US Foreign Policy After the Cold War

Global Hegemon or Reluctant Sheriff?

Fraser Cameron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415358644
• eBook ISBN: 9781134244058
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

Since the success of the best-selling first edition, the world has remained fascinated with US foreign policy, not least because of the far-reaching consequences of the US led invasion of Iraq. This fully updated textbook follows the events of the past two and a half years including the 2004 presidential campaign, whilst still providing a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of American foreign policy. Chapter headings include:

• from colony to superpower
• the post-Cold War decade
• the role of Congress
• the media and public opinion
• the US and terrorism.

Examining the administrations of George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, it explains the complex interaction between the institutions of power, the key actors and the non-governmental organizations to give a complete picture of foreign policy. With a complete glossary of terms, this textbook is ideal for those studying American politics or international relations.

Companion website available at: www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415358655

1
From colony to superpower

Key facts

The American century

The reluctant internationalist

The two world wars

The Cold War

Case study: the Vietnam War

Conclusion

Selected further reading

Key facts

• The twentieth century was “the American century.” Since 1945, America has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, a unique role in the world as the pre-eminent political, military, and economic power. The contemporary debates on what global role the US should play are rooted in American history.
• A large majority of the Founding Fathers did not wish the US to become involved in global affairs. Blessed by geographical position and abundant natural resources, the US maintained a low foreign policy profile during its first hundred years. The gradual expansion of territory during the nineteenth century was followed by an imperial scramble at the turn of the century. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson represented competing visions of realism and idealism.
• The First World War intervention in 1917 was decisive in securing an allied victory but the US rejected the League of Nations and reverted to isolationism and protectionist economic policies in the inter-war years. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 catapulted the US into the Second World War and again its intervention was decisive in ensuring allied victory.
• After 1945, the US began a massive global engagement and arms build-up to ensure “containment” of communism. There was broad bipartisan support for US foreign policy during the Cold War. Superpower rivalry dominated international politics. The Vietnam War divided America and colored later thinking about military interventions.
• The Cold War era saw massive expansion in national security structures and huge budgets for military and intelligence communities. The end of the Cold War was due to freedom and independence movements in Eastern Europe, the internal collapse of the Soviet Union, and US arms spending during the Reagan presidency.

The American century

No country can escape its geography and history when it comes to establishing its foreign policy principles and priorities. The US is not just a country; it is a continent, protected by two vast oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific. Of course, even its geographical advantages cannot protect the US from terrorist attacks but the enormous size of the US, plus its population and economic base, give it a unique position in the world. True, there are countries larger in size (Russia, Canada) and population (China, India) but no other country enjoys the panoply of resources that befit the term “superpower” or “hyperpower.” As can be seen from Table 1.1, the European Union (EU) is already an economic superpower but it is far from being a political and military superpower like the US.

Like all other countries, the US has always acted in defense of its national interests but a continuous thread of idealism has also found a place in American foreign policy. Throughout its history the US has viewed itself as having a unique mission in the world, to promote its values of “freedom, independence, and democracy” and its market economy or capitalist economic system. Other countries, including all other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), France, the UK, Russia and China, share, or shared in the past, their own messianic vision. Few have been in a position to promote their values abroad to the same extent as the US, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. The 1990s were the climax of “the American century.” Not only had the US won the Cold War but its economy raced ahead of other industrial nations and its culture and technology had spread to every corner of the globe. Whether studying in China, Russia, Brazil, India or Germany, students were likely to be using Microsoft, listening to Madonna, watching Tom Cruise, drinking Coke and eating Big Macs.

Table 1.1 Comparison of US, EU, Japan, Russia, and China

At the start of a new millennium, with a new administration taking over in Washington, there were many debates on the future direction of American foreign policy. A host of reports poured out of Congress, think tanks, and various national commissions seeking to define American external interests and priorities. A central theme of this debate was whether the US should use its extraordinary power only to protect vital American interests, about which there was no consensus, or whether it should play a wider role in the world. In general, those on the left argued that values (e.g. promotion of democracy, protection of human rights) were vital to American interests while those on the right were more skeptical of a values approach to foreign policy. Strangely, at this unique historical moment, there was very little discussion about the external spending priorities of the US nor about the most appropriate instruments the US should be using and developing to maintain its global position. Neither was there any substantive discussion on the kind of image that the US projected abroad. This changed, however, in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The divisions between and within political parties on foreign policy reflected a lack of consensus on what role the US should seek to play in the post-Cold War world. These differences, however, are not new. To some extent they were masked by the largely bipartisan foreign policy approach during the Cold War but divisions over foreign policy have been the norm throughout American history. A brief survey is revealing of such differences.

