The Bush Doctrine During The Cold War

Presidential doctrines are essentially set as a precedent for the country to follow. Doctrines are statements made to get a specific message across and are usually reserved for times of intense international and political crisis or upheaval. The Truman Doctrine, for example, stated that the United States should give support to countries threatened by Soviet forces or communist sedition; whereas the Bush Doctrine was directed towards terrorism. Both doctrines, however, served as a prototype for future U.S. policy of interventionism; and were used to justify military action by expressing that their efforts were aimed to protect American freedom. Though the doctrines attempted to grant Americans their freedom, instead it limited the civil liberties
In response to the 911 terrorist attacks, president George W Bush recited a speech that described the specific policy elements, including a strategy of "preemptive strikes" as a defense against an immediate threat to the security of the United States. Bush's speech later turned into what is now known as the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was used to indicate a willingness to unilaterally pursue U.S. military interests and as an effort of spreading democracy at the global level. Following the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy relied on the concepts of “deterrence” and “containment”. In a world dominated by two superpowers, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), both armed with huge arsenals of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, the policy of deterrence relied on mutual assured destruction (MAD) to prevent the outbreak of war. President Bush argued that the new policy was necessary to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among terrorist
The attacks also allowed the Bush administration to expand the U.S. military response to include terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism. However, though the doctrine of preemptive war was created in an attempt to discourage the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it instead promoted greater misuse of weapons by other nations, which increased the likelihood of regional conflicts. As a result of Bush's “pro-active” policy it installed a fear of Muslims in the American people and later led to the abuse of weapons in foreign states causing the rise of radical terrorist groups (ISIS). Certain actions like random security checks and the installment of the Patriot Act were efforts by the government to protect the American people's security, but it rather violated the 1st and 4th amendment of the constitution, limiting the privacy of