The bush doctrine and the Iraq war: Neoconservatives versus realists

Security Studies

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 191-220

  Schmidt, Brian C ^a   Williams, Michael C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 46949109830     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410802098990     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. Among the most interesting is Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
2. See "War with Iraq is Not in America's National Interest," New York Times, paid advertisement, 26 September 2002.
3. Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 45.
4. While all realists recognize that war is an ever-present possibility, some realists are more pessimistic than others. Defensive realists such as Kenneth Waltz appear to be less pessimistic than offensive realists such as John Mearsheimer about the prospects of avoiding interstate war. See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979)
5. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001)
6. and Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," International Security 19 (Winter 1994-95), 50-90.
7. The neoconservatives displeasure with the outcome of the Persian Gulf War and their effort to get the United States to remove Hussein from power is chronicled in Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
8. See "Open Letter to President Clinton: Remove Saddam From Power," in Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003).
9. For important recent contributions to the analysis of rhetoric, power, and foreign policy, see Ronald R. Krebs and Patrick Jackson, "Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric," European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (2007): 35-66; and from a different perspective, Lene Hansen, Security As Practice (London: Routledge, 2007).
10. Charles Krauthammer, "The Neoconservative Convergence," Commentary (July-August 2005), 22.
11. For various interpretations of the Bush Doctrine, see John Lewis Gaddis, "Bush's Security Strategy," Foreign Policy, 133 (November/December 2002): 50-57
12. Andrew J. Bacevich, "Bush's Grand Strategy," American Conservative (4 November 2002)
13. Melvyn P. Leffler, "Bush's Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy 144 (September/October 2004): 22-28
14. John G. Ikenberry, "America's Imperial Ambition," Foreign Affairs 81 September/October 2002): 44-60
15. and Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003).
16. See George W. Bush, "Remarks at the 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy," West Point, New York, 1 June 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html.
17. See The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, DC, September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
18. William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 75 (July/August 1996), 23.
19. Robert Jervis, "Understanding the Bush Doctrine," in Demetrios James Caraley ed., American Hegemony: Preventive War, Iraq and Imposing Democracy (New York: The Academy of Political Science, 2004), 14.
20. Christopher Layne, for example, argues that the United States' pursuit of hegemony has been evident since 1940 and continues to guide America's grand strategy today. See Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
21. For additional information about the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, see David Callahan, Between Two Worlds: Realism, Idealism, and American Foreign Policy After the Cold War (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 90-94
22. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 145-6; and Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times (8 March 1992), A1.
23. On the differences between a hegemonic and balance-of-power order, see G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).
24. John J. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism versus Neo-Conservatism," www.openDemocracy.net, posted 19 May 2005, 2.
25. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 163.
26. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "What To Do About Iraq," in The Iraq War Reader, eds. Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 247.
27. While the Bush administration has articulated a doctrine of preemption and attempted to cast the invasion of Iraq in terms of a preemptive war, perhaps in the vain attempt to acquire legal legitimacy as some international lawyers argue that the right to self-defense allows states to strike first if they are facing an imminent threat, in actuality the United States launched a preventive war as the threat that Iraq posed was a distant one at best. For a good general discussion of the differences between preventive and preemptive war, see Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)
28. and Jack S. Levy, "Preventive War and the Bush Doctrine: Theoretical Logic and Historical Roots," in Stanley A. Renshon and Peter Suedfeld, eds. Understanding the Bush Doctrine: Psychology and Strategy in an Age of Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2007).
29. See, for example, Richard Falk, "The New Bush Doctrine," The Nation (15 July 2002).
30. For an interesting account of how the neoconservatives used the media to help create a general climate of fear and inflame public opinion, see Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 182-200
31. Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)
32. and, more broadly, Stuart Croft, Culture, Crisis, and America's War on Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
33. On the role that threat inflation played in selling the war to the American people, see Chaim Kaufmann, "Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War," International Security 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 5-48.
