Wolfowitz Doctrine

Wolfowitz Doctrine is an unofficial name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) authored by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby. Not intended for public release, it was leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992, and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defense policy. The document was widely criticized as imperialist as the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent any other nation from rising to superpower status.

Such was the outcry that the document was hastily re-written under the close supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell before being officially released on April 16, 1992. Many of its tenets re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine, which was described by Senator Edward M. Kennedy as "a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept."

Although Wolfowitz was ultimately responsible for the Defense Planning Guidance, as it was released through his office and was reflective of his overall outlook, he did not participate in its drafting, nor saw it before it was publicly released. The task of preparing the document fell to Libby, who delegated the process of writing the new strategy to Zalmay Khalizad, a member of Libby's staff and longtime aide to Wolfowitz. In the initial phase of drafting the document, Khalizad solicited the opinions of a wide cross-section of Pentagon insiders and outsiders, including Andrew Marshall, Richard Perle, and Wolfowitz's University of Chicago mentor, the nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter. Completing the draft in March 1992, Khalizad requested permission from Libby to circulate it to other officials within the Pentagon. Libby assented and within three days Khalizad's draft was released to the New York Times by "an official who believ[ed] this post-cold war strategy debate should be carried out in the public domain."

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