Temat: MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY DOCTRINES OF THE COLD WAR PERIOD

1. Containment
Created by George Kennan, Foreign Service’s foremost expert on the Soviet Union.
1946 – he presented the basis of what became to be known as Containment – a new American policy that recognized the hostile character of the Soviet Regime. In a long telegram, sent from the US Embassy in Moscow, Kennan analyzed the communist outlook on world affairs:
1. The Soviet Union had no community of interest with the capitalist States; they rather saw their relationship with Western powers in terms of innate antagonism.
2. The outside world (beyond the Soviet Union and its “allies”) was hostile and it was the duty of Soviet leaders to overthrow eventually the western political forces beyond their borders.
3. The thesis that the world is the enemy – as the background of the conduct of Soviet leaders as well as every ordinary man.
Those three principles functioned as the pattern of thought in leading the Soviet foreign policy, always characterized by: the secretiveness, and the lack of frankness, the duplicity, the suspiciousness, and the basic unfriendliness of purpose. These characteristics of the Soviet policy were basic to the internal nature of Soviet power, which would remain the same until the moment when the nature of Soviet power is changed.
According to Kennan, the Soviets had no timetable of any conquest against capitalism. He envisaged a long struggle, led with patience, flexibility and coition.
How could such policy be answered? Kennan’s plan: American policy would be one of “long-term patient but firm and vigilant containment.” He viewed it as a test of American democracy to conduct an effective, responsible foreign policy and contribute to changes within the Soviet Union that ultimately would bring about a moderation of its revolutionary aims.
Containment was a rather peaceful and defensive doctrine; its task was to limit geographically the influence of Soviet and Eastern block by preventing its military and ideological spreading and by promoting tendencies which would eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.
Why was the USA so favorably positioned for a long-term struggle? For INDUSTRY – as the key ingredient of power. And it was the USA that controlled most of centers of industry. There where 5 such centers and the USA controlled 4: USA, Britain, Japan, and West Europe. The Soviets controlled only its own one. Containment meant confining the Soviet Union into that one. However long it would take the Soviets finally would have to readjust its policies to the logic of a new state of affairs.

Containment won with two other courses of action promoted that time:1) historic isolationism; 2) preventive war

2. Truman Doctrine – March 12, 1947 – before a joint session of Congress (background: Greece and Turkey)
The USA could survive only in a world in which freedom flourished. The USA is going to help free peoples to maintain their institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose totalitarian regimes upon them. Such movements undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the USA. The policy of the USA must be that of supporting free peoples who are resisting the attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure. This help should have primarily economic and financial character.
• 400 million dollars for economic and military supplies to Greece and Turkey, and authorized dispatch of American personnel to assist with reconstruction and also to provide their armies with appropriate instruction and training.
TD was a new call for anticommunist crusade for three reasons:
1. Soviet expansionist efforts left the USA no choice but to adopt a countervailing policy. Internationalism – a product of postwar bipolar distribution of power.
2. Hostile Soviet behavior and words were the reasons for gradual shift of American policy and public opinion from amity to enmity. But American action was not fundamentally ideological issue, rather it was activated by the concern for preventing a major nation from achieving dominance in Europe that had twice in the 20th century led the USA into war.
3. The role of anticommunism in American policy was essentially to gain congressional and public support for the policy once it had been decided upon.

In t1950 National Security Council, composed of the president’s major foreign policy advisors issued a famous report: NSC68, depicting the all-encompassing character of the Soviet threat and the possibility of a possible Soviet atomic strike against the USA by 1954. In this document the SU is presented as the nation seeking to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. The report was intended to arouse the foreign policy bureaucracy and alert it to the need for military rearmament.

3. Frontiersmanship
The achievements of President Eisenhower’s two terms were two multinational alliances – one in the Middle East (CENTO) and another one in the South Asia (SEATO), what completed the walls of containment around the Sino-Soviet block spanning Eurasia

- John Foster Dulles - ROLLBACK
The republicans charged Truman’s post-war policies as self-defending. Containment was a negative policy, it surrounded the initiative to the enemy; it merely reacted to counter the communist danger, it was so costly that it would bankrupt the country; and it aimed only at preserving the status-quo.
The aim of American policy should not be to coexist indefinitely with the Communist menace but to rollback the Soviet power. The US had only to proclaim its stance for freedom and announce that it would never by a party to any “deal” that confirmed Soviet despotism. In other words America should make it publicly known that it wants and expects freedom and liberation movements to occur. The mere statement of that wish and expectation would change the mood of the captive people, encouraging them to action. Republicans envisaged the end of the Cold War.
These were good intentions, unsupported by concrete political and military policies, notoriously impotent on the international scene. But it didn’t matter, as liberation itself proved to be very effective policy. The country desperately needed a more vigorous and forthright anti-Communist policy that promised an end to the Cold War. This was however, only a verbal dynamism, because any active liberation of the satellite states would involve high risk of all-out war with the SU, to which the USA was not at all prepared. The policy primarily was meant to impress the American people.
Prove: East Berlin – June 1953 or Hungary – 1956; Eisenhower’s administration failed to act.
Basically, the E’s policy was not very different from Truman’s

Then: ending the Korean War; the first Indochina War; SEATO’s funding, Taiwan Straits, Middle-East and the Suez War; beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the Anglo-Egyptian quarrel (Nasser)
4. The Eisenhower Doctrine
After the Suez crisis E. urged Congress to support a new commitment to resist communism in the Middle East. A joint resolution of Congress, known as the E’s Doctrine, passed in the Spring of 1957 and declared that the United States considered the preservation of the independence and integrity of the Middle East nations vital to American security, and that it was prepared to use armed force to assist any nation or nations “requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.”
In fact, this doctrine was addressed to Nasser, his viscous attacks on all Western nations, and continued flirtation with the Soviet Union. ”armed aggression” meant also the attempts to overthrow pro-Western gov’ts through subversion. “any country controlled by international Communism” included nations with close ties to the SU.
In short, the target became Nasser’s radical Arab nationalism. This doctrine was still based on the same anti-Communism assumptions but now it was intended to deal with the Middle East in which the Soviets had already destroyed the southern ties. Now the administration found itself filling the vacuum left by the British to contain what it saw as the Moscow-Cairo axis.
ED was first applied in Jordan (April 1957), where Hussein’s government survived due to US military and financial help. Next, in summer 1958, Iraq fell into the Arab nationalism. Only Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia were still outside the Nasser camp. Eisenhower resorted to force. Lebanon and Jordan were saved from nationalist movements and attempts to put them under Nasser’s ruling. Soviets didn’t help Nasser and the new regime in Iraq (Kassen) took the position opposing Nasser’s policy. Soviets gave the economic and military support to Kassen’s government. So Nasser’s drive for Arab leadership was stalled. Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia remained independent. Libya and Sudan had resisted Nasser’s attempts to subvert them, and Syria and Iraq were unwilling to permit him to dominate within the region. Meanwhile the USA had become almost the full-flanged member of the Baghdad Pact, now renamed the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), whose southern line remained very fragile: the conflicts among Arab states and Arab-Israeli quarrel.

5. Massive Retaliation + (deterrence / balance of terror)
American foreign policy has traditionally been based on a worldview of mutually exclusive conditions: war or peace, force or diplomacy, aggressors or peace loving states. Peace – normal, war – abnormal. Force was unnecessary in the absence of conflict and hostilities, it was to be used in wartime to eliminate the source of war itself. Massive retaliation fit this American approach. It was all-or-nothing strategy that could not be used short of a Soviet attack. Deterrence was the American goal: nuclear strategy was to retaliate after the opponent struck first. If the USA were attacked, however, it would use massive retaliation to punish and destroy the enemy in ways not conceivable until 1945.
US stockpile was to be used against all targets, military and economic, in one huge war-winning blow. By this strategy, nuclear war was made too destructive to start the fight. This strategy was meaningless and deterrent, and in fact it aimed a eliminating war itself, as it became “unthinkable.” The destructiveness of nuclear weapon could best be used to deter the possibility of an all-out attack and contain limited challenges but not prevent them.
Soviet and American nuclear forces incredibly deterred one another. This strategic balance between the USA and SU developed in the 50’s and early 60’s. Neither adversary could achieve a major advantage on the other.
Led to: SALT I – 1972; ABM Treaty – 1972
A sort of stability achieved – both sides heavily armed but with no means to defense themselves – unable to win.

6. Détente – Realpolitik (Kissinger 1969-1977)
International politics is not a fight between a good side and a bad side. All states had the right to exist and possess legitimate interests. Differences of interests did not represent a conflict of virtue and evil. Differences should be resolved and interests shared. International politics was not just conflicts but cooperation as well. Summit meetings, negotiations, good personal relations – to smooth hard bargaining. Now – all the USA was expected to do was to influence communist dictatorships’ international behavior in a responsible direction. American power was too limited to transform another nations’ domestic policies and behavior. No more crusades to democratize adversaries. Negotiating with a Communist regime was now necessary if peace and security were to be preserved. Balance of power was still the key.
Détente – lessening the tension. The Nixon, ford and Carter administrations all perused détente because changes in the USA and the state system made the relaxation of tensions necessary. Nation had become weary of its foreign policy burdens. In the pre-Vietnam era of containment Congress had rarely questioned the President’s authority to use the armed forces or CIA to carry out US policy. But after Vietnam the criticism of America’s “global policeman” role was widespread and the emphasis was placed on the nations “limited power,” and more restricted role was suggested.
Another reason for détente was the fact the Soviet Union had achieved strategic parity around 1970. The Soviet strategic power had caught up with that of the USA, and it was to keep on building. In that situation continuation of the containment policy by means of threats of force would become risky and costly.

7. Carter Doctrine
Carter announced his doctrine in his January 1980 State of the Union Address, after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in December 1979. The doctrine said that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region” would “be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The doctrine was modeled on the historic 1947 Truman Doctrine.
At the same time US military and medical aid begun flowing directly to the Afghan rebels. From this moment on Carter seemed to abandon any idea of military parity with the SU. He wanted to obtain superiority. “The USA will remain the strongest of all nations.” Even though he was still asking Senate to approve SALT II program, he was also asking for approval of the largest new US weapons program in nearly 30 years.
PD 59 – Pentagon Budget + $107 billion.
It was return to militarism – Carter’s defense budgets formed the roots of Ronald Reagan’s policies in 1980’s.

8. Reagan Doctrine
He was an ardent, outspoken anticommunist focused on Soviet Union – called by him as “evil empire.”
China – also regarded as an enemy. Nixon and Carter – condemned for moving closer to China. However, in 1084 Reagan swallowed his own words and went to China in order to strengthen the US – China ties, in the need of new Chinese markets.
Reagan came back to massive nuclear build—up and heightened military spending enormously, up to $1,5 trillion. His military plan was Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), that threatened Carter – Breżniew’s SALT II agreements. Star Wars was to be a space-based defense system forming a high tech defense shield over Americans and their allies against incoming missiles. This system was to provide the nation with security and the feeling of superiority again. The doctrine was announced in the President’s State of the Union Address in 1985. “Our mission is to nourish and defend freedom and democracy and to communicate these ideas everywhere we can... We must stand by our all democratic allies. And must not break faith with those who are risking their lives – on every continent... – to defy Soviet supported aggression and secure rights, which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.” This doctrine is often compared to Wilsonian world “made safe for democracy” by direct US involvement.
It was a coming back of the rollback policy. Containment was dead. Cheap supplying of freedom fighters accompanied by covert CIA actions. No more “Vietnam” and usage of large US force.

Afghanistan rebels obtained at least $400 million in 1984-85 alone.
Reagan Doctrine: in Latin America: El Salvador, Nicaragua.
In the Middle East: the Iran Contra Affair