[Juan Tovar Ruiz, La doctrina en la política exterior de Estados Unidos: De Truman a Trump ( Madrid: Catarata, 2017) 224 pages.]
review / Xabier Ramos Garzón
Every change in the White House leads to an analysis of the outgoing president's policies and to speculation about the policies of the incoming president. Given the weight of the United States in the world, the vision on international affairs of each administration is decisive for the world order. Juan Tovar Ruiz, professor of International Relations at the University of Burgos, deals in this book with the essence of the foreign policy of each president - mainly from Truman to Trump (Biden's, logically, is yet to be defined) - which in many cases follows a defined road map that has come to be called "doctrine".
Among the book's strengths are the fact that it combines several points of view: on the one hand, it covers, from the realist point of view, the structural and internal effects of each policy, and on the other, it analyzes the ideas and interactions between actors taking into account the constructivist point of view. The author explores the decision-making processes and their consequences, considers the ultimate effectiveness of American doctrines in the general context of international relations, and examines the influences, ruptures and continuities between different doctrines over time. Despite the relatively short history of the United States, the country has had an extensive and complex foreign policy which Tovar, focusing on the last eight decades, synthesizes with special merit, adopting a mainly general point of view that highlights the substantive.
The book is divided into seven chapters, organized by historical stages and, within each, by presidents. The first chapter, by way of introduction, covers the period following U.S. independence until the end of World War II. This stage is sample as an antecedent core topic in the future American ideology, with two particularly determining positions: the Monroe Doctrine and Wilsonian Idealism. The second chapter deals with the First Cold War, with the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson doctrines. Throughout the chapter the different postulates are contextualized and the issues that were core topic in the creation of doctrines that only affected the foreign policy of the moment, but were imbricated in the core of American political thought are pointed out. The third chapter deals with the Distension, the period between 1969 and 1979 in which the doctrines of Nixon and Carter took place. The fourth chapter takes us to the Second Cold War and the end of the US-USSR confrontation, a time when we find the doctrines of Reagan and Bush senior. From this point, the following chapters (fifth, sixth and seventh) deal with the Post-Cold War period, with the doctrines of Clinton, Bush junior and the most recent ones - therefore still subject to study - of Obama and Trump.
In the conclusions the author summarizes each of the chapters on the basis of academic or political characterizations and makes some qualifications, such as warning that in his opinion Obama's foreign policy is rather a "non-doctrine", since it combines elements of different ideologies and is partly contradictory. Obama dealt with various conflicts in different ways: he dealt realistically with "wars of necessity" (Afghanistan) and agreement with the liberal internationalist approach to conflicts such as Libya. Although the flexibility carried out by Obama may be considered a weakness by some, as he did not follow a firm and marked policy, it can also be seen as the necessary adaptation to a continuously changing environment. There are many occasions when a U.S. president, such as Bush Jr. has pursued a rigid foreign policy, ideologically speaking, that ultimately written request achieved little practical success.
Another example of a variant of the conventional doctrine that sample the author is the "anti-doctrine" carried out by Trump. Whoever was president until 2021 executed a policy characterized by numerous contradictions and variations with respect to the role that the US had been exercising in the world, thereby casting doubts and uncertainties on the expected performance of the American superpower. This was due to Trump's political inexperience, both domestically and domestically, which caused concern not only among international actors but also in the core of Washington itself.
From the analysis of the different doctrines presented in the book, we can see how each one of them is adapted to a specific social, historical and political context, and at the same time they all respond to a shared political tradition of a country that, as a superpower, manifests certain constants when it comes to maintaining peace and guaranteeing security. But these constants should not be confused with universal aspects, since each country has its own particularities and specific interests: simply adapting U.S. positions to the foreign policy plans of other countries can lead to chaotic failures if these differences are not recognized.
For example, countries such as Spain, which depend on membership of the European Union, would not be able to enter into random wars unilaterally as the United States has done. However, Spain could adopt some elements, such as in subject of decision making, since this subject of doctrines greatly facilitates objectifying and standardizing the processes of analysis and resolutions.
