There is some evidence that Bush 's willingness for the US to act unilaterally came even earlier . The '' International Journal of Peace Studies '' 2003 article " The Bush administration 's image of Europe : From ambivalence to rigidity " states : The doctrine was developed more fully as an executive branch response following the September 11 attacks . The attacks presented a foreign policy challenge , since it was not Afghanistan that had initiated the attacks , and there was no evidence that they had any foreknowledge of them . In an address to the nation on the evening of September 11 , Bush stated his resolution of the issue by declaring that , " We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them . " The President made an even more aggressive restatement of this principle in his September 20 , 2001 address to a Joint Session of Congress : White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer later wrote in an autobiographical account of that address , " In a speech hailed by the press and by Democrats , the President announced what became known as the ' Bush Doctrine ' " . The first published reference after the 9/11 attacks to the terror-fighting doctrine appeared September 30 in an op-ed by political scientist Neal Coates
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Bush Doctrine