The ‘Bush Doctrine’ as a hegemonic discourse strategy

Abstract

Even if preventive military counter‐terrorism may sometimes be ethically justifiable, it remains an open question whether the Bush Doctrine presented a discursively coherent account of the relevant normative conditions. With a view towards answering this question, this article critically examines efforts to ground the morally personifying language of the Bush Doctrine in term of hegemonic stability theory. Particular critical attention is paid to the arguments of leading proponents of this brand of game theory, including J. Yoo, E. Posner, A. Sykes, and J. Goldsmith. When examined in their terms, the Bush Doctine is best understood as an ethically hypocritical and shortsighted international discursive strategy. Its use of moralistic language in demonizing ‘rogue states’ for purely amoral purposes is normatively incoherent and discursively unsustainable. If it is a strategically rational piece of international communication, it seems designed to undermine globally shared normative meanings for the sake of short‐term unilateral military advantage.

Keywords:

• Bush Doctrine
• hegemony
• game theory
• discourse strategy

Acknowledgements

For helpful discussions of preliminary drafts, I am grateful to Preston King, Andrea Baumeister, Michael Plaxton, Sonja Levsen, Clifford Bob, Clark Wolf, John Halpin and Dick Burke.

Notes

1. It is worth noting here that this description of the nature of international relations is contentious. David Lake (2001, 2003), for example, cogently challenges the assumption of international anarchy in hegemonic stability theory, and argues instead for a rational choice model of transnational imperial hierarchy.

2. In his critical review of Eric Posner’s Law and social norms (2002), McAdams cannot think of many examples of norm entrepreneurs that introduce such separating equilibria, but the Bush Doctrine appears to be a good example.