The first failed empire of the 21st century

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Surface Phenomena ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twenty First Century

American foreign policy has been recently dominated by the venture into Iraq. This has not gone well. Most criticism has focused on ‘mistakes’ – there were not enough US troops, or they were of the wrong type, the Iraqi army was mistakenly disbanded after it surrendered, looting was not anticipated, oil expectations were unreal, the US depended too much on Iraqi exile claims, and so forth. Indeed, these were mistakes. 250,000 troops trained also in police roles would have made a difference. So might Iraqi army units converted into security police. So might better planning all round. But the mistakes were only the surface phenomena of a more profound American failure. The Iraq venture was doomed from the outset by the attempt to create what some neo-conservatives styled a ‘New American Empire’. This exaggerated American powers, made facile historical comparisons with previous Empires, mis-identified the enemy, and mis-identified the century we live in. This early twenty-first century attempt at Empire is failing. There will not be others.

Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteenth Point in the Twenty-First Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-41
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Knock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores American foreign policy and the country’s global position in the early twenty-first century, and in particular during the presidency of Donald Trump, employing the historical background of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Specifically, the chapter discusses the importance of Wilson’s fourteenth point, which emphasizes the need for international cooperation and mutual understanding among nations. It explains why the United States needs internationalism and a strong foreign policy. The chapter concludes by stating the need for America’s involvement with the United Nations, in the midst of Trump’s efforts to separate America from the international community.

Neoliberal Redistributive Policy: The US Net Social Wage in the Early Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Moos
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
First Century ◽  
Redistributive Policy ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Social Wage

This paper estimates the net social wage—the difference between labor benefits and labor taxation—from 1959 to 2012 in the United States using two different methodologies. During this period the average NSW1/GDP and NSW2/GDP ratio are 1.3 and −3.8 percent, respectively. This paper finds a deviation in the net social wage data starting in 2002, suggesting greater redistribution to US workers in the early twenty-first century than in the twentieth century. This paper argues that the increase in the US net social wage in the early twenty-first century is being caused by a combination of cyclical, structural, and secular factors. US redistributive policy should be understood as stabilizing and subsidizing the social reproduction of labor. JEL Classification: H5, E62, B5

From the Inside Out: The Policies and Diplomacy Shaping India’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-355
Author(s):  
Madhu Bhalla
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Inside Out

Shiv Shankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy. Gurgaon: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2016, pp. 243, ₹599. ISBN: 9780670089239. Shyam Saran, How India Sees the World: Kautilya to the 21st Century. New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2017, pp. 312, ₹599. ISBN: 9789386228406.

Torture, Exile, and the Citizen

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Power And Authority

Machiavelli wrote The Prince and the Discourses in exile, after three weeks being imprisoned and tortured because he was falsely suspected of being involved in an assassination attempt against the Medici. Reading those works, and particularly the former, through the light cast by torture, casts a new light on Machiavelli’s argument about new regimes and on the use of torture in the US foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Drawing on Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain and Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, the chapter argues that torture is designed as an ideological process, a way to disrupt potential political communities and to replace them with audiences for the “fiction of power” and authority that new regimes create through physical torture and the displacement of populations.

10. The U.S. Navy in the Twenty-First Century

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-122
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Hot Spots ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The U.S

The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not erase the need for a global U.S. Navy, as events in the Middle East and elsewhere provoked serial crises that led to the dispatch of U.S. naval combat groups to various hot spots around the world. ‘The U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century’ explains how the U.S. Navy continues to fulfill many of its historic missions—suppressing pirates, protecting trade, and pursuing drug runners. It is also a potent instrument of American foreign policy and a barometer of American concern. In addition to its deterrent and peacekeeping roles, the U.S. Navy also acts as a first responder to natural or man-made disasters that call for humane intervention.

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