Why the bush doctrine cannot be sustained

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 120, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 351-377

  Jervis, Robert ^a,b  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

^b Amer Political Science Association   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 25144481418     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2005.tb00550.x     Document Type: Review

References (108)

1. For a more detailed discussion, see Robert Jervis, "Understanding the Bush Doctrine," Political Science Quarterly 118 (Fall 2003): 365-388.
2. Adams to Jefferson, February 2, 1816, in Lester Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 463.
3. For an example, see Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker, "Syria Stops Cooperating with U.S. Forces and C.I.A.," New York Times, 24 May 2005.
4. Bush's speech to the Army War College in May 2004: "President Outlines Steps to Help Iraq Achieve Democracy and Freedom," White House press release, 24 May 2004;
5. "Remarks by the President at the United States Air Force Academy Graduation," White House press release, 2 June 2004.
6. NBC News, 2 March 2004, Jim Miklaszewski, "Avoiding Attacking Suspected Terrorist Mastermind," accessed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/, 5 March 2004.
7. Scot Paltrow, "Questions Mount Over Failure to Hit Zarqawi's Camp," Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2004.
8. Susan Sachs, "Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies," New York Times, 17 March 2004;
9. no author, "Bush vs. bin Laden (And Other Popularity Contests)," New York Times, 21 March 2004;
10. Alan Cowell, "Bush Visit Spurs Protests Against U.S. In Europe," New York Times, 16 November 2003.
11. This view is held by a wide range of observers, including France's leading anti-terrorism investigator and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, as well as (more predictably) France's Chirac: Douglas Frantz, Josh Meyer, Sebastian Rotella, and Megan Stack, "The New Face of Al Qaeda," Los Angeles Times, 26 September 2004;
12. cnn.com, "Musharraf 'Reasonably Sure' bin Laden is Alive," 25 September 2004, accessed at http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/musharraf/, 26 September 2004;
13. Craig Smith, "Chirac Says War in Iraq Spreads Terrorism," New York Times, 18 November 2004. It was even endorsed by the head of the CIA in early 2005:
14. Dana Priest and Josh White, "War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told," Washington Post, 17 February 2005.
15. For a related argument, see Richard Betts, "The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror," Political Science Quarterly 117 (Spring 2002): 19-36.
16. The term is taken from Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
17. A parallel argument was made earlier by Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
18. Quoted in Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 244.
19. More consistency is seen by Stephen Sestanovich, "American Maximalism," National Interest 79 (Spring 2005): 13-23;
20. and Richard Betts, "The Political Support System for American Primacy," International Affairs 81 (January 2005): 1-14.
21. Keith Bradshear, "Pakistanis Fume As Clothing Sales to U.S. Tumble," New York Times, 23 June 2002.
22. Richard Benedetto, "Poll: Support for War is Steady, But Many Minds Not Made Up," USA Today, 28 February 2003;
23. an even larger effect was reported in Michael Tackett, "Polls Find Support for War Follows Party Lines," Chicago Tribune, 7 March 2003.
24. Some findings indicate that what was seen as crucial was support from allies, not necessarily the UN: Gary Younge, "Threat of War: Americans Want UN Backing Before War," The Guardian (Manchester), 26 February 2003;
25. for data and analysis that shows continued American support for multilateralism, see the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations 2004 public opinion survey, accessed at http://www.ccfr.org/globalviews2004/main.html, 22 November 2004;
26. and Ole Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), especially ch. 6.
27. Supporters of President Bush believe that such weapons were found, however: see the survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland, "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," 21 October 2004, accessed at http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/Report10_21_04.pdf, 29 October 2004.
28. The official American and British post-mortems not only provide a good deal of information, but exemplify, and indeed parody, the conventional wisdom about the two countries' political cultures. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report, US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (7 July 2004) is more than just critical of the CIA, it is both a brief for the prosecution and quite partisan. It is also extremely long and detailed. It exemplifies the American penchant for as much information as possible and an adversarial approach to public policy questions. The WMD Commission Report to the President of 31 March 2005 is better.
