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PrintJanuary 12, 2020
Trump repudiates the Carter Doctrine
Nikolas Gvosdev is a Russian-American international relations scholar who is concerned that President Trump is repudiating the Carter doctrine on the Middle East.
What is this doctrine that Gvosdev is referring to? No, it's not what you might first suspect, appeasement. Rather, it's that the U.S. considers instability in the Persian Gulf region an assault on vital American interests which will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. This doctrine was not a Senate-ratified treaty or anything so formal. Rather, it was defined in a State of the Union address that Carter gave in 1980 in the midst of the second oil shock. The Carter doctrine was essentially a promise to the world that the U.S. would ensure the free flow of oil through the Persian Gulf.
According to Gvosdev, to the Carter Doctrine a 'corollary' was added in 1981 by President Reagan. It held that the internal stability of the governments in the region, as well as their safety from external attack, was a prime national interest of the United States.
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But back when these policies were made, the Carter doctrine and the Reagan corollary made sense. The U.S.S.R. had not yet fallen. America was highly dependent on Middle Eastern energy. China was still a backward peasant country. But things are different now. Gvosdev is worried that President Trump is in the process of questioning the strategic logic of these commitments given that the U.S. has become energy independent and that the U.S. has already spent (squandered) much blood and treasure in the Middle East in recent years.
And the horror of it, President Trump is suggesting that U.S. allies who continue to depend on oil from the Middle East take up more of the burden and cost of developing and sustaining the Middle Eastern security architecture. This, in-and-of itself, does not actually repudiate the Carter doctrine. In Carter's State of the Union address, he said security of the Persian Gulf "demands the participation of all those who rely on oil from the Middle East and who are concerned with global peace and stability." That part seemed to have been forgotten by one and all as the full burden of guaranteeing free oil flow out of that troubled region has fallen fully on the United States since then.
The demand that the free-riding must end, as well as America's blank check commitment to keep oil flowing from the Middle East, is voiced by more than just President Trump. It is the American people, both on the left and right, who are repudiating the idea that the United States continue to be the world's policeman on defense and its piggy bank on trade. This is why the MAGA agenda has widespread appeal. And it is why Donald Trump sits in the oval office today and not Hillary Clinton. The much-needed change in American strategy is upon us, and the foreign service people, as much as they loathe the idea, will have to get aboard or get off the train.
Image credit: U.S. Navy / public domain
