Nixon Doctrine (1969)

Policy announcing the U.S. intention to support its threatened allies with economic and military aid rather than ground troops. During the Vietnam War, at the beginning of a 1969 global tour, President Richard Nixon spoke with reporters on the island of Guam. In this informal discussion, Nixon stated that the United States could no longer afford to defend its allies fully. He added that although the United States would continue to uphold all of its treaty responsibilities, it would expect its allies to contribute significantly to their own defense.

Nixon also indicated that the United States would continue to extend economic and military assistance (arms), especially in cases where it was in the national interest of the United States. At the same time, he reassured U.S. allies by promising that the United States would continue to use its nuclear arsenal to shield its friends from nuclear threats.

The Nixon Doctrine was not intended to influence U.S. actions in its engagement in the Vietnam War, in which ground troops were already committed. It was, in fact, because of the tremendous drain of the Vietnam War on U.S. resources that Nixon created the doctrine. Even so, from 1969 onward, although the Nixon Doctrine was a firm message to U.S. allies, the Nixon administration did not adhere absolutely to the doctrine. The U.S. invasions into Cambodia in 1970 and Laos in 1971 employed the use of U.S. ground troops, contradicting the intentions of the doctrine.

Historians and foreign policy experts emphasize that with the Nixon Doctrine, Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, were intent on shifting U.S. foreign policy away from a bilateral view of international relations—that is, away from a sole focus on the U.S.-Soviet struggle for power. Nixon and [Page 518]Kissinger also envisioned a world in which the United States would share power with a number of its allies.

According to this multilateral view, the United States would not be the sole rescuer of the free world but would share that responsibility with its most powerful allies. Nixon hoped that one day the United States, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Japan would coexist peacefully and trade together to their mutual benefit.

The Nixon Doctrine influenced the United States in its decision to sell arms to Iran and to Israel in the early to mid-1970s. In Iran, the United States agreed to a request by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (the shah of Iran) to purchase conventional weapons. The shah purchased a total of $15 billion in U.S. arms, buying weapons that were technologically superior to most of those in the U.S. arsenal. Nixon and Kissinger believed that strengthening Iran's weapons program would stabilize the Middle East, thereby not only protecting Iran's oil supply but also the oil reserves in all nations bordering the Persian Gulf.

An unintended negative consequence of the decision to sell arms to Iran was its impact on the U.S. economy. To pay for the weapons, the shah raised oil prices, creating a situation that contributed to the already heavily inflated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil prices, which hurt U.S. oil consumers.

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