In order to maintain world stability, the report continued, the United States was right to wage preemptive war on any aggressor. It named a number of state actors as aggressors, from Iraq and North Korea to India and Japan. Post-Soviet Russia was also viewed as a potentially destabilizing force. Additionally, preemptive strikes were warranted against any threat to US interests. At the time, these ideas were critiqued harshly by the policy establishment; the report was a political embarrassment for the elder Bush. The backlash was so strong that Wolfowitz believed his political career to be over. The document was revised, and a softer version replaced the original. It was not yet the neocons’ time—as we will see shortly, the 1990s were to be the era of “humanitarian imperialism,” led by Clinton and the liberal imperialists.

XREF: Connects to the later Bush Doctrine after 9/11 and neoconservative influence in the Iraq War.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 384