ABSTRACT
President Ronald Reagan's decision to send US troops to Grenada in October 1983 rekindled an ancient, if episodic, debate in US foreign policy about the proper use of military power. In view of his loudly and frequently proclaimed anticommunism and his overwhelming 1980 electoral mandate, President Reagan might have been expected to announce some sweeping foreign policy doctrine early in his administration. The intellectuals and foreign policy specialists holding the views are neoconservatives. In reality, however, congressional reaction to Grenada, like its response to all major episodes in US foreign policy since the late 1960s, demonstrated the absence of the old bipartisan consensus. President Reagan declined to proclaim a sweeping "Grenada doctrine" largely because of the continuing lack of a domestic consensus about the purposes and limits of US power. British representatives in Grenada, who were much more sanguine about the situation than their US counterparts, doubted that foreign nationals were in danger.
