America at the Crossroads

Unintended Consequences

After the Sept. 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks, President George W. Bush made fundamental shifts in U.S. policy and its strategic foreign relations direction. Among other changes, he created the new federal agency of Homeland Security to protect the U.S. and he sent armed forces to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He adopted a pre-emptive strategy, replacing deterrence and containment with attack. Then he sent troops to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein and prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The first set of actions responded to the al Qaeda attack, but the invasion and pre-emptive doctrine did not. Bush decided to focus on attacking Iraq before the summer of 2002, before extensive U.N. Security Council debate and before weapons inspectors finished their work. Prior to this administration, neoconservatives supported regime change, hegemony, pre-emptive strikes and America's willingness to stand alone. Bush molded many of these policies into his doctrine, but his administration does not reflect the core ideas of neoconservatives. Since the Cold War, neoconservatives have come to believe in democracy, human rights and...