Presidential Cold War Doctrines: What Are They Good For?

Abstract

It is no overstatement to say that access to formerly classified material produced by and for the highest levels of the U.S. government has been and will remain fundamental to our field, even as scholars continue to push the field in new and exciting directions that move well beyond the confines of official government actors.1 The program for the 2023 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Conference provides ample evidence of the importance the Society places on access to previously classified materials.2 Many of the papers presented and books discussed over the conference’s three days made use of previously classified materials, as did much of the recent scholarship announced in publishers’ advertisements and arrayed at their display tables. The conference’s plenary session highlighted past and ongoing efforts to ensure access, and issues surrounding records access were the subject of Director of the National Security Archive Tom Blanton’s talk at the Saturday luncheon. Tom and his team have spearheaded all manner of efforts on behalf of records access.3 Our collective debt to them is enormous. Executive Order 13526 of 2009, which currently governs the handling of information related to U.S. national security, provides for three levels of classification: “Confidential,” “Secret,” and “Top Secret,” depending on a document’s degree of sensitivity, and delineates who within the federal government can have access to such materials. While recognizing “that the American people [must] be informed of the activities of their Government” and that U.S. “progress depends on the free flow of information both within the Government and to the American people,” it goes on to note that restricting access to some information is necessary “to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, our homeland security, and our interactions with foreign nations.” Most previously classified materials are supposed to be released within twenty-five years of origination, at which time they become open to researchers.4 The reality, however, has been very different. Delays in basic declassification have become the norm, and the National Declassification Center, established by EO 13526 “to advance the declassification and public release of historically valuable permanent records while maintaining national security,” has a backlog totaling millions of pages.5 Ongoing glitches and delays in routine declassification aside, the books and articles that make up the corpus of writing in our field make abundantly clear that scholars have used previously classified materials to great effect. Their many deep dives into formerly classified materials have unraveled the intricacies of internal policymaking, tracked the give and take of high-level discussions, and helped us to understand efforts to achieve consensus, the costs of dissent, and the various considerations that go into making key foreign policy decisions. But notwithstanding the importance that classified materials have played in our field, there is also value, I believe, in public-facing foreign policy statements. Such statements can take many forms. Presidents often use their inaugural addresses to spell out their foreign policy goals.6 And international developments are often included in annual State of the Union addresses.7 The norms of an open society require these kinds of statements so that the public can be kept informed about the United States’ role in the world. Presidents also often discuss foreign policy matters in speeches to civic groups, political organizations, and other entities, most commonly in an attempt to gin up public support for new initiatives.8 And, of course, they often deliver dedicated addresses to Congress or the nation on foreign policy question of extreme importance. The discussion that follows will briefly explore some of those statements, specifically, six discrete presidential doctrines during the Cold War period. These doctrines were enunciated in a variety of media, from stand-alone addresses on specific international crises, to State of the Union addresses, remarks to reporters, and public speeches. Whatever the form, they were all performative pieces crafted with the express purpose of advancing a foreign policy goal or principle. They carry no force of international law.9 Yet they were not mere words on a page—or in a radio or television broadcast or public speech or address. They were important statements of U.S. policy at the time and can be invaluable vehicles for scholars today. They illuminate the Cold War’s progression from Western Europe to other parts of the world. They demonstrate the way the nation’s domestic conditions affected foreign policy decisions, whether that meant expanding or contracting them. And they reveal that the exigencies of the Cold War often placed a greater priority on containing communism than promoting democracy and other traditional American values. Collective study of these doctrines has heretofore b