U.S. may modify Bush doctrine of preemptive attack

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is reviewing the Bush administration's doctrine of preemptive military strikes with an eye to modifying or possibly ending it.

The international environment is "more complex" than when President George W. Bush announced the policy in 2002, Kathleen Hicks, the Defense Department's deputy undersecretary for strategy, said in an interview. "We'd really like to update our use-of-force doctrine to start to take account for that."

The Sept. 11 terrorist strikes prompted Bush to alter U.S. policy by stressing the option of preemptive military action against groups or countries that threaten the United States. Critics said that breached international norms and set a dangerous precedent for other nations.

The doctrine is being reassessed as part of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review of strategy, force structure, and weapons programs. Hicks is overseeing the review.

"We are looking very explicitly at use of force and use of forces," she said.

President Obama was elected on a platform that included promises to undo many Bush policies. He pledged to extract U.S. forces from Iraq, close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and give greater support to the U.N.

Norway's Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the Peace Prize last week, cited a "new climate" in world politics and the restoration of "multilateral diplomacy." The prize also was widely seen as a repudiation of Bush's policies.

Congress requires the administration to report its national security strategy annually, and it requires the Pentagon to reassess its policies and war-fighting doctrine every four years.

The Obama administration will state its security doctrine for the first time as part of the Pentagon's review, which will be given to Congress in February with the fiscal 2011 budget.

Bush outlined his doctrine of preemptive strikes in a speech at West Point in June 2002. He elevated it to a formal strategy that September. For the first time in a doctrine, the United States expressed the right to attack a threat that was gathering, not just imminent.

The doctrine says, "In an age where enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world's most destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain idle while dangers gather."

Some defense policy analysts say the doctrine should be amended or minimized.

"That doctrine was always at odds with international law and norms," said James Lindsay, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington, said "the clear challenge for this administration is to find a balance between retaining the right, in extremis, to preempt, while avoiding association with the Bush administration."

"The only solution is to try to downplay this option and say it will be reserved for the most extreme cases and even then pursued only with as much international backing and legitimacy as possible," O'Hanlon said.