George Bush's Military Strategy

One of the defining elements of George Bush’s presidency was his decision to invade Iraq in an effort to prevent the use of their alleged WMDs, even though no such weapons existed. While many analysts have heavily criticised this foreign policy, we can clearly see the rationale behind it in Bush’s The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Throughout, he routinely claims that the United States is unrivaled on the world stage in terms of power and influence, and that the US plans to use this to create decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty around the world. However, he concedes that while the US is undoubtedly the strongest state in the world, this strength is in traditional terms, and that many of the modern threats
In turn, Bush argues that the defensive capabilities of the US need to be transformed. He argues that while the US should remain the world’s strongest military, they also need to invest resources into Homeland Security as well as their intelligence services so that they can better predict and foil terror attacks. The most important element of the Bush doctrine, however, is his belief that “the best defence is a good offense”, and that the practice of pre-emptive attacks is crucial to American success. But, given that many terrorists are stateless, this raises the question of how do you attack an intricate global network. To this, Bush’s answer is that any state that works with these groups will be deemed an enemy of the US, and a potential target of the US military. Because of the potential damage of WMDs, and a large number of unstable countries possessing these, Bush fears that it is quite plausible for a terrorist cell to obtain a WMD and use it against the US. Thus, according to Bush’s strategy, the invasion of Iraq was not only justified, but also integral to the protection of the
Crawford. In her article The Slippery Slope to Preventive War, she establishes that she does indeed agree with Bush and his notion that warfare has changed over the past two decades, and that it is impossible to achieve complete invulnerability. But, she is strongly against Bush’s notion that self-defense and preemption are the same thing. Meaning, the idea that the only way to defend against terrorists is to take the fight to them before the US is attacked is in her mind flawed. She points to how the administration blurs the line between states that harbor terrorists, and the actual terrorists that reside there, a distinction that can label a preemptive strike either effective, or an international crime. Instead, she argues that preemption is legitimate if it meets four criteria: i) that it is strictly for self-defense ii) that there is enough evidence to prove that there will be an attack, as just having the capability does not count iii) that it will likely reduce or eliminate the threat iv) that all other measures either do not have the time to work, nor are they likely to. Crawford also disagrees with Bush’s notion of self-defense, as Bush argues that the defense of the US’s national interests count as self-defense. To counter, Crawford points to Richard Betts argument that when “self-defense” extends past one’s own borders, the line between offense and defense becomes