---
title: "History of US Foreign-Policy Doctrine for FSOT"
description: "Trace US foreign-policy doctrine from Washington's Farewell Address through the Monroe Doctrine, isolationism, containment, and the post-9/11 era for the FSOT."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/fsot-us-foreign-policy-history-of-us-foreign-policy-doctrine"
---

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History of US foreign-policy doctrine

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# History of US foreign-policy doctrine

Traces US foreign-policy doctrine from Washington's Farewell Address through the Monroe Doctrine, isolationism, containment, and the post-9/11 era for the FSOT.

## From Neutrality to the Monroe Doctrine

US foreign-policy doctrine begins with George Washington's Farewell Address (September 19, 1796), which warned against "permanent alliances" and "foreign entanglements," and Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural (March 4, 1801), which reduced that to "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." These statements established the founding bias toward unilateral freedom of action rather than literal isolation; the young republic traded globally while avoiding binding political commitments to European powers.

The **Monroe Doctrine**, delivered in President James Monroe's annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823 and drafted substantially by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, declared the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonization and pledged US non-interference in European affairs. It was aspirational in 1823—enforced by the Royal Navy, not the US fleet—but became a cornerstone of hemispheric policy. The **Roosevelt Corollary** (Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 annual message) transformed it into a claim of US police power over Latin America, justifying interventions such as the customs receivership in the Dominican Republic (1905).

## Manifest Destiny and Continental Expansion

Nineteenth-century doctrine fused with continental expansion: the Louisiana Purchase (1803), annexation of Texas (1845), the Mexican-American War ending in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), and the Oregon Treaty (1846). Journalist John L. O'Sullivan coined "Manifest Destiny" in 1845. The Spanish-American War (1898) and the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) extended reach overseas, transferring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to US control and inaugurating a debate over empire that the Insular Cases (1901) only partly resolved.

## The Open Door and the Hesitant World Power

Secretary of State John Hay's **Open Door Notes** (1899–1900) asserted equal commercial access to China and Chinese territorial integrity—an early articulation of US economic internationalism. Yet after Woodrow Wilson's idealist intervention in World War I and his Fourteen Points (January 8, 1918), the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations membership in votes on November 19, 1919 and March 19, 1920, reasserting the non-entanglement tradition. The interwar **Neutrality Acts** of 1935, 1936, and 1937 codified isolationism until the Lend-Lease Act (March 11, 1941) and Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) ended it decisively. Across these episodes, a recurring tension defines US doctrine: between unilateral freedom of action inherited from Washington and the collective-security internationalism that would dominate after 1945.

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