34. See The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, DC, September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
35. Ikenberry, "America's Imperial Ambition," 49.
36. See The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, DC, September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
37. For more on the influence of Wohlstetter, see Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 61-64.
38. See Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Where Is Our Foreign Policy?" Washington Post, 30 July 1993
39. and Paul D. Wolfowitz, "Clinton's First Year," Foreign Affairs (January/February 1994): 28-43.
40. President Bush's claim to have assembled a broad coalition of states is dubious at best. Among the states included in the so-called coalition were Bulgaria, El Salvador, Eritrea, Iceland, Kuwait, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and the United Kingdom.
41. Jervis, "Understanding the Bush Doctrine," 13.
42. See Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray, "Saddam's Delusions: The View from Inside," Foreign Affairs85 (May/June 2006).
43. The impressive extent of American military capabilities are discussed in Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003).
44. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 26.
45. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 2.
46. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 1.
47. See Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry, and Takashi Inoguchi, eds., American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
48. C. Layne, The Peace of Illusions,
49. and Jonathan Monten, "The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy," International Security 29, no. 4 (Spring 2005).
50. Charles Krauthammer, "Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World," National Interest (Winter 1989/90), 47.
51. See President George W. Bush, remarks at the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy United States Chamber of Commerce, Washington, DC, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html.
52. Our analysis of American foreign policy and the decision to invade Iraq does not rest on the specific roles played by individual neoconservatives in the Bush administration. Nevertheless it is valid to ask whether Vice President Cheney, who tirelessly argued that Saddam Hussein represented a grave threat to the United States and played a major role in advocating regime change, is a neoconservative. Neoconservatism is itself, of course, a very broad "persuasion," to use Irving Kristol's description. With this said, we think the evidence indicates that Cheney is closely associated with the position of the neoconservatives, at least as an "implementer" if not an "originator" of their ideas. See Michael Desch, "America's Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy," International Security 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/08). Cheney's signature can be found on the "1997 Statement of Principles of the Project for a New American Century," http://www.newamericancentury.org/ statementofprinciples.htm. Charles Krauthammer identifies George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld as "the current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy."
53. See Krauthammer, "The Neoconservative Convergence," 26. For additional discussion of this issue, see Halper and Clarke, America Alone;
54. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Touchstone, 2002)
55. and James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of the Bush War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004).
56. By contrast, Cheney is labeled a realist in Anatol Lieven's thoughtful America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), which illustrates the difficulties in cut-and-dried categorizations.
57. See Halper and Clarke, America Alone
58. Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound
59. and Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).
60. "War With Iraq is Not in America's National Interest." Paid advertisement, 26 September 2002. For a general overview of some of the key realists views of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, such as those of John J. Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, Christopher Preble, Daryl G. Press, Stephen Walt, and Kenneth N. Waltz, see Paul Starobin, "The Realists," National Journal 39, no. 37 (16 September 2006): 24-31.
61. See Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951)
62. and George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, Expanded Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
63. Hans J. Morgenthau, "Another 'Great Debate': The National Interest of the United States," American Political Science Review 46 (December 1952), 972.
64. Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Primacy of the National Interest," The American Scholar (vol. 18, no. 2, Spring 1949), 10.
65. Ibid., 10.
66. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest, 33.
67. See, for example, Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security 19 (Fall 1994): 5-49
68. and Sebastian Rosato, "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 585-602.
69. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 3.
70. The seminal work is by Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison- Wesley, 1979).
71. Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," in Debating the Democratic Peace, eds. Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 162.
72. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 4.
73. Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (W. W. Norton, 2005) 184.
74. There are, however, some exceptions. See Randall L. Schweller, "Bandwagoning For Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994).
75. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 4.
76. See Michael C. Desch, "Know Thy Enemy," American Conservative (16 December 2002)
77. and Barry Posen, "Battling for Baghdad," New York Times (13 October 2002).
