scholarly journals 21. Global environment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Environmental Leadership ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Environmental Initiatives ◽  
International Environmental Problems ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how US foreign policy on environmental issues has evolved over a period of nearly five decades, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. It first considers the United States’ environmental multilateralism as well as environmental initiatives under Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Donald Trump before discussing key trends and puzzles in US foreign environmental policy. It shows the United States as an environmental leader during the Cold War, but an environmental laggard in the post–Cold War period, with the Obama administration’s re-engagement in climate diplomacy as a significant exception. The chapter also explains how the larger trend of waning environmental leadership from the United States has occurred at the same time as international environmental problems, especially climate change, have increasingly moved from the periphery towards the centre of world politics.

1. Theories of US foreign policy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines some of the competing theories that have been advanced to explain U.S. foreign policy. In trying to explain the foreign policy of the United States, a number of competing theories have been developed by International Relations scholars. Some theories focus on the role of the international system in shaping American foreign policy while others argue that various domestic factors are the driving force. The chapter first considers some of the obstacles to constructing a theory of foreign policy before discussing some of the competing theories of American foreign policy, including defensive realism, offensive realism, liberalism, Marxism, neoclassical realism, and constructivism. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the theoretical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the debate over the most appropriate grand strategy that the United States should follow in the post-Cold War era.

The United States and the Soviet Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Cold War

Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Divine providence may not have hurt, but it was America’s domestic political institutions that transformed a smattering of British colonies in North America into, first, an independent nation and, then, a global superpower with a network of allies and partners spanning six continents. The United States faced off against the Soviet Union for a half century during the Cold War. But Washington possessed the better institutions, and the stress of the competition caused Moscow’s political system to collapse altogether. In the post–Cold War period that followed, Washington deepened and expanded the Pax Americana, and spread unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom. For the first time since Ancient Rome, a single superpower so overawed any potential competitors that great power rivalry itself came to a temporary halt.

Helmut Schmidt, Euromissiles, and the Peace Movement

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-171
Author(s):  
Noel D. Cary
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Nuclear Missiles ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Vladimir Putin

On February 1, 2019, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a landmark Cold War treaty: the agreement between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to ban intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. One day after Trump's announcement, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would also withdraw from the treaty. Allegations of Russian violations in recent years have thus led to actions that threaten to return Europe to some of the most frightening days of the Cold War.

The United States and the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor Tobin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Post Cold War

In December 1979, Soviet troops entered the small, poor, landlocked, Islamic nation of Afghanistan, assassinated the communist president, Hafizullah Amin, and installed a more compliant Afghan leader. For almost ten years, Soviet troops remained entrenched in Afghanistan before finally withdrawing in February 1989. During this period, the United States undertook a covert program to assist the anti-communist Afghan insurgents—the mujahideen—to resist the Soviet occupation. Beginning with President Jimmy Carter’s small-scale authorization in July 1979, the secret war became the largest in history under President Ronald Reagan, running up to $700 million per year. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acted as the war’s quartermaster, arranging supplies of weapons for the mujahideen, which were funneled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), in coordination with Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, and others. No Americans were directly involved in the fighting, and the overall cost to the American taxpayer was in the region of $2 billion. The Afghan cost was much higher. Over a million Afghans were killed, a further two million wounded, and over six million refugees fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. For the Soviet Union, the ten-year war constituted its largest military action in the postwar era, and the long and protracted nature of the conflict and the failure of the Red Army to subdue the Afghans is partially responsible for the internal turmoil that contributed to the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s. The defeat of the Soviet 40th Army in Afghanistan proved to be the final major superpower battle of the Cold War, but it also marked the beginning of a new era. The devastation and radicalization of Afghan society resulted in the subsequent decades of continued conflict and warfare and the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism that has shaped the post-Cold War world.

scholarly journals Germany, the United States, and Future Core Conflict

1995 ◽  
pp. 445-482
Author(s):  
Brigitte Schulz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Common ◽  
Will Power ◽  
The Cold War

With the end of the Cold War, much attention has been paid to the nature of the emerging new world order. By what criteria will power and influence be measured in this new era? Who will be the winners and losers? What types of allegiances will develop? Or is Francis Fukuyama's argument correct that, with the collapse of communism, we have reached the "...endpoint of man's ideological evolution" and thus "the end of history". Unlike Marx, who saw socialism at the end of humanity's arduous journey, Fukuyama tells us that the search is off because we have already arrived at our evolutionary destination: liberal capitalism...Other analysts envision less optimistic scenarios...One of the most popular scenarios over the past few years has been to anticipate growing tensions between the three main core powers: the US, Germany, and Japan... The first task of this paper, then, is to look at Germany within the context of the radically altered post-Cold War period... We argue that Germany, based on a multitude of factors which will be outlined below, is not now, nor will it ever become in the foreseeable future, a global hegemon... Indeed, as will be asserted in the second part of this paper, Germany will enter into a close alliance with the United States to form a reinvigorated trans-Atlantic marriage in which the common bonds of "culture and civilization" will replace a virulent anti-communism as the common vow.

