Major powers' foreign policy doctrines

International Relations · History and regions. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

A doctrine is a short public statement of how a state will act in a certain kind of situation. It tells friends and rivals what to expect. Examiners ask you to match each doctrine with its author, its date and its main idea.

American policy moved from isolationism, which avoided permanent alliances and European wars, to world leadership after 1945 under the policy of containment. Soviet policy moved from building socialism at home under Stalin, to peaceful coexistence under Khrushchev, to the defence of the socialist bloc under Brezhnev.

China set out the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in 1954. After the Sino-Soviet split, President Nixon opened relations with Beijing, which changed the balance among the three powers.

Rules to remember

Monroe Doctrine, 1823: the Americas are closed to further European colonisation; the USA will stay out of European quarrels. Roosevelt Corollary, 1904: the USA may intervene in Latin America as a police power.
Open Door, 1899-1900: equal commercial access to China for all powers. Good Neighbour policy, 1930s (Franklin Roosevelt): no intervention in Latin American states.
Truman Doctrine, 1947: support for free peoples resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure. Domino theory: if one state falls to communism, its neighbours follow.
Nixon Doctrine, 1969: allies must carry the main burden of their own defence. Nixon visited China in February 1972.
Reagan Doctrine, 1980s: support for anti-communist resistance movements.
USSR: Stalin, 'socialism in one country'; Khrushchev, 'peaceful coexistence' (1956); Brezhnev Doctrine (1968), the right to intervene where socialism was judged to be under threat.
Panchsheel, 1954: respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful coexistence.

Common mistake

Students confuse the Truman Doctrine with the Nixon Doctrine. Truman (1947) promised American support to states under communist pressure; Nixon (1969) told allies to provide most of their own defence.

Worked example

In 1968 Warsaw Pact forces entered Czechoslovakia to end a reform movement. The Soviet leadership then said that socialist states had a duty to act when socialism in any one of them was in danger. Which doctrine is this?

The statement is about intervention inside the socialist bloc, so it is a Soviet doctrine, not an American one.
Peaceful coexistence concerns relations with capitalist states, and 'socialism in one country' concerns building socialism at home. Neither fits.
The claim of a right to intervene in a socialist state, made in 1968, is the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Answer: The Brezhnev Doctrine.

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