78. Mearsheimer, "Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War," 5.
79. On the perils of empire, see the statement of principles by the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/static/000027.php.
80. On the debate about unipolarity, see G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)
81. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs (vol. 81, no. 4, July/August 2002): 20-33
82. Layne, The Peace of Illusions; and Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment," International Security 31, no. 2 (Fall 2006).
83. G. John Ikenberry, "Introduction," in ed. G. John Ikenberry, America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 8.
84. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
85. Christopher Layne, "From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing," in eds. Michael E. Brown et al., America's Strategic Choices, Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 126.
86. John J. Mearsheimer, "Hearts and Minds," The National Interest 69 (Fall 2002), 15.
87. Stephen M. Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off-Balance,"' in America Unrivaled, 133.
88. Walt, Taming American Power, 59-60.
89. See Robert A. Pape, "Soft Balancing Against the United States," International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 7-45
90. and T. V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 46-71.
91. Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," 9.
92. Ibid., 10.
93. See Walt, Taming American Power, chap. 4
94. and Stephen Brooks, As Others See Us: The Causes and Consequences of Foreign Perceptions of America (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006).
95. See "War with Iraq is Not in America's National Interest," New York Times, paid advertisement, 26 September 2002.
96. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M.Walt, "An UnnecessaryWar," Foreign Policy (January/February 2003), 52.
97. See "The Glaspie Transcript: Saddam Meets the U.S. Ambassador," in eds., Sifry and Cerf, The Iraq War Reader, 61-71.
98. Mearsheimer and Walt, "An Unnecessary War," 54.
99. Ibid., 52.
100. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box," New York Times, 2 February 2003.
101. Ibid.
102. Mearsheimer and Walt, "An Unnecessary War," 59.
103. See Christopher Layne, "The Post-Saddam Quagmire," LA Weekly, 20 March 2003. 77 See Ronald R. Krebs and Jennifer Lobasz, "Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony, Coercions, and the Road to War in Iraq," Security Studies 16, no. 3 (July-September 2007): 409-45.
104. Michael Cox, "Hans Morgenthau, Realism and the Cold War" in ed. Michael C. Williams, Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
105. Again, this is not to say that such issues were wholly missing in realism, especially if one goes back to earlier "classical" thinkers such as Morgenthau, Tucker, or Osgood, much less is it to say that realists do not have values. But one of the main elements in the transition to neorealism lay in a conscious move away from treating values in a systematic theoretical fashion in the name of an objective social science. For a broad analysis of realism's move in this direction, see Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil, eds., The Return of Culture and Identity in International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1996).
106. For recent attempts to reinvigorate the insights of classical realism see Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
107. Michael C. Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
108. and the overview in Brent Steele, "The Reflexive Realists," Journal of International Relations and Development (forthcoming).
109. For a wider analysis, see Michael C. Williams, "What is the National Interest?: The Neoconservative Challenge in International Relations," European Journal of International Relations 11 (December 2005): 307-37.
110. An extended essay that revealingly embodies many of the key themes of neoconservatism is Norman Podhoretz, "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, And Why We Have To Win" in ed. G. Rosen, The Right War?: The Conservative Debate On Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 102-69.
111. A valuable recent treatment is Jean-Francois Drolet, "The Visible Hand of Neo-conservative Capitalism," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2007): 245-78.
112. As William Kristol argues, for example, although "material interests and geographical and historical characteristics of nations" are important, "the nature of a regime is crucial, rather than some alleged underlying, geographically or economically or culturally determined 'national interest.' The priority of the political order implies a morally informed American foreign policy." "The members of the president's foreign-policy team have all become Reaganites," The Weekly Standard 8, no. 21 (2 October 2003): 1. This can be read in part as the legacy of a Straussian concern with the nature of the "regime."
