Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — Whether he intended to or not, President Bush's drumbeat for regime change in Iraq — through force if events warrant — has sparked a landmark debate about how aggressive U.S. foreign policy should be in protecting Americans.
The Bush doctrine, as it's being called, warns "the United States must be ready for pre-emptive action if necessary to defend our liberty.''
It has drawn fire from the political left, libertarians and from old-guard Republicans alike.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a liberal, has called it a doctrine of "pre-emptive war'' in the name of a new U.S. imperialism.
Even House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, a conservative, voiced serious concerns about pre-emption as a foreign policy, although he has since concluded Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein represents such a significant threat that he needs to be disarmed and possibly removed.
Some lawmakers and defense analysts fear it sets a dangerous precedent — that China might use such a justification to attack Taiwan, or that Russia might launch heavy pre-emptive strikes against the Chechen rebels in Georgia it has called terrorists.
"If we're going to accept that standard here,'' Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., warned, "then we'd better be able to accept it elsewhere.''
Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, fears pre-emption is a slippery slope that could easily lead to "a perpetual state of war to achieve peace.''
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger contends the doctrine is "revolutionary,'' challenging the system of international sovereignty established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Inspired by the religious wars that wracked Europe for centuries, the treaty spelled out the modern principle of nonintervention in domestic affairs by foreign states.
Even seemingly justified pre-emption, Kissinger argued in a recent Washington Post essay, "runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self defense only against actual, not potential, threats.''
The Bush administration argues that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a watershed, calling for a new approach to heading off threats before they are allowed to materialize.
"The oceans no longer protect us,'' Bush said recently at the White House. "The battleground is here.''
Historically, the United States has shifted between unilateralism — to fight communism in Vietnam and Central America — and cooperation — with the United Nations in Korea — throughout the 20th century.
Pre-emption, however, adds a significant new twist.
The twin realities of the new age — unchallenged U.S. might and cataclysmic terrorism — are prompting the most comprehensive reassessment of U.S. foreign policy since the dawn of the Cold War.
"Blueprints have not yet been produced and Yalta-style summits have not been convened,'' Georgetown University professor G. John Ikenberry wrote in a recent essay for the Council on Foreign Relations. "But actions are afoot to dramatically alter the political order that the United States has built with its partners.''
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