The Carter Doctrine, articulated in 1980, states that the Middle East is an area of vital interest to the USA and that the USA reserves the right to intervene with military force if those American interests (oil) are threatened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. It was a response to the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and it was intended to deter the Soviet Union, the United States' Cold War adversary, from seeking hegemony in the Persian Gulf region.The wording of the document stresses that it would be against forces from outside the region that the USA would retaliate against.
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.The Carter Doctrine was modeled on the Truman Doctrine of 1947, which asserted that the USA will globally counter the spread of communism, and which signified the beginning of the Cold War. Notably, it was not so much communism itself which was perceived as a threat, but Soviet Communism, and the real area of concern was Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 29, 1947,[1] and further developed on July 4, 1948, when he pledged to contain threats in Greece and Turkey. Direct American military force was usually not involved, but Congress appropriated financial aid to support the economies and militaries of Greece and Turkey. More generally, the Truman Doctrine implied American support for other nations allegedly threatened by Soviet communism. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of American foreign policy, and led, in 1949, to the formation of NATO, a military alliance that is still in effect. Historians often use Truman's speech to date the start of the Cold War.
The Truman Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world.[5] It shifted American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from anti-fascism ally to a policy of containment of Soviet expansion as advocated by diplomat George Kennan. It was distinguished from rollback by implicitly tolerating the previous Soviet takeovers in Eastern Europe.The Truman Doctrine pragmatically tolerated the preexisting conquest of Eastern Europe by the Soviets, rather than calling for regime change and revolution ("rollback"). The Truman Doctrine's (conservative) realism was quite different from the later Reagan Doctrine, which called for the USA to support the global overthrow of communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Doctrine
In its pragmatism, the Truman Doctrine resembled the earlier Monroe Doctrine, which declared that further European attempts to colonize the western hemisphere would be regarded by the USA as an act of war -- but nevertheless recognized current European colonies in the New World as legitimate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."[1] At the same time, the doctrine noted that the U.S. would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. The Doctrine was issued on December 2, 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires.In the USA, the Monroe, Truman and Carter Doctrines are understood as anti-imperialist policies warning away other great powers; for the people in these regions, these doctrines are often seen as the imposition of American imperialism. This is classic "sphere of influence" politics. A superpower will inevitably dominate its neighbors. Moreover, that superpower will also recognize the right of other superpowers to likewise dominate their own neighbors (e.g., Soviet domination of eastern Europe) -- even if those other superpowers are arch-enemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence
In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity, accommodating to the interests of powers outside the borders of the state that controls it.
In more extreme cases, a country within the "sphere of influence" of another may become a subsidiary of that state and serve in effect as a satellite state or de facto colony. The system of spheres of influence by which powerful nations intervene in the affairs of others continues to the present. It is often analyzed in terms of superpowers, great powers, and/or middle powers.A sphere of influence is sometimes referred to as a "sphere of interest".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_interest
The national interest, often referred to by the French expression raison d'État (English: "reason of State"), is a country's goals and ambitions, whether economic, military, cultural or otherwise. The concept is an important one in international relations, where pursuit of the national interest is the foundation of the realist school.The USA has at least three major spheres of interest: Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Any intervention by an outside power in these regions would endanger the USA according to established American foreign policy doctrine. That's a lot of real estate to police.
This background might help to explain why the USA is not rushing off to war despite Iran's attacks on oil production in Saudi Arabia. Iran is a regional power, not a global superpower posing an existential risk to the USA the way the USSR did. If the Soviet Union still existed and was allied with Iran and these strikes against Saudi Arabia were carried out, the world might well have very rapidly found itself veering toward nuclear war. Without the USSR, the "Big One" happened in the Middle East, yet to no consequence (yet).
From a realist perspective, the problem in the Cold War was not primarily ideology or communism, but great power conflict between the USA and the USSR. (Hence Nixon and Kissinger's recognition of communist China in order to counter the power of the USSR.) Communism has disappeared, but with the revival of the Russian economy, Russia has emerged as an adversary to the USA. Idealists in the USA are flummoxed by this, but to a realist, it is all very predictable.
This tells us something about the ascent of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump to the presidency in the USA. When there is a life-or-death crisis, people tend to become pragmatic and realistic. When Reagan was elected, the Cold War was heating up with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But that invasion was itself a sign of the steep decline in all areas in the USSR (the Soviet leadership was literally senile). The political sphere in the USA seems to have become incorporated into the entertainment industry precisely because there are so few obvious existential threats.
Ironically, things have never been better. More ironically, the cocky sense of overconfidence that the absence of real crisis inspires among the masses is itself a source of instability and grievous concern.
Robert Reich asserts that President Trump is dangerously unstable and needs to be forced from office. What the good professor fails to realize is that thanks to democracy, someone far worse than Trump -- and far more fun! -- would be elected in Trump's place.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/15/donald-trump-nuts-impeachment-25th-amendment-2020-election
