Martin Meenagh blog

And thus I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ And seem a saint, when most I play the Devil….   Richard III , William Shakespeare A presidential doctrine is a term for an overarching strategic rule or a set of broad rules under which strategic national security policy will be implemented. It is not a formal position, and not all administrations have had one; the term has also been used reactively and pro-actively. In the case of the administration of George Walker Bush, the term ‘Bush doctrine’ was used to characterise several propositions, which blended traditional and neoconservative ideas about national security.   One proposition was that there was a close association of the inward and outward behaviour of regimes, and that consequently, it was sensible to concentrate American diplomatic and military power on those regimes which supported or enforced values that were antagonistic to the United States. These were seen as ...

The concept of watersheds in a history as short as that of the United States is an overblown one. Occasionally, events or processes do get a grip which are determinative, though not necessarily forever. For instance, historians once thought that the question of secession from the Union had been decisively solved (and ruled out) by the contingent events of 1861-5. In recent years, however, serious legal thought has been given to the idea that Texas, Vermont and Alaska, and possibly Hawaii, could be said to have a right of secession. Similarly, the aftermath of the Watergate crisis, which was meant to have put an end to the ‘Imperial Presidency’ did not, in fact, mark a decisive break with anything except Nixonian Republicanism (and indeed that itself may have been reinvented as the Obama style of governance). So it is with some trepidation that the serious historian turns to the events of 2000 and 2001 which led to the validation of George Walker Bush’s election to the Presidency b...