Despite its portrayal as a bold departure, the Bush Doctrine was not the "new" or "revolutionary" policy instrument that many at the time portended. This work seeks to argue that while it was clear that the Bush Doctrine certainly qualified as a preventive war policy, it is apparent that the adoption of this strategy did not mark a total break with American tradition or earlier Administrations. Warren seeks to dispel arguments pertaining to the supposed "radical" nature of the Bush Doctrine – based on comparisons with previous National Security Strategies and previous Administrations’ penchant for prevention. However, the work also highlights that what was new and bold about the Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002, was its willingness to embrace reinvigorating a nuclear option that could ultimately be used in the context of preventive war. While Obama has struck bold rhetorical notes and promises in relation to limiting the role of nuclear weapons, he has stopped short of changing the status quo on critical issues that have lingered since the Cold War – such as tactical nuclear weapons and keeping missiles on alert. This book’s final section examines the extent to which Obama has attempted to ‘adjust’ the nuclear option with the recent release of the congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Offering new insights into the Bush doctrine and providing a comprehensive analysis of the current status of the US nuclear weapons strategy, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of American foreign policy, security studies and international relations.

American foreign policy has long been caught between conflicting desires to influence world affairs yet at the same time to avoid becoming entangled in the burdensome conflicts and damaging rivalries of other states. Clearly, in the post-1945 context, the United States has failed in the attaining the latter. As this new, expanded edition illustrates, the term “doctrine” seemingly (re)attained a charged prominence in the early twenty-first century and, more recently, regarding the many contested debates surrounding the controversial transition to the Biden administration. Notwithstanding such marked variations in the discourse, presidential doctrines have crafted responses and directions conducive to an international order that best advances American interests: an almost hubristic composition encompassing “democratic” states (in the confidence that democracies do not go to war with one another), open free markets (on the basis that they elevate living standards, engender collaboration, and create prosperity), self-determining states (on the supposition that empires were not only adversative to freedom but more likely to reject American influence), and a secure global environment in which US goals can be pursued (ideally) unimpeded. Of course, with the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, the doctrinal “commonalties” between Republican and Democratic administrations of previous times were significantly challenged if not completely jettisoned. In seeking to provide a much-needed reassessment of the intersections between US foreign policy, national security, and doctrine, Aiden Warren and Joseph M. Siracusa undertake a comprehensive analysis of the defining presidential doctrines from George Washington through to the epochal post-Trump, Joe Biden era.

Preemption is a doctrine of American constitutional law, under which states and local governments are deprived of their power to act in a given area, whether or not the state or local law, rule or action is in direct conflict with federal law. This book covers not only the basics of preemption but also focuses on such topics as federal mechanisms for agency preemption, implied forms of preemption, and defensive use of federal preemption in civil litigation.

This volume evaluates the impact of coercive arms control efforts to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the twenty-first century. A new paradigm in arms control is gradually replacing the idea that mutually agreed restrictions on armaments can improve international security. Thus, Hedley Bull’s classic definition of arms control as the "cooperation between antagonistic pairs of states in military affairs" needs to be amended by a new notion of coercive arms control as the set of non-cooperative and non-reciprocal measures to restrict the weapons or military capabilities of certain states. This volume addresses the topic of how this ongoing paradigmatic shift will affect the effectiveness of arms control as a conflict management instrument.While some argue that new instruments can complement and strengthen traditional, multilateral and inclusive arms control regimes, others maintain that conflicts and contradictions between coercive and cooperative arms control regimes will severely limit their effectiveness. This volume provides a forum for academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss these developments in depth and to assess the specific strengths and weaknesses of these new instruments of arms control. This book will be of much interest to students of arms control, global governance, foreign policy and IR/Security Studies in general.

Examining the accuracy of predictions and perceptions about a possible military threat from the Southern Mediterranean world, this book assesses the impact of such a threat on NATO's political and military posture and the Alliance's key options for dealing with the problem.

If RMA (revolution in military affairs) was the acronym and concept of choice in the U.S. defense community in the 1990s, so preemption has threatened to supercede it in the 2000s. The trouble is that officials and many analysts have confused preemption, which is not controversial, with prevention, which is. In this monograph, Dr. Colin S. Gray draws a sharp distinction between preemption and prevention, and explains that the political, military, moral, and strategic arguments have really all been about the latter, not the former. Dr. Gray provides definitions, reviews the history of the preventive war option, and considers the merit, or lack thereof, in the principal charges laid against the concept when it is proclaimed to be policy. Dr. Gray concludes that there is a place for preventive war in U.S. strategy, but that it is an option that should be exercised only very occasionally. However, there are times when only force seems likely to resolve a maturing danger.