Open Door Policy Analysis

Elements of Soft Power in The Open Door Policy: Beyond Liberalism and Realism

Class: MAS 2016

Name: Yu Hanqi

Lecturer: Dr. Martin Thunert

1 Introduction

1.1 The Open Door Policy

The Open Door Policy refers to the United States foreign policy carried out to deal with the situation in China in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was first announced by John Hay, then Secretary of State, in his Open Door Note on September 6, 1899 and dispatched to the major European powers with vested influence and interests in China. If proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, keeping any one power from total control of the country, and calling upon all powers, within their spheres of influence, to refrain from interfering

The power relations in the Far East were undergoing drastic realignment as a result of the Russo-Japanese War. By the middle of 1905 the Japanese had proceeded to take over Russian rights and interests in South Manchuria, including the leasehold at Port Arthur and that part of the Russian-controlled Chinese Eastern Railway stretching from Changchun to Port Arthur. The Russians in North Manchuria and the Japanese in South Manchuria.

2.1 “American Exceptionalism”: The Idealism Approach

The open door policy proclaimed a doctrine of freedom--of equality of privilege. It was a live and let-live policy; it rhymed with the lofty sentiments of the rights of man and the Declaration of Independence.[ Tyler Dennett, The Open Door Policy as Intervention, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 168, American Policy in the Pacific (Jul., 1933), p. 78]

I have already pointed out how the American people responded to the first intervention in the Far East as a great ethical policy. We would free the downtrodden Filipinos from the blight of the Spanish rule and the Roman Catholic friars. We would “save China”.[ Tyler Dennett, The Open Door Policy as Intervention, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 168, American Policy in the Pacific (Jul., 1933), p.

... Behind closed doors, however, the elites who make national security policy speak mostly the language of power, not that of principle. ... In essence, a discernible gap separates public rhetorics from the actual conduct of American foreign policy.” [ John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: W. W. Norton, 2001]

2.2.1 Realism Policies and Liberalism Rhetorics

Foreign policies also produce soft power when they promote broadly shared values such as democracy and human rights. Americans have wrestled with how to integrate our values with other interests since the early days of the republic.[ Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power - The Means to Success in World Politics, New York: Public Affairs, 2004]

Realist policies sometimes coincide with the dictates of liberalism, in which case there is no conflict between the pursuit of power and the pursuit of principle. Under theses circumstances, realist policies can be justified with liberal rhetoric without having the discuss the underlying power realities.[ John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: W. W. Norton,