Doctrines of American foreign policy: their meaning, role and future

Describing a phenomenon unique to American foreign policy, The Doctrines of American Foreign Policy analyzes the nation's strong tendency to issue and rely on diplomatic "doctrines" to regulate its relations with other countries. No other nation has depended so heavily on the pronouncement of foreign policy doctrines as the United States a dependence all the more remarkable in light of the nation's eclectic, clearly nondoctrinal approach to its domestic problems.

From the presidency of James Monroe onward, nearly every guid ing principle of American foreign policy has at some point been expressed in a doctrine. Focusing on eight of these pronouncements, Cecil V. Crabb closely examines the often invoked Monroe Doctrine, which the editorial pages of a New York newspaper once observed "is as elastic as India Rubber and as comprehensive as all outdoors"; the Open Door Principle, which was in many ways the Far Eastern equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine; and the doctrines of the Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter administra tions. Crabb applies a uniform system of analysis to each of these doctrines, and then in a concluding chapter examines their common characteristics and assesses their overall performance-how they have obstructed and how they have contributed to American diplomatic objectives, and what their role is likely to be in the future.

"Not infrequently." Crabb writes, "the diplomatic doctrine has functioned in much the same way as a religious article of faith: its adherents have sometimes believed that the doctrine's mere invoca tion and reiteration would accomplish miraculous results." Yet Crabb's discussion also reveals the important, practical part that doctrines have played, and continue to play, in the shaping and reshaping of American foreign policy. A careful and complete study, The Doctrines of American Foreign Policy illuminates the role of a venerated and influential aspect of United States diplomatic relations.