ABSTRACT
To understand past and present military doctrines, one must analyze the foreign policy objectives these doctrines are designed to implement. The advent of the Reagan administration marked a shift toward the rollback extreme of the foreign policy spectrum. As a consequence, US military doctrines have moved from more defensive toward more aggressive postures. In three major areas military doctrine has undergone changes during the Reagan era: nuclear, conventional, and unconventional war doctrine. The chapter outlines US foreign and military policy since World War II and discusses debates over nuclear, conventional, and low-intensity war policy in the light of the 1980s shift toward rollback foreign policy goals. Although not a military doctrine, economic destabilization of socialist or radical nationalist governments is a critical tactic of the Reagan Doctrine of Third World rollback and is an integral part of low-intensity conflict. This tactic is designed to prevent the necessity of direct military intervention and may use proxy armies as a central feature.
