“Containing” the Bush Doctrine: Ian Shapiro’s Critique of the Post-9/11 American Security Strategy

Abstract

“Containing” the Bush Doctrine: Ian Shapiro’s Critique of the Post-9/11 American Security Strategy Susan Keppelman Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror , by Ian Shapiro. Princeton : Princeton University Press , 2007 , 133 pages. $24.95 (hardcover). In Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror , Ian Shapiro argues for the rejection of the Bush Administration’s national security strategy in favor of a strategy based on George Kennan’s idea of containment. Shapiro offers a systematic critique of the current security strategy, which he refers to as the “Bush Doctrine,” and argues that preemptive use of force and abandonment of multilateral institutions will ultimately alienate the U.S.’s supporters and foster new terrorists. Despite the book’s name and chapter titles (such as “Containment for Democracy” and “Containment’s Realism”), Shapiro provides little discussion of the details of his theory of containment. The first five of seven chapters, for example, address the history and rationale of the Bush Doctrine, with only passing references to what alternatives Shapiro would propose. The book’s primary pitfall, however, is that Shapiro occasionally deviates from a pure discussion of strategy to inject partisan attacks, which likely alienates certain potential readers and will certainly limit the adoption of his ideas. Shapiro approaches this topic with a background in political theory and 24 years as a political science professor at Yale University. While he does not have a background in either history or national security issues, Shapiro has extensively studied theories of democracy, including the preconditions for democratic government and rule of law, relevant to both the Bush Doctrine and the idea of containment. This book, however, is not an academic study, but rather meant for mass consumption. The prose is easy to read, with much of Shapiro’s tedious research hidden in the 40 pages of endnotes (for only 133 pages of text). Containment begins with a review of how the Bush Administration came to reject previous Cold War-era security strategies, such as containment and deterrence, and adopt the Bush Doctrine. The “shock, scale, and sheer drama of the 9/11 attacks”1 led the administration to conclude that the U.S. would need a more aggressive security strategy based on preemptive, rather than reactive, actions. In August 2002, Vice President Cheney concluded that “it’s [End Page 203] a lot tougher to deter enemies who have no country to defend, and containment is not possible when dictators obtain weapons of mass destruction and are prepared to share them with terrorists, who intend to inflict catastrophic casualties on the United States.”2 According to Shapiro, the 2002 National Security Strategy was a departure from previous U.S. policies in that it had a worldwide scope, affirmed the U.S.’s right to unilateral action unconstrained by alliances, allowed for preemptive war even without an “imminent threat,” envisioned the replacement of dictators with democracies, and, most importantly, created a condition of “permanent war” with the administration’s declaration of war on terror. Shapiro refutes the basic assumption of the Bush Doctrine—that terrorism is a threat unlike any other the U.S. has experienced. Specifically, he lists six claims that the Bush administration has made to justify its new policies, a discussion that dominates 40 of the book’s 133 pages. These claims include assertions that the U.S. is facing new technologies of destruction, that “rogue regimes” are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that corruption makes international sanctions regimes impossible, that terrorists leaders and attackers who are willing to die are unresponsive to incentives, and that weak states provide havens for terrorist organizations. Shapiro responds to these assertions by highlighting the fact that all terrorist groups depend on some degree of local support and sanctuary, and that the U.S. can fight terrorism by making it less likely that these groups will find indigenous support. A policy of containment should recognize that the U.S. may be powerless to influence others’ ideologies, but that collective-action sanctions can serve to influence their behavior. While he offers no particular policy suggestions, Shapiro does emphasize that “the strident assertion of American might alienates people unnecessarily”3 and that U.S. support for Israel...