Bush Doctrine

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The Bush Doctrine refers to a set of interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush. These principles include unilateralism, the option of preemptive war, and the promotion of regime change. Some elements of these principles had antecedents in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. Charles Krauthammer first used the phrase in June 2001, to describe the Bush administration's "unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol." After the September 11 attacks, the phrase described the policy that the U.S. had the right to secure itself against countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush Doctrine became strongly associated with the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Different pundits have attributed different meanings to the Bush Doctrine. It was used to describe specific policy elements, including a strategy of "preemptive...

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