Formation of US foreign policy strategies and doctrines at the beginning of the 21st century: a practical dimension

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze the foreign policy strategies and doctrines of the USA in the last decades. Special attention is paid to presidential doctrines, which, focusing on the most important priorities of the president’s foreign policy, shape the position of the state in the modern system of international relations. Currently, the key direction of foreign policy priorities has become the development of strategies covering the concept of “new challenges” to national security. Threats such as terrorism, regional instability, uncontrolled flows of weapons and drug trafficking, transnational crime networks and illegal migration, ethnic conflicts and political regimes, systematic violation of human rights, growing demand for resources, natural disasters, environmental hazards, and pandemics came to the fore. The renewal of the complex of strategic threats has caused the modernization of American approaches to ensuring security and defense. As a result of the study, based on the application of political analysis methods, considerable attention is paid to the strategic culture of the USA as an answer to fundamental questions about the way of thinking and behavior of the state, the tools of its foreign policy, its perception of key categories for national improvement – «security», «enemy», «environment», «threat». Taking into account the evolutionary dimension of the perception, awareness and overcoming of threats to the USA, it is possible to single out certain features of strategic culture that played and continue to play a significant role in the process of making foreign policy decisions of this state, which are discussed in this article. Conclusions. All US foreign policy actions are aimed at achieving its own national interests, and their structuring, reflection and consolidation in doctrinal documents allow for the synchronization of foreign policy steps and the adoption of important political decisions, despite the turbulence in international relations and the changing geopolitical realities of the 21st century.