The Bush Doctrine Revisited

The Bush Doctrine has been highly contested in international law ever since it was implemented as the US’s National Security Strategy after 11th September, 2001. More than a decade later, this book explores whether the Bush Doctrine has led to a change in international law.
Certain elements of the Bush Doctrine, like its claim to both pre-emptive self-defence and self-defence against states who harbour terrorists, stretch far beyond the traditional scope of the right to self-defence. Moreover, examining state practice before and after 9/11, the author comes to the conclusion that the Bush Doctrine is not an ‘invention’ of the Bush administration, as other US administrations and states have used the same arguments.
Peggy Wittke has been a member of the Faculty of Law at the Freie Universität Berlin since 1998. She is the director of the Model United Nations/Model European Union programmes at that institution.