NIXON DOCTRINE

Nixon Doctrine

Nixon Doctrine

Introduction

Nixon Doctrine is a self-limiting defence doctrine for the US in Asia, inadvertently born as the Guam Doctrine of 1969 and formally announced by President Nixon in 1970 as a result of American disillusion with the Vietnam War. The US would keep its treaty commitments and defend small allies against assault by communist great powers, but in other types of aggression the nation threatened would have to assume the primary responsibility of providing manpower for its own defence. The Nixon Doctrine greatly stimulated the development of self-reliant defence thinking in Australia, especially evident in the Dibb Report of 1986. This paper discusses the famous “Nixon Doctrine”.

Discussion

Nixon Doctrine was a foreign policy precept enunciated by U.S. president Richard M. Nixon on November 3, 1969. In July 1969 Nixon began his first foreign trip as president with a stop in Guam. Speaking to the press at the island's Naval Air Station, he promised that “we will keep our treaty commitments” to Asian nations but cautioned that “as far as the problems of internal security [and] military defense, except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons, the United States … has a right to expect that this problem will be increasingly handled by … the Asian nations themselves.” (Nixon, 2008)

In an address to the nation on November 3, 1969, Nixon expanded on his earlier remarks, calling for the United States to honor its current treaty negotiations and to provide a nuclear umbrella for its key allies. The United States would continue to provide military and economic aid to other nations battling Communist aggression but with the understanding that those nations themselves would provide the manpower with which to do battle. In essence, Nixon put most of the developing world on notice that Americans would no longer bear the primary responsibility of fighting Communist forces. (Kaplan, 2000)

Many interpreted Nixon's pronouncement, which the press quickly dubbed the “Nixon Doctrine,” as meaning that Nixon planned to abandon Vietnam once American troops had withdrawn. Nixon later argued in his Memoirs that such interpretations were false and that the doctrine was meant to be a platform that would allow the United States to “play a responsible role” in helping non-Communist nations win and defend their independence.

Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger were fully aware that the American populace was highly unlikely to support costly brush-fire wars such as those fought in Korea and Vietnam. They also realized that the United States was in a period of relative economic decline, which made open-ended military commitments around the world unwise if not dangerous. The Nixon Doctrine also seemed to acknowledge that the formerly bipolar era, in which the Soviets and Americans predominated, had given way to a more multipolar world in which strict policies of Communist containment were no longer as important. Clearly the Nixon Doctrine came from the realization that U.S. power had its limits. (Greene, 2002)

Elsewhere in the world, the Nixon Doctrine intended to employ ...