113. See, for example, Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 28-9, but it also has broader sources. There are also, of course, intriguing implications in these formulations for constructivist theories in International Relations, but we leave these aside here.
114. William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 75, no. 4 (1996), 28. In Michael Ledeen's notable phrasing: "Whenever I hear policy-makers talking about 'stability,' I get the heebie-jeebies. That is for tired old Europeans and nervous Asians, not for us. In just about everything we do, from business and technology to cinema and waging war, we are the most revolutionary force on earth. We are not going to fight foreign wars or send our money overseas merely to defend the status quo; we must have a suitably glorious objective.
115. We are therefore not going to stick by a government that conducts foreign policy on the basis of Realpolitik. Without a mission, it is only a matter of time before public opinion will turn against any American administration that acts like an old fashioned European state. Just ask Henry Kissinger. That is why I find the realist position highly unrealistic." Contribution to "American Power - For What?" Commentary 19, no. 1 (2000): 36.
116. In similar terms, neoconservatism argues that the national interest should not be reduced to commercial interests alone, since it would overlook the primacy of politics. See, for example, William Kristol and David Brooks, "What Ails the Right," Wall Street Journal, 15 September 1997.
117. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Janovich, 1955).
118. For an interesting treatment with important connections to this point, see Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
119. It has been in these terms that debates between neoconservatives and other conservatives have taken place with, for example, the "paleoconservatism" of Patrick Buchanan, or the more traditional conservatism of George Will, amongst others. To enter into these areas would here take us too far afield, but they represent an important area for consideration. On the neoconservative rejection of traditional conservatism on the grounds that it is an ineffective, backward-looking philosophy in an age of forwardlooking ideologies, see Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), x;
120. and William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Toward a Post-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, 75 no. 4 (1996): 31-32.
121. For a wider analysis, see Michael C. Williams, Culture and Security (London: Routledge 2007): 92-119.
122. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the two most prominent journals founded by Irving Kristol were, of course, The Public Interest and The National Interest.
123. Quoted in John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945-1994 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 57.
124. Robert Kagan, "A Tougher War for the U.S. Is One of Legitimacy," New York Times, 24 January 2004.
125. The neoconservative assault on realism has also had considerable impact on debates over the nature of realism in American foreign policy. Henry Kissinger, to use only one prominent example, has argued that "the advocates of the important role of a commitment to values in American foreign policy have won their intellectual battle," and goes on to argue for a new synthesis of "values and interests" in debates over its future direction. Henry A. Kissinger, "Intervention With a Vision" in ed. G. Rosen, The Right War?: The Conservative Debate On Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53.
126. Podhoretz, "World War IV," 154. As is often the case, the theme of cultural decadence and martial renewal is captured most vividly by Victor Davis Hanson, who writes "In an era of the greatest affluence and security in the history of civilization, the real question before us remains whether the United States - indeed any Western democracy - still possesses the moral clarity to identify evil as evil, and then the uncontested will to marshal every available resource to fight and eradicate it." "Iraq's Future - and Ours" in ed. G. Rosen, The Right War, 16-17.
127. Irving Kristol, "The Neoconservative Persuasion," in ed. Irwin Steltzer, Neoconservatism (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), 35.
128. There are also, of course, important material dimensions to these alliances, particularly to the amount of financial support given to neoconservative think tanks by wealthy patrons, and broader links to economic and media interests. A fuller analysis would have to account for all these dimensions.
129. For an early and still valuable analysis, see Sarah Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1995),
130. as well as John Micklethwaite and AdrianWoodridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (London: Penguin, 2004).
131. Thomas Frank captures the tenor of these alliances more critically in What'sWrong With America?: The Resistable Rise of the American Right (London: Secker and Warburg, 2004).
132. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative (New York: Free Press, 1983), xiv-xv.
133. Ibid., xiv-xv.
134. Quoted in Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 233.
135. Joel Rosenthal, Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991) remains one of the best examinations of this question.