29. The British report of a committee of Privy Counselors chaired by the Rt Hon The Lord Butler of Brockwell KG GCB CVO, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (14 July 2004), is shorter, displays a good understanding of the problems of intelligence, is embarrassingly exculpatory, but makes some good points in a subtle manner.
30. A devastating analysis of the way in which the administration distorted and misstated intelligence is Senator Carl Levin, "Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraqal Qaeda Relationship," 21 October 2004, accessed at www.Levin.senate.gov, 28 October 2004.
31. On politicization in general, see H. Bradford Westerfield, "Inside Ivory Bunkers: CIA Analysts Resist Managers' 'Pandering', Part I," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 9 (Winter 1996/97): 407-424;
32. H. Bradford Westerfield, "Inside Ivory Bunkers: CIA Analysts Resist Managers' 'Pandering', Part II," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 10 (Spring 1997): 19-56;
33. Jack Davis, "Analytic Professionalism and the Policymaking Process," Sherman Kent for Intelligence Analysis Occasional Papers, vol. 2, October 2003 (Washington DC: CIA);
34. and Richard Betts, "Politicization of Intelligence: Costs and Benefits" in Richard Betts and Thomas Mahnken, eds., Paradoxes of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael Handel (London: Cass, 2003), 59-79. My analysis assumes that the administration believed that Saddam had WMD. Although no evidence has been produced to the contrary, one significant bit of behavior raises doubts: the failure of U.S. forces to launch a careful search for WMD as they moved through Iraq. Had there been stockpiles of WMD materials, there would have been a grave danger that these would have fallen into the hands of America's enemies, perhaps including terrorists. I cannot explain the U.S. failure, but the conduct of much of the U.S. occupation points to incompetence.
35. Douglas Jehl, "C.I.A. Chief Says He's Corrected Cheney Privately," New York Times, 10 March 2004.
36. Jessica Mathews and Jeff Miller, "A Tale of Two Intelligence Estimates," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 31 March 2004;
37. Donald Kennedy, "Intelligence Science: Reverse Peer Review?" Science 303 (March 2004): 194;
38. Center for American Progress, "Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings," 28 January 2004, accessed at http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24889, 28 January 2004.
39. Douglas Jehl and David Sanger, "Prewar Assessment on Iraq Saw Chance of Strong Divisions," New York Times, 28 September 2004.
40. The best analysis is Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews, George Perkovitch, and Alexis Orton, WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment, January 2004);
41. also see David Isenberg and Ian Davis, "Unravelling the Known Unknowns: Why No Weapons of Mass Destruction Have Been Found in Iraq," British American Security Information Council Special Report 2004.1, January 2004;
42. David Cortright, Alistair Millar, George Lopez, and Linda Gerber, "The Flawed Case for the War in Iraq," Fourth Freedom Forum and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Policy Brief F12, June 2003;
43. "Opening Statement of Senator Carl Levin at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing with DCI Tenet and DIA Director Jacoby," 9 March 2004, accessed at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_hr/levin030904.html, 10 March 2004.
44. It now appears that some of the friction between Undersecretary of State John Bolton and intelligence officials over how to characterize Cuban biological programs concerned whether his speech represented a political judgment or a report on the intelligence consensus: Douglas Jehl, "Released E-Mail Exchanges Reveal More Bolton Battles," New York Times, 24 April 2005;
45. Douglas Jehl, "Bolton Asserts Independence On Intelligence," New York Times, 12 May 2005.
46. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds., On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 117. Anyone who sees intelligence errors in terms of the failure to "connect the dots" does not understand the problem.
47. SSCI, U.S. Intelligence, 65.
48. WMD Commission, "Report to the President," 92-93.
49. "Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD," 30 September 2004 (Duelfer Report), 29, 55, 62, 64.
