Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-79
Author(s):  
Derek Chollet
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Smart Power ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explores what Eisenhower, H. W. Bush, and Obama set out to achieve in foreign policy—explaining the initial strategic choices they made once in office, how they formulated them, and what influenced their thinking. It analyzes Eisenhower’s effort to build a foundation for US foreign policy in the early Cold War years and devise a sustainable concept of containment; Bush’s attempts to understand the nature of change in the Soviet Union and the possibilities for superpower cooperation, especially how to define American foreign policy after the Cold War; and Obama’s work to promote a foreign policy based on “smart power” and to “rebalance” US foreign policy to address twenty-first-century geopolitical shifts after inheriting a catastrophic economic crisis at home.

scholarly journals Ethnic Diasporas and US Foreign Policy

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Haglund ◽  
Elizabeth Stein
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Irish Americans ◽  
The Cold War

The past two decades have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in the role that “ethnic diasporas” play in the formulