Abstract:
The future direction of American foreign policy in the post-cold war
changed dramatically with September 11, 2001. The September 11
terrorist attack on U.S marked the collective conscious of the country and
of its foreign policy. The neo-conservatives who for the first time in U.S
history occupied the highest positions in the Bush Administration saw
this catastrophe as an opportunity to achieve their long held goals and
objectives. The most prominent objective was the use of preemption as a
self-defense against rogue regimes. In the absence of the Soviet Union
threat and in the aftermath of September 11 crisis, preemption was
elevated to the status core of the security doctrine and coupled with
regime change strategy, unilateralism and democratization. This doctrine
was first applied in Afghanistan and then on Iraq and tend to be the 21 st
century American foreign policy.
This thesis concludes that the preemptive strategy on Iraq has showed
that this strategy was only used to allow the U.S to intervene and spread
its power abroad. Hence preemption under the power of the
neoconservatives has become the raison d'etre of U.S imperialism.
