The Strategy of Indirect Approach in the U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

The essence of the strategy of indirect approach (SIA), the definition and notion of which was introduced into the scientific discourse in the mid‑20th century by the English historian B.G. Liddell Hart, is that the main consideration in it was given not to the military force factors, as it had been previously in history, but to alternative options for subduing a hostile state. Nowadays, according to many American scientists and experts, SIA should be used primarily in the preparation of war, and therefore it has switched from the purely military sphere to other areas of state activity — economy, culture, ideology, etc. Nowadays, one of the types of the SIA of the United States is the so-called proxy war, in which military actions of the allied state are the final stage of gradual inclusion of another country into the zone of American influence through alternative methods.