Furthering the ‘war on terrorism’ through international law: how the United States and the United Kingdom resurrected the Bush doctrine on using preventive military force to combat terrorism*

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article revisits the Principles Relevant to the Scope of a State’s Right of Self-Defense Against an Imminent or Actual Armed Attack by Nonstate Actors published by Sir Daniel Bethlehem in the American Journal of International Law in 2012. As disclosed in documents revealed by WikiLeaks, the principles were the product of intergovernmental discussions led by the United States to secure greater understanding of the jus ad bellum that had their origins in the controversial ‘Bush doctrine’ published in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America in 2002. In 2017, the UK Attorney General announced that the UK ‘follows and endorses’ Principle 8 of ‘The Bethlehem Principles’, as did Australia’s Attorney General. Principle 8 reflects an expansion of the right of anticipatory self-defence by providing a new standard of imminence to enable preventive military strikes against threats outside traditional conflict zones.