The reluctant internationalist

The US was not always keen to play a global role. After gaining its independence from Britain, the US sought to limit its involvement in international affairs and avoid competition with foreign powers. In particular, a clear majority of the Founding Fathers of the new republic insisted that America should avoid involvement in the political intrigues and power rivalries of Europe. (One can imagine how shocked they would be today to learn of the global involvement of the US from Afghanistan to Argentina, from Kosovo to Korea.) In his farewell address in 1796, President George Washington set out guidelines for American foreign policy that found widespread approval. “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations but to have with them as little political connections as possible. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

This policy of non-entanglement or isolationism from other countries thus has a long historical tradition. Apart from broad agreement on isolationism, there was no consensus among the Founding Fathers as to what principles should guide US foreign policy. Indeed the differences between the idealists and realists led to rival ideological camps that persist to this day. In the idealist camp were the likes of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who believed that the new nation could and should make a sharp break with the past and conduct a foreign policy guided by law and reason, not power politics. Jefferson claimed that power and force had been legitimate principles in the past, but that in the new era of democracy and law, relations between nations should be guided by a code of morality.

Representing the realist camp, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay took a quite different perspective. Hamilton attacked the notion that increased trade would lead to perpetual peace. Jay went further in arguing that nations in general would make war whenever they had a prospect of gaining an advantage. As far as Hamilton and Jay were concerned, America would have to be guided by sober national interest just like any other country. Although the US would be sympathetic to other countries seeking freedom, democracy, and independence, its early leaders agreed that it should not become involved directly in such struggles (Kramnick 1987). In the words of Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, America does not go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy. She will recommend the general cause (of freedom and independence) by the countenance of her voice, and by the benign sympathy of her example” (LaFeber 1965). Adams’s words were interpreted as applying to territory outside North America because, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the US was engaged in a military campaign to conquer the western territories from native Americans and Mexico. In another pronouncement that was a mixture of idealism and realism, the US let it be known that it would not welcome any outside interference in the western hemisphere, a policy statement made by President Monroe in 1823 that later became known as the “Monroe Doctrine.”

Developing a foreign policy for the new republic entailed reconciling not just the divide between idealists and realists, but also the competing interests of the country’s different regions. Northerners were interested in developing an industrial base and therefore sought tariffs (taxes on imports) to protect their manufactured goods. Southerners depended heavily upon the export of cotton and other crops and thus opposed the protective tariffs sought by the north. In addition to divergent foreign trade policy priorities of the north and south, there were also fundamental social and cultural differences (e.g. over the issue of slavery) that culminated in the Civil War of 18615. In the aftermath of the Civil War, in which over half a million Americans lost their lives, the US concentrated on re-building the devastated south, expanding its economy, and healing social divisions. But as the turn of the century approached, the US began to flex its muscles. It started to construct a formidable navy and simultaneously began to push its weight around in the Caribbean and Pacific. In 1898 it provoked a conflict with Spain over Cuba and then in the same year proceeded to establish colonial rule in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines.

The reasons for this change in policy were complex. For some Americans, it was simply time for their country to enjoy the fruits of being a great power. The US had developed a strong economy; it should therefore have an international voice commensurate with its new status. Others argued that the US was “a nation apart” and had a “manifest destiny,” which involved a moral mission to promote liberty and democracy around the world, and to protect Latin America from European imperialism. According to one historian, many influential Americans of the time simply liked

the smell of empire and felt an urge to range themselves among the colonial powers of the time, to see our flag flying on distant tropical isles, to feel the thrill of foreign adventure and authority, to bask in the sunshine of recognition as one of the great imperial powers of the world.

(Kennan 1984: 17)

The increased power of the federal government after the upheaval of the Civil War also played a role. National leaders were able to allocate more resources to support the military, a necessary buttress to a more assertive foreign policy (Zakaria 1998). Throughout the nineteenth century the US continued to proclaim that its ideas were universal but did little to export them to other countries. This would change in the twentieth century. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first occupant of the White House to acknowledge the importance of the balance of power and a keen proponent of a more robust American approach to world affairs. During his presidency (1905–09), the US intervened in Haiti (as it would do at the end of the twentieth century) and helped Panama secede from Colombia, thus paving the way for the Panama Canal to be completed. In a first effort at global mediation, in 1905, Roosevelt invited representatives from Japan and Russia to sign a peace treaty, the Treaty of Portsmouth, in the US.

The two world wars

If Theodore Roosevelt was a “realist” in foreign policy, President Woodrow Wilson was more of an “idealist.” With the outbreak of the First World War, involving initially Britain, France, and Russia on one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other, Wilson’s initial response was to remain neutral. Public opinion strongly opposed entry into what many Americans viewed as a European civil war and there was solid support for the President’s policy of neutrality. After German submarines began sinking American merchant ships, however, Wilson’s strategy proved untenable, not least because the war threatened to do serious harm to the US economy by shutting down transatlantic trade. The President did not, however, seek to win support for the war by appealing to American national interests. Rather he sold the war to the American public in idealist terms, speaking of the US “making the world safe for democracy.” America was unlike other powers pursuing narrow national interests. Wilson saw the war as an opportunity “to end the failed balance of power system and replace it with a community of power and an organized peace.”