50. John Mueller had earlier speculated that Saddam's limitations on the inspectors were motivated by his fear of assassination: "Letters to the Editor: Understanding Saddam," Foreign Affairs 83 (July/August 2004): 151.
51. Duelfer Report, 34, 57. Ending economic sanctions and ending inspections would not necessarily have coincided and it is not clear which of them was viewed as most troublesome, or why. The UN resolutions provided for the latter to continue even after the former ended, and Saddam had terminated inspections in 1998. This presents a puzzle, because if inspections had been the main barrier, Saddam should have resumed his programs at that point, as most observers expected he would. But it is hard to see how the sanctions were inhibiting him, because after the institution of the Oil for Food program, the regime had access to sufficient cash to procure much of what it needed.
52. White House, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," (Washington DC: September 2002), 16. Similarly, in defending the idea of preventive war, Condoleezza Rice said that it "has to be used carefully. One would want to have very good intelligence":
53. Online NewsHour, "Rice on Iraq, War and Politics," 25 September 2002, accessed at www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/july-dec02/rice_9-25.html, 15 September 2003.
54. NBC, Meet the Press, interview with Tim Russert, 8 February 2004, accessed at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/, 2 November 2004;
55. also, see Bush interview with Diane Sawyer, "Ultimate Penalty, " 16 December 2003, accessed at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/US/bush_sawyer_excerpts_1_031216.html, 20 December 2003.
56. Colin Powell said something similar in "Remarks on the Occasion of George Kennan's Centenary Birthday," 20 February 2004, accessed at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/29683pf.htm, 21 February 2004
57. despite having taken a somewhat different position the week before: Glenn Kessler, "Powell: Arms Doubts Might Have Affected View of War," Washington Post, 3 February 2004.
58. For evidence for reasoning along these lines, see the Duelfer Report, 11, 66-67.
59. Ibid., 32. It is also possible that Saddam believed that the United States actually knew he did not have WMD and this, too, would have reduced the pressures on the United States to invade:
60. Bob Drogin, "Through Hussein's Looking Glass," Los Angeles Times, 12 October 2004.
61. For another attempt to recreate Saddam's views, see David Kay, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Lessons Learned and Unlearned," Miller Center Report 20 (Spring/Summer 2004): 7-14.
62. Also see Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2004), 265-266.
63. Thomas Schelling, Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).
64. Indeed, shortly before the war, the Bush administration returned to the position that to avoid invasion, Saddam would not only have to disarm, but also would have to step down: Felicity Barringer and David Sanger, "U.S. Says Hussein Must Cede Power To Head Off War," New York Times, 1 March 2003.
65. For excellent studies of when coercion does and does not succeed in changing behavior, see Alexander George, David Hall, and William Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Co., 1971);
66. Alexander George and William Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994);
67. Robert Art and Patrick Cronin, eds., The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2003). For a discussion of failures of coercion that cannot be explained by standard theories
68. see Richard Ned Lebow and Janis Gross Stein, "Deterrence: The Elusive Dependent Variable," World Politics 42 (April 1990): 336-369;
69. Richard Ned Lebow and Janis Gross Stein, "Beyond Deterrence," Journal of Social Issues 43 (No. 4 1987): 5-72.
70. For good if conflicting accounts, see Gregory Gause III, "Iraq's Decisions to Go to War, 1980 and 1990," Middle East Journal 56 (Winter 2002): 47-70;
71. and Fred Lawson, "Rethinking the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait," Review of International Affairs 1 (Autumn 2001): 1-20.
72. For the argument that this extreme military pressure made a political settlement more difficult to reach, see Robert Pastor, "The Delicate Balance Between Coercion and Diplomacy: The Case of Haiti, 1994" in Art and Cronin, eds., The United States and Coercive Diplomacy, 119-156.
