American commitments in the Third World: theory vs. practice

1987 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce W. Jentleson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Third World ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
The Third World

Amidst their other differences, the defeats suffered by the United States in Vietnam, Iran, and Lebanon have a common explanation. In all three cases American strategy was based on “global commitments theory.” Interests were to be defended and global credibility strengthened by the making, maintaining, reinforcing, and sustaining of American commitments to Third World allies. However, the core assumptions on which the logic of global commitments theory rests are plagued with inherent fallacies. These fallacies can be identified analytically as patterns of dysfunction along four dimensions of foreign policy: decision-making, diplomacy, military strategy, and domestic politics. They also can be shown empirically to have recurred across the Vietnam, Iran, and Lebanon cases. The central theoretical conclusion questions the fundamental validity of global commitments theory as it applies to the exercise of power and influence in the Third World. Important prescriptive implications for future American foreign policy are also discussed.

4. American foreign policy during the Cold War

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Saull
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Third World ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter offers a theoretically informed overview of American foreign policy during the Cold War. It covers the main historical developments in U.S. policy: from the breakdown of the wartime alliance with the USSR and the emergence of the US–Soviet diplomatic hostility and geopolitical confrontation,to U.S. military interventions in the third world and the U.S. role in the ending of the Cold War. The chapter begins with a discussion of three main theoretical approaches to American foreign policy during the Cold War: realism, ideational approaches, and socio-economic approaches. It then considers the origins of the Cold War and containment of the Soviet Union, focusing on the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. It also examines the militarization of U.S. foreign policy with reference to the Korean War, Cold War in the third world, and the role of American foreign policy in the ending of the Cold War.

Angola: The Present Opportunity

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
John A. Marcum
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Third World ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
The Third ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Gulf Of Tonkin ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Present Opportunity

As remote and improbable a venue for a crisis in American foreign policy as Quemoy or the Gulf of Tonkin, Angola (1975) came to assume a Munich-like symbolism in the calculations of Americans who perceived a threat of Soviet expansionism into the third world during the latter years of the Brezhnev era. Smarting from a political/military shutout in Angola that came on the heels of a humiliating American exodus from Saigon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pointed to Angola as the “principal” cause of a deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations. Subsequent policy confrontations over Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Cambodia reinforced this perception of Angola as the beginning of the end of detente.

scholarly journals Colonial empires and USA policy in the South-East Asia after the 1945

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-255
Author(s):  
Stanislav Gennadyevich Malkin ◽  
Sergey Olegovich Buranok ◽  
Dmitriy Aleksandrovich Nesterov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The Military

The following paper analyzes the characteristics of the US foreign policy decision-making process at the beginning of the Cold War, due to the active appeal of representatives of the political establishment, the military and the countrys expert community to the colonial experience of the European powers in terms of the prospects of applying their experience in ensuring colonial control in Southeast Asia before and after the end of the World War II as part of the US political course in this region. In addition, it is concluded that more attention should be paid to the role and, therefore, to the prosopographic profile of the experts (in the broad sense of the word), who collaborated with the departments responsible for the development of American foreign policy, such as the Department of State and the Pentagon, and formulated many of the conclusions, which, at least rhetorically, formed the basis of Washingtons course in Southeast Asia after 1945. Special attention is paid to interpretations of the role of colonial knowledge in the light of the unfolding Cold War in the third world, proposed by British diplomats and the military to their American colleagues in the logic of the special relations between Great Britain and the United States.

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