At the President’s urging, Congress declared war on Germany in April 1917, and the US was thereafter directly involved in just the type of conflict it had avoided successfully since the founding of the republic. Given American military and economic resources, the US intervention in the war was to prove decisive. Once an allied victory appeared inevitable, Wilson devoted his presidency to negotiating the Versailles peace treaty and designing the League of Nations, the organization that he hoped would ensure America’s permanent involvement in safeguarding global stability. The debate on America’s participation in the League was revealing of attitudes toward a wider US international engagement.

Wilson made much of America’s idealist traditions setting out in 1918 “fourteen points” or principles that should guide US policy. These included a call for open diplomacy, self-determination, general disarmament, and the abandonment of the balance of power principle in favor of a system of collective security. His opponents argued that the US should look after its own interests and not become involved in settling disputes around the world. Despite his huge personal efforts Wilson was unable to convince the Senate, or a majority of Americans, that they should become permanently involved in world affairs through the League of Nations. His unwillingness to compromise on the treaty’s provisions, as some senators demanded, was also a serious error. Many senators were opposed to the automatic and binding provisions of the treaty. The Senate’s rejection of the treaty in 1919 by fifty-five votes to thirty-five not only dealt a fatal blow to Wilson’s hopes but also revealed the country’s doubts about becoming a global power (Cooper 2001). Warren Harding, who won the 1920 presidential election, campaigned on an “America First” slogan and rejected Wilson’s view that the US should play a prominent internationalist role in foreign and security policy. The interwar years saw the US retreat into an isolationist and protectionist stance. America largely turned its back on the world and raised tariffs to protect its own industries from foreign competition.

Twenty-five years after rejecting the League of Nations, the US Senate ratified almost without objection (892 votes) America’s entry into another global collective security organization, the United Nations (UN). This striking turnaround in American policy was the product of years of careful planning and shrewd political maneuvering by President Franklin Roosevelt to build domestic support for America’s participation in a postwar security system. The US had again remained neutral at the onset of the Second World War but Roosevelt made clear his sympathy for Britain and its allies fighting against Nazi Germany. It was not until the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, however, that the US was able to join the hostilities. Surprisingly it was Hitler that declared war on the US and thus made his own defeat inevitable. As in the First World War, American intervention was to prove the decisive factor in securing an allied victory with American forces fighting in Europe, North Africa, and the Far East. In the latter war theater, the US dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, thus ensuring Japan’s defeat. For some, the use of nuclear weapons was more designed to demonstrate American power to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, rather than a device to end the war with Japan (Alperovitz 1994).

President Franklin Roosevelt was determined not to make the same mistake as Wilson in 1919. From late 1943 until the end of the war, the administration carefully mapped out detailed plans for the UN, involving a restricted Security Council of the major powers and an American veto, while working to strengthen the bipartisan consensus supporting US participation. The President’s clever political and public relations campaign resulted in overwhelming public and congressional support for American participation in the UN. Support for US engagement was helped by the fact that America had become such a dominant political, military, and economic force in the world. By the end of 1945, and largely as a result of the economic stimulus provided by the war, the US was by far the wealthiest nation in the world with more than half the world’s productive capacity. In global affairs, most nations now looked to Washington first, with other capitals such as London and Paris a distant second.

The Cold War

After a century and a half, the US had finally committed itself to play a continuing role on the world stage. But now it was faced with the challenge of communist expansion. As the Soviet Red Army moved toward Berlin in the spring of 1945, it liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazis and became the dominant power factor in the region. The Soviet Union had borne the brunt of the fighting and the losses (20 million) during the Second World War. Given the extent of these losses and the fact that Poland was the traditional invasion route to Russia, Stalin had no intention of allowing Western-style democracy to take root in Poland, Czechoslovakia, or anywhere else under his control, lest these countries adopt an anti-Soviet stance. Partly as a result of Winston Churchill’s warning in 1946 of an “Iron Curtain” descending in the middle of the European continent, the US became increasingly concerned at the prospect of a communist takeover in Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe. These rival views about the future of Europe led to a confrontation between the US, which was in the midst of a massive demobilization of its armed forces, and the Soviet Union, which had maintained its huge army, and which would also soon possess the atomic bomb. This confrontation, known as the Cold War, led to an unprecedented arms race between the US and the Soviet Union that would lead to a fundamental change in American foreign policy.

In 1947, the Foreign Affairs journal published a famous article signed by “X” (a pseudonym for an American diplomat, George Kennan) that put forward the idea that the US should pursue a patient, but firm, long-term policy of containment of Soviet power. The containment strategy was also designed to destroy Soviet communism over time, by isolating it and exposing its economic and social weaknesses. President Harry Truman, who recognized the need to build on the new consensus that Roosevelt had created in order to secure domestic support to oppose communism, took up the containment idea. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947, the President laid down the policy that became known as the “Truman Doctrine.”

It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. The...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: From colony to superpower
• 2: The post-Cold War years
• 3: The executive branch
• 4: The role of Congress
• 5: The domestic environment
• 6: The media and public opinion
• 7: Foreign trade, the economy and globalization
• 8: Terrorism and the Iraq War
• 9: US foreign policy priorities
• 10: Hegemon and sheriff
• Conclusion: What kind of US leadership?
• Glossary
• Selected key dates
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Bibliography