Ideology as a Factor in the Transformation of US Foreign Policy in the Late 20th and First Quarter of the 21st Centuries

The article analyses the importance of the ideological factor in the shaping of US foreign policy in the late 20th and early decades of the 21st centuries. The role of ideology in US foreign policy is outlined in historical retrospect. It is pointed out that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the USA faced the problem of finding a new ideological doctrine that would replace the anti-Communist doctrine of the Cold War era. The key aim was to substantiate the country’s claims to geopolitical dominance and the creation of a unipolar world, which took shape as early as in the 1990s. During that period, the ideological basis of US foreign policy were the concept of democratic enlargement by A. Lake and, for the post-Soviet states, the concept of geopolitical pluralism by Z. Brzeziński. In the early 21st century, democratic enlargement was supplemented by the concepts of humanitarian intervention and regime change, whose purpose was to ideologically substantiate the policy of largescale military interventions that were launched in the late 1990s – early 2000s. The author analyses the attempts of the US leadership to deviate from the so-called reset policy by Barack Obama, as well as the announced abandonment of the policy of interventions in the course of Donald Trump’s first presidential term. In addition, the role of ideology in the country’s foreign policy during Joe Biden’s presidency is studied. The author comes to the conclusion that the current US foreign policy is extremely ideologized. The steps taken by the US leadership in the sphere of foreign policy are rather based on ideological stereotypes than on the analysis of the actual state of affairs on the global stage. According to the author, the dominant ideology makes the stabilization of the system of international relations impossible. In conclusion, the author attempts to determine prospects for US foreign policy taking into account a major recent event, i.e. D. Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.