The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

In the heat of the midterm elections in 2006, three weeks before announcing Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, George W. Bush signed the Defense Authorization Act in a private Oval Office ceremony. Tucked into its fourteen hundred pages is a rider that went almost completely unnoticed at the time. It gave the president the power to declare martial law and “employ the armed forces, including the National Guard,” overriding the wishes of state governors, in the event of a “public emergency” in order to “restore public order” and “suppress” the disorder. That emergency could be a hurricane, a mass protest or a “public health emergency,” in which case the army could be used to impose quarantines and to safeguard vaccine supplies.4 Before this act, the president had these martial law powers only in the face of an insurrection.