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Limited AchievementsNo More Monsters to Destroy?

Limited Achievements: No More Monsters to Destroy? [All foreign policy is part of one or several traditions, and the United States is the country where references to these traditions most abound. US diplomatic history is full of references to these traditions, which often become doctrines: Monroe’s Doctrine with its Polk, Ohney, and Roosevelt corollaries, Manifest Destiny, the Open Door Policy, President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Acheson’s doctrine, Nixon’s doctrine, Reagan’s doctrine, and Clinton’s doctrine.1 Every president claims, or is identified with a foreign-policy doctrine. Barack Obama is no exception. As described below, however, he challenged attempts to define his policy with regard to the Arab Spring. This is the crux of the problem. The press and academic circles often use the term “doctrine” to mean guidelines, which can be more or less strict. What is sometimes pompously called the Clinton doctrine, based on the idea of “democratic enlargement,” was in fact but a bureaucratic exercise to theorize US foreign policy after the end of the Cold War, even though the term doctrine is probably not the most appropriate to describe a fundamentally pragmatic, post—Cold War policy.2 These doctrines often serve to give formal coherence to tentative policies, but also to rationalize policies and constraints. The Nixon doctrine was nothing more than a means to prepare the United States for a withdrawal from Vietnam by emphasizing that it was time for the Vietnamese to take responsibility for their security.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Limited AchievementsNo More Monsters to Destroy?

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2012
ISBN
978-1-349-43757-3
Pages
39 –60
DOI
10.1057/9781137020871_3
Publisher site
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Abstract

[All foreign policy is part of one or several traditions, and the United States is the country where references to these traditions most abound. US diplomatic history is full of references to these traditions, which often become doctrines: Monroe’s Doctrine with its Polk, Ohney, and Roosevelt corollaries, Manifest Destiny, the Open Door Policy, President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Acheson’s doctrine, Nixon’s doctrine, Reagan’s doctrine, and Clinton’s doctrine.1 Every president claims, or is identified with a foreign-policy doctrine. Barack Obama is no exception. As described below, however, he challenged attempts to define his policy with regard to the Arab Spring. This is the crux of the problem. The press and academic circles often use the term “doctrine” to mean guidelines, which can be more or less strict. What is sometimes pompously called the Clinton doctrine, based on the idea of “democratic enlargement,” was in fact but a bureaucratic exercise to theorize US foreign policy after the end of the Cold War, even though the term doctrine is probably not the most appropriate to describe a fundamentally pragmatic, post—Cold War policy.2 These doctrines often serve to give formal coherence to tentative policies, but also to rationalize policies and constraints. The Nixon doctrine was nothing more than a means to prepare the United States for a withdrawal from Vietnam by emphasizing that it was time for the Vietnamese to take responsibility for their security.]

Published: Nov 9, 2015

Keywords: Foreign Policy; Nuclear Weapon; Bush Administration; Biological Weapon; Obama Administration

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