73. For further discussion, see Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 44-45.
74. Quoted in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 769.
75. Quoted in Barbara Slavin, "U.S. Softens Stance on Mideast Democratic Reforms," USA Today, 12 April 2004;
76. for later developments, see Barbara Slavin, "U.S. Toning Down Goals for Mideast," USA Today, 27 May 2004. For a general discussion of the prospects for liberalization in the Middle East and the American efforts
77. see Tamara Cofman Wittes, "The Promise of American Liberalism, " Policy Review 125 (June/July 2004): 61-76.
78. For some of the tensions and contradictions, see Elisabeth Bumiller, "The First Lady's Mideast Sandstorm," New York Times, 6 June 2005.
79. No author, "U.S. Recognizes New Leader for Turkish Cypriots," New York Times, 27 May 2004;
80. The refusal to deal with Arafat has been extended to Hamas, despite its electoral success: Steven Weisman, "U.S. to Shun Hamas Members, Even if Democratically Elected," New York Times, 7 June 2005.
81. A cautionary tale is provide by the memoirs of the British commander in the newly created Iraq after World War I: Sir Arnold Wilson, Mesopotamia 1917-1920: A Clash of Loyalties (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 259, 268-272, 311-312.
82. For the concept of natural order, see Stephen Toulmin, Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry into the Aims of Science (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961). For an intriguing argument that democracy will indeed flourish in the absence of imposed obstacles
83. see John Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999);
84. for an excellent analysis that is skeptical of the ease of democratic transitions, see Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 5-21.
85. "President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East," White House press release, 6 November 2003, 3;
86. also see "President Discusses the Future of Iraq," speech to the American Enterprise Institute, White House press release, 26 February 2003;
87. "President Attends International Republican Institute Dinner," White House press release, 18 May 2005.
88. See Ian Shapiro, "The State of Democratic Theory" in Ira Katznelson, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (New York: Norton, 2002), 235-265;
89. Barbara Geddes, "The Great Transformation in the Study of Politics in Developing Countries" in Ira Katznelson, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (New York: Norton, 2002), 342-370;
90. Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvaraz, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
91. for a critique, see Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, "Endogenous Democratization," World Politics 55 (July 2003): 517-549.
92. Quoted in Steven Weisman, "U.S. Muffles Sweeping Call To Democracy In Mideast," New York Times, 12 March 2004.
93. Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
94. Quoted in Douglas Jehl, "U.S. Says It Will Move Gingerly Against Sadr," New York Times, 7 April 2004. Similarly, in the run-up to the war in Kosovo, General Wesley Clark endorsed the view that the problem was caused by the fact that the Belgrade regime was not a democratic one.
95. Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Conflict (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2002), 128.
96. Public opinion data in the spring of 2004 was ambivalent but not encouraging: while most Iraqis were glad that Saddam was ousted, said their own lives were better off because of the invasion, and thought that their country would be less safe if Coalition forces left, they viewed those forces as occupiers rather than liberators, thought they should leave immediately, and viewed George Bush unfavorably; accessed at http://www.cnn.com/2004/world/meast/04/28/iraq.poll/iraq/poll.4.28.pdf, 5 May 2004.
97. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1922).
98. Ibid., 95, 381-382. It is also worth noting that Lippmann's chapter on intelligence argues: "It is no accident that the best diplomatic service in the world is the one in which the divorce between the assembling of knowledge and the control of policy is most perfect."
99. For further discussion, see Jervis, "Understanding the Bush Doctrine," 379-383.
100. See Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (New York: Routledge, 2005), ch. 3.
101. See, for example, G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001);
102. John Gerard Ruggie, Winning the Peace: America and the New World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);
103. John Steinbrunner, Principles of Global Security (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2000).
104. See Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 154-163, for a good discussion of the different circumstances under which unilateralism and multilateralism are appropriate;
105. also see John Van Oudenaren, "What Is 'Multilateral'?" Policy Review 117 (February-March 2003): 33-47;
106. and John Van Oudenaren, "Unipolar Versus Unilateral, Policy Review 124 (April-May 2004): 63-74.
107. For the argument that even in the Cold War, the United States was unilateralist, see Sestanovich, "American Maximalism,"
108. and Betts, "Political Support System for American Primacy."