Description
This article challenges from a gender perspective the concept of US foreign policy doctrines, a key concept used in US foreign policy and international politics more broadly. Despite a lack of definitional clarity, this article sheds light on two points of convergence in scholarship on US foreign policy doctrines: their gendered style and substance. The article demonstrates that US foreign policy doctrines rely on a masculinised style of communication and on a masculinist military posture. Doctrines may concentrate on different regions, use different methods for projecting American power, advocate different courses of action, or lead to success or failure, yet they share one commonality: doctrines are expressed as short foreign policy ‘post-it’ notes and convey a hawkish and militarist foreign policy stance. This is also true of the Hillary doctrine, one of the early iterations of what is now referred as “feminist foreign policy”. Drawing on a range of feminist scholarship, this intervention contributes to the theorisation of doctrines by making gender visible, so far absent in US doctrines studies. It argues that the way US foreign policy doctrines are conceptualised and recognised maintain the gender order and close alternative constructions of foreign policy that are potentially more complex, conciliatory, and nuanced.
