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<p>This dissertation addresses one of the most vexing issues in American foreign policy:
Under what circumstances should the United States use military force in pursuit of
national interests? Despite not having a policy upon entering office or articulating
one throughout its first term, the Reagan administration used military force numerous
times. Two-weeks following Reagan's landslide reelection victory, Secretary of Defense
Caspar W. Weinberger articulated six tests for when and how to use military force,
which surprisingly seemed to call for restraint. Through the examination of three
case studies, the Reagan administration's decisions are found to have been influenced
by the assimilation of lessons from Vietnam, the reading of public pulse, the desire
to placate Congress, and the need to protect the nation's strategic interests. All
these factors, ultimately codified by Weinberger, were considered by the leaders in
the Reagan administration as they tried to expand the military's ability to help the
U.S. meet an increasingly wider range of threats. Thus this dissertation will show
that, contrary to what one finds in contemporary scholarship, the Weinberger doctrine
was intended as a policy to legitimize the use of military force as a tool of statecraft,
rather than an endorsement to reserve force as a last resort after other instruments
of power have failed.</p>
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