scholarly journals Doomed to Repetition? Havana, Washington, Miami, and Moscow, from the Cold War to Today

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Radoslav Yordanov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Competitive Coexistence ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War

This paper offers a broad historical overview of US economic sanctions against Cuba, starting with the imposition of the partial trade embargo on 19 October 1960, taking the story up to the present day. Additionally, it develops a comprehensive survey of the numerous scholarly and policy debates which closely follow the changes in United States’ post-Cold War attitudes and actions towards its southern neighbor and which demonstrate the thinking behind centers of power in Washington and Miami related to US’ Cuba policies. The paper also glances over the latest developments under Cuba’s new President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the notable return to the harsh Cold War rhetoric, which transcends the boundaries of the localized Washington-Miami-Havana axis of the past thirty years. Referring to historic patterns, the paper concludes that the conjecture between the recent complication in the US-Cuba relations and Moscow’s ambition to reinstate its erstwhile position as an unavoidable international factor would afford Havana with the opportunity to reclaim once again the dubious honor of becoming one of the focal points in the renewed competitive coexistence between the United States and Russia.

17. US foreign policy in Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Patman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines US foreign policy in Africa. It first considers the United States’ historical engagement with Africa, particularly during the Cold War era that saw the intensification of US–Soviet Union superpower rivalry, before discussing the rise of a New World Order in the immediate post–Cold War period that held out the possibility of positive US involvement in Africa. It then explores the United States’ adoption of a more realist approach after Somalia, as well as its renewal of limited engagement between 1996 and 2001. It also analyzes US policy towards Africa after 9/11, with emphasis on President George W. Bush’s efforts to incorporate Africa into Washington’s global strategic network as part of the new war on terror, as compared to the approach of the Obama administration calling for political transformation in Africa.

The Cold War Debate Continues: A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Earl Haynes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Cold War Literature

This article reviews the huge Cold War-era and post-Cold War literature on American Communism and anti-Communism in the United States. These issues have long been the subject of heated scholarly debate. The recent opening of archives in Russia and other former Communist countries and the release of translated Venona documents in the United States have shed new light on key aspects of the American Communist Party that were previously unknown or undocumented. The new evidence has underscored the Soviet Union's tight control of the party and the crucial role that American Communists played in Soviet espionage. The release of all this documentation has been an unwelcome development for scholars who have long been sympathetic to the Communist movement.

Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

Did the United States promise the Soviet Union during the 1990 negotiations on German reunification that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe? Since the end of the Cold War, an array of Soviet/Russian policymakers have charged that NATO expansion violates a U.S. pledge advanced in 1990; in contrast, Western scholars and political leaders dispute that the United States made any such commitment. Recently declassified U.S. government documents provide evidence supporting the Soviet/Russian position. Although no non-expansion pledge was ever codified, U.S. policymakers presented their Soviet counterparts with implicit and informal assurances in 1990 strongly suggesting that NATO would not expand in post–Cold War Europe if the Soviet Union consented to German reunification. The documents also show, however, that the United States used the reunification negotiations to exploit Soviet weaknesses by depicting a mutually acceptable post–Cold War security environment, while actually seeking a system dominated by the United States and opening the door to NATO's eastward expansion. The results of this analysis carry implications for international relations theory, diplomatic history, and current U.S.-Russian relations.

scholarly journals Turkey-United States' Bilateral Ties: a Tale of Convergence and Divergence of Interests

sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 282-288
Author(s):  
Dr. Murad Ali
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
The Cold War

The paper explores bilateral ties between Turkey and the United States (US) following the end of World War II to the recent era of Trump-Erdogan. Due to its immense geostrategic significance and a strong military, throughout the Cold War period and also in the post-Cold War era, Tukey has mostly remained a key US ally. The methodology adopted for this study is based on both qualitative data available in the form of policy documents and existing literature about the subject as well as utilizing quantitative data comprising US economic and military aid and arms' sales to Turkey obtained from databases of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) respectively. Like numerous developing countries in other parts of the world, Turkey also became one of the biggest recipients of US economic and military assistance and Washington also provided huge arms to Ankara during the Cold War years. The US has provided Turkey an aggregate of US$ 70 billion in civilian and military assistance and has delivered its arms worth US$ 34 billion. However, it has not been a smooth journey as their bilateral relationship experienced some upheavals not only during the Cold War period but ties have been strained by various thorny matters in recent years. These include Turkey's dispute with Greece on Cyprus, targeting Kurdish fighters in Syria, purchase of S-400 defense systems from Russia, and human rights violations at home. By examining these vital points of concern, the paper concludes that although both countries have historically maintained warm bilateral ties, several divergent issues have marred the relationship between the two countries in recent years.

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