although Iraq appears beyond redemption, Libya is slowly limping away from its old ways. Given the right incentives or pressures, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia might choose the path of repentance. By some accounts, Iran is teetering on the brink of a counterrevolution.
        Still, the White House cannot base a national-security strategy on hope and hypotheticals. That was tried and failed. It must never be tried again.
        The alternative is preventive war, and it promises to be costly--in diplomatic standing, in treasure, and in blood. As historian Alan Brinkley recently observed, the Bush Doctrine's aggressive stance has "the potential for unleashing a level of anti-Americanism around the world--not just in the Middle East and the areas where we may take military action, but in Europe and among our friends."¹¹ But, given what happened on September 11, it is surely better to carry the battle to the enemy and risk diplomatic isolation than to win the friendship of UN bureaucrats and risk a cataclysm. Of course, this may be a false choice: When Bush laid out the case against Baghdad for the UN General Assembly last September, the diplomats listened and many of them fell in line. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has observed, "Leadership in the right direction finds followers and supporters."
        Furthermore, it is better to give the military the resources to fight on America's terms than to fight on American soil. In its first post--September 11 budget, the White House earmarked $369 billion for defense--a 12

Just as the campaign in Afghanistan altered the behavior of Pakistan and has already reshaped much of central Asia, preventive military action in Iraq or Syria could have a deterrent effect vis-à-vis more distant threats.

percent increase over the previous year. For the kind of war that lies ahead, however, this may not be enough. Take, for example, the high-tech bombs used in Afghanistan. Each laser-guided bomb costs $250,000; 6,000 of them were used in Afghanistan. Each satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) costs $25,000; another 6,000 of these were dropped in Afghanistan.¹² Thus, in air-dropped missiles alone, the United States spent some $1.65 billion applying the Bush Doctrine in Afghanistan. This figure promises to mushroom in Iraq, where the targets are far more plentiful and the enemy could prove far more tenacious. Indeed, White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey has estimated that the war in Iraq could cost as much as $200 billion, and Iraq is presumably only the beginning.¹³
        The United States certainly has the economic capacity to sustain such an effort. As Rumsfeld noted last year in testimony before the Senate, "In the Eisenhower and Kennedy era, we were spending about 10 percent of our gross national product on defense [and] over 50 percent of the federal budget on defense." The 2003 defense budget, by comparison, amounts to a scant 3.3 percent of GDP and just 17 percent of the overall federal budget.¹⁴ According to historian-author Mark Helprin, if the United States invested merely "the peacetime average of the last half-century," its current defense budget would be $655 billion. A military investment comparable to World War II outlays, he adds, would approach the $4 trillion mark.¹⁵
        Finally, it is preferable for military personnel to risk their lives in war than for civilians to be evaporated in peacetime. That may sound unfeeling and cold, but any soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine would agree. That is what they are sworn to do. Indeed, as Rumsfeld explains, the mission of the U.S. military is "first, to protect the homeland." In an age of terror--when mass murderers scramble to build weapons of mass destruction and maim U.S. cities--fulfilling that mission requires sending America's sons and daughters to wage preventive war in faraway lands. They must not fight and die in vain, but they must fight.

Durable or Doomed?

