The Bush Doctrine

"We are history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Many historians deplore this comments like this made by members of the Bush Administration. (Gurtov, p. 210) However, as audacious and arrogant as it sounds it is also paints a fine picture of a hyperpower in a unipolar world. Not only does it do this but it also speaks to the echoes in history that the United States has left in her wake.

Ever since her birth America has been a revolutionary power, "A sometimes unwitting but nevertheless persistent disturber of the status quo wherever it's influence has grown." (Kagan, p. 137) This has been blatantly evident during the reign of President George W. Bush. Over the last eight years the world has increasingly looked upon America with disfavor, shock, and even fear, all side effects of the adoption of the so called "Bush Doctrine" and the actions taken under its guidance. However, this policy did not start with Bush's election in 2000. It has quietly been the policy of American administrations since the end of World War II, if not since the dawn of the Republic. The Bush doctrine seems to be a radical shift in foreign policy, but in reality it is the culmination of trends spanning six decades and a desire lasting the better part of four centuries. Only in the last eight years have the policy makers in Washington openly embraced these seemingly radical strategies and shown the world what kind of ripples a hegemonic power can create.

In 1630 John Winthrop preached, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us." Ever since that moment in the Massachusetts Bay nearly 400 years ago the idea of American "exceptionalism" has prominently dominated the thinking of this country's elites. "That peculiar and peculiarly successful experiment to create a new nation conceived in liberty and henceforth a model for others" has always been the view of American leaders. (Gurtov, p. 14) The emanations from these liberal ideas have crossed continents. Even as early as 1817, John Quincy Adams wrote from London,

"The universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations." (Kagan, p. 137) Throughout the 19th century manifest destiny drove America's ambitions we expanded from coast to coast and in the 20th centuries we adopted a policy of regime change. Sometime even outright imperialism drove the masterminds in Washington. Starting in 1898 Hawaii, the Philippians, Puerto Rico, Guam, Midway, and other Pacific islands slowly came under American control. During the Cold war the United States repeatedly overthrew leftist or pro-Soviet governments throughout Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and more often than not installed friendly dictators to keep those countries out of the Soviet Union sphere of influence. (Overthrow, Kinzer) The anti-American backlashes from these interferences can still be seen in places like Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, and Grenada.

After Vietnam the idea of America being a "City upon a Hill" fell out of fashion. Deeply scarred by the first military defeat in this country's history, the loss of prestige made it difficult to justify a unilateral hard-line approach to America's opponents. It was not until the second half of the Carter administration when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan that the "get-tough" policy in Washington was back. "The congressional comeback in foreign affairs that had marked the Vietnam War years was dead." (Gurtov, p. 31) President Reagan specifically used national pride and the congressional power ceded to him to restore "exceptionalism to pride of place in popular mythology," calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and calling the Vietnam War a "noble cause." (Gurtov, p. 31) The pseudo-fundamentalist approach in this apocalyptic world view has been echoed in the Bush Administration, substituting Communism for, in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's words, "terrorists and those who harbor them."

The Bush administration has relied heavily on the ideals professed by a group called the Neo-Conservatives. Immediately following World War II many proclaimed that the post-war era was to be the "American Century." American power and prestige had never been greater and the symbols of the dollar and the atomic bomb rallied many to this idea. However, conflict with the Soviet Union and realizations on the limit of American influence often caused the wave of American power to fall short of the theorized global hegemony. The Neo-Conservative ideas herald back to this proclamation and its advocates have held positions in the Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, H. W. Bush, as well as been members of the Committee on the Present Danger, the Project for the New American Century, and influential characters in the current administration as well. (Gurtov, p. 3, 28) Recently, the Project of the New American Century (PNAC), founded in 1997, has revived "American Exceptionalism" and has been the think tank for the Neo-Con agenda. The election of George W. Bush in 2000 assured their agenda would be prominent.