Is there a Bush Doctrine? If so, how many?

The Carpetbagger Report makes a good case that there have been, thus far, at least three variations -- with little consistency:

1. With us or against us.
2. Military preemption.
3. The spread of democracy.

Or, if I may put them another way:

1. Friends and enemies (see Carl Schmitt).
2. War to prevent war (see Machiavelli).
3. End-of-history idealism (see Hegel, Kojeve, Woodrow Wilson)

In my view, the various iterations of the so-called Bush Doctrine very much reflect fault-lines within American conservatism at the present time. The Republican Party is the political bottleneck for the conservative movement, which means that it is the White House, more or less, that channels conservative political theory into practise. (I think back to David Brooks's column in the Times a while back, where he argued that the strength of the conservative movement is precisely its diversity. Yes, to a point. But it would be nothing without an effective political machine. For more on this, see my comments here.)

The problem is that it is difficult to maintain consistency from theory to practice, from ideological rigor to political expediency (see Plato). To me, this is why the "Doctrine" has been so malleable. You have the traditional, old-school realists (Kissingerian types like Scowcroft and the rest of Bush I's team), the Christian moralists (Brownback et al.), and the neoconservatives at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and The Weekly Standard. (Then there are the paleo-conservative isolationists like Pat Buchanan, but they don't have much influence in Washington these days.) The first emphasizes national self-interest (strictly defined), the second moral interventionism (often to defend Christians -- in Darfur, for example), the third an idealistic remodelling of the world order (largely to secure American hegemony). It seems as if the latter two have often squeezed out the first, though relations with Pakistan and Uzbekistan (to name but two) suggest that realism is very much alive beneath the rhetorical surface. All three seek realization through official policy channels, but, of course, those policy channels give way to political reality. In the end, it's Karl Rove, more than the ideologues at PNAC or the moralists scattered throughout America's "family"-oriented organizations, who determines the course of American foreign policy. So if the so-called Bush Doctrine seems to have shifted through various iterations, well, that's politics.

Which is not to excuse it, by the way. A little bit of consistency wouldn't be such a bad thing. What needs greater attention, though, is just how the "Doctrine" has been allowed to shift so significantly without much in the way of criticism of any of its fundamental premises (which themselves have shifted). It's like Bush saying that he wants Osama dead or alive, then saying that he doesn't think about him all that much and that the war on terror is bigger than one man. Well, sure. But shouldn't Bush be called out on that? And shouldn't he be required to explain just what his "Doctrine" is supposed to mean?

Dare one say... flip-flop?