hat brings us to the long-term viability of the Bush Doctrine, which remains to be seen. Domestic politics, of course, will be a factor. If the American people conclude that their troops are dying in vain, the Bush Doctrine and its architect will become a footnote in history. Under this grim scenario, it is doubtful that Bush's successor would ever invoke the doctrine by name or practice.
        However, it is just as possible that the Bush Doctrine will be effective in defending America and promoting international security. Helprin's comparisons notwithstanding, this is not World War II. The enemy is different. America is different, and America's position relative to the rest of the world is different. The Bush Doctrine can leverage these realities. By matching rhetoric with action in one part of the world, the doctrine can have a dramatic impact elsewhere. Just as the campaign in Afghanistan altered the behavior of Pakistan and has already reshaped much of central Asia, preventive military action in Iraq or Syria could have a deterrent effect vis-ˆ-vis more distant threats.
        If this second scenario unfolds and Bush governs until 2009, he will, in effect, shape an entire decade of U.S. foreign policy. Like Truman from 1945 to 1953, he will have laid the groundwork for an enduring national-security strategy.
        International politics will also play a role. The Bush Doctrine openly contemplates the dismantling of sovereign states. The rationale for this international equivalent of the death penalty may seem solid in Washington, but it appears vague and malleable on the other side of the Atlantic. In essence, Washington is saying, "Trust America's judgment." If any country has earned that trust, it is the United States. Trust has limits, however. To return to our medical analogy, if the cure proves worse than the disease, the pressure from allies to scrap the Bush Doctrine will be enormous.
        Moreover, the United States could lose by winning. Even if the preventive wars of the next decade go well, the omnipresence and near-omnipotence required to wage them could cause serious problems. A nation with both the unequaled power of the United States and the unapologetic willingness to use it is bound to change the world. What Washington must be especially sensitive to is how the Bush Doctrine could change America. In applying the doctrine, the United States will likely be tempted by what British scientist P.M.S. Blackett called the "Jupiter Complex"--which, according to Paul Johnson, is the notion that America and its World War II allies were "righteous gods, raining retributive thunderbolts on their wicked enemies."
        Of course, it could be argued that the United States has already succumbed to that temptation. The last decade saw Washington effortlessly and repeatedly strike its enemies from 30,000 feet. In 1991, a U.S.-led air armada decimated the Iraqi military. Coalition losses could be counted on two hands. In 1993, U.S. warships launched 23 cruise missiles at an Iraqi intelligence facility. In 1995, U.S. warplanes ended Milosevic's five-year siege of Bosnia and Croatia in a matter of hours. In August 1998, Washington hurled 75 cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan in a simultaneous strike aptly code-named "Infinite Reach." The attacks were aimed at disabling Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. (Had they been effective, there would be no Bush Doctrine.) In one five-month stretch in 1999, American and British pilots attacked 359 Iraqi targets with more than 1,100 missiles. Not one plane was lost. During the 1999 air campaign over Serbia, NATO pilots flew a numbing 35,219 sorties, firing or dropping some 23,000 munitions. Not one pilot was killed.
        Perhaps nothing symbolizes the Jupiter Complex better than Washington's use of the B-2 stealth bomber. Whether the target is Belgrade, Bagram, or Baghdad, the B-2s fly out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, travel twenty hours one way, let loose a dozen or so 2,000-pound bombs, and arc back toward home before the payloads even hit their targets--all without touching the earth or even being detected. As B-2 squadron commander Brig. Gen. Leroy Barnidge Jr. observed during the intercontinental attacks against Kosovo in 1999, "There's not a target on the planet that we can't hit."¹⁶
        If anything, the sweeping success in Afghanistan has fed both America's Jupiter Complex and the enemy's appetite for effective countermeasures, such as unconventional warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and long-range missilery. Yet those countermeasures are rendered irrelevant when rogue regimes are replaced by democratic governments. Indeed, no one inside the Pentagon worries about French commandos ramming an airliner into the White House, British nukes evaporating Manhattan, or Turkish missiles slamming into the Sixth Fleet. And that brings us to the most important factor in determining the durability of the Bush Doctrine: Success on the battlefield must translate into authentic regime change. To be truly effective, the preventive-proactive component of the Bush Doctrine will need not only to destroy the machinery of terror but to extend the architecture of freedom. To its credit, Bush's national security strategy commits America to "building a balance of power that favors freedom." That presupposes long-term U.S. engagement, the kind that converted Japan and Germany from militarist states into islands of peace and stability.

A Simple Choice

ost Americans would prefer the simpler, safer world of Adams' day to the one we know. When Adams celebrated America's blissful isolation, soldiers killed only soldiers, man's capacity to destroy still lagged behind his desire to destroy, and vast oceans protected this country from the monsters.
        All of that has changed in the intervening 182 years. Today, the monsters take aim first at women and children. Their desire to destroy is unmatched. Their capacity to kill is unchecked by conscience. Their reach is unlimited, and, as we learned on September 11, if America fails to go abroad to destroy them, the monsters will surely come and destroy us.