International Relations Doctrines Of Power Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Among the most important foreign policy doctrines since the nineteenth century are balance of power, self-defense, appeasement, containment, détente, and interventionism, doctrines that unfolded in the wake of four wars: the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), World War I (1914–1918), World War II (1939–1945), and the cold war.

Nineteenth and Twentieth century European Doctrines Of Power

The doctrines of self-defense and balance of power originated in past millennia but found creative practitioners in nineteenth-century Europe. Self-defense entails two principles: (1) states may use force to defend themselves and their allies, and (2) self-defense may involve other doctrines listed above (and more, including preventive measures to avoid war, coercive threat, collective security, counterterrorism, tribute, economic sanctioning, and deterrence based on threats of nuclear retaliation). The balance of power idea was a means for weaker states to defend themselves from hegemonic states by forming alliances to counterbalance expansionist states. Balancing power would serve to maintain independence of major states and regional and international stability.

A failure by European governments to balance Germany led to World War I and World War II. Appeasement, designed by British idealists (and Woodrow Wilson) to persuade hegemonic states to abandon aggression by offering unilateral compromises, conciliations, and economic incentives, failed to prevent World War II. These failures led American cold warriors to seek more effective defense doctrines.

The Cold War And Containment

Suspecting that the Soviets sought territorial and ideological expansion after World War II, the Truman administration launched containment to deter aggression. George Kennan, an official at the U.S. State Department, argued in his 1946 “Long Telegram” that the paranoid, militaristic, and dangerous Soviet Union was “committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus Vivendi.” According to Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” selective shows of force and economic counterbalancing would create “situations which will compel the Soviets to recognize . . . the necessity of behaving in accordance with precepts of international conduct.”

Containment led to the United States’s subsidizing the Western European economies, engaging in limited military actions, leading alliances that committed the United States to intervention, assisting states facing communist insurgencies, and mobilizing global public opinion. All U.S. administrations during the cold war deemed this effort necessary to prevent Soviet global dominance. The ever-growing commitments and interventions, however, aroused questions about American purpose and credibility. All administrations agreed that containment suffered a debilitating blow in Vietnam.

Richard Nixon sought to alleviate this blow through détente. Henry Kissinger defined détente as “the pursuit of relaxation of tensions” with the Soviet Union based on four principles: the United States must (1) resist Soviet aggression but respond to moderate behavior, (2) maintain a strong defense but not expect political power to flow from military strength, (3) accept its limited ability to produce internal change in other countries, and (4) recognize that both superpowers should receive advantages in any constructive relationship. Nixon and Kissinger described the hope that “the Soviet Union would acquire a stake in a wide spectrum of negotiations and would become convinced that its interests . . . would be best served in mutual restraint” (in Nomination Hearings for Henry A. Kissinger, Part 1, 1973).

After a decade of détente failed to fulfill these hopes, Ronald Reagan reinstituted containment. He argued that only Western willingness to resist challenges encouraged Soviet restraint. Reagan’s containment entailed several assumptions: the Soviets posed strategic and political threats to the United States and the world, détente facilitated Soviet activism, and military strength was the most effective tool to deny Soviet exploitation of international crises, convince them to negotiate seriously, and enable the United States to sustain international commitments. Containment, based on American economic and military superiority, would keep regional conflicts from spreading, convince the Soviets that expansionism no longer worked, and reduce the risk of superpower confrontation. According to Reagan in 1986, “Backing away from [Soviet] challenge[s] will not bring peace. It will only mean that others who are hostile to everything we believe in will have a freer hand to work their will in the world” (quoted in Kissinger 1993).

In the post–cold war, debate resurfaced between those for and against American interventionism to deter aggression and establish global security. Noninterventionists such as libertarian Doug Bandow do not believe interventionism is feasible, affordable, or likely to defend America’s security, freedom, or prosperity. He assumes that global disorder per se does not threaten the United States, intervention on behalf of dictatorships to promote regional stability yields instability instead, and instability “can be contained by other states, met by more modest steps such as sanctions, or simply ignored” (Bandow 1992/1993, 164–169).

Selective noninterventionists call for an idealist (golden rule) ethic to guide policy. Charles Kegley (1992) argues that the ethic depends on awareness of the strategic as well as humanitarian advantages that come, in an interdependent world, from aiding those in need. This ethic requires multiple subscriber states and institutions. The United States must not go it alone. In Kegley’s (2003) view, a unilateral American imposed democratization policy is an example of unreflective globalism that employs an ends-justifies-the-means interventionism. In the idealist noninterventionist view, the United States may promote democracy by abstaining from excessive intervention and hoping that the example of democracy and freedom will inspire the nations of the world.

Noninterventionists fear that American democratization projects in Russia, Serbia, Somalia, or Iraq patronize them; paying for nation-building jeopardizes American financial equilibrium; and the expansionist impulse inspires impossible (democratization) and neoimperialist goals. This vision for American retrenchment and democracy building by example may reflect a lack of realism about power, conflicting interests, aggression, the might of reason and public opinion, and the prospects of international cooperation. Noninterventionists, while sympathetic to democratic principles and victims of tyrannies, may end up with weak proposals to cheer freedom fighters, boo bad guys, and abstain from liberating interventions.

Multilateral interventionists want to do more than cheerlead. Bill Clinton noted in 1992 that “it is time for America to lead a global alliance for democracy” (p. 421). Multilateral interventionists call for collective security, multilateralism, and intervention on behalf of democracy, human rights, and global order. This avoids the taint of unilateralism but may lack full appreciation that consensus and effectiveness are hampered in a world of conflicting interests and limited military and economic resources.

Given the difficulties of multilateralism, unilateral interventionists (such as George W. Bush) say the United States must act unilaterally when necessary to ensure global or regional democratization and stability or to fight global terrorism. One must deal with instability on the periphery to prevent conflict escalation and erosion of the credibility (willingness to intervene) of states or organizations committed to peacemaking; in this view, the United States cannot sit on the sidelines. Multilateral interventionists see much risk of overextension in unilateralism. They urge a more prudent (and internationally endorsed) selection of problems to solve and warn that a U.S. imposed democratic world order is unobtainable.

Bibliography:

Bandow, Douglas. “Avoiding War.” Foreign Policy 89 (Winter 1992–1993): 156–174.
Clinton, Bill. “Strategy for Foreign Policy.” Vital Speeches (May 1992): 421.
Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Kegley, Charles W., with Eugene R.Wittkopf. World Politics: Trend and Transformation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.
Kegley, Charles W., Jr. “The New Global Order:The Power of Principle in a Pluralistic World.” Ethics and International Affairs 6, no. 1 (1992): 21–40.
Kissinger, Henry A. Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Long Telegram.”Telegram, George Kennan to George Marshall. February 22, 1946.
Harry S.Truman Administration File, Elsey Papers. Mingst, Karen, and Jack Snyder. Essential Readings in World Politics. New York: Norton, 2001.
“Nomination Hearings for Henry A. Kissinger before the Committee on Foreign Relations: United States Senate, Part 1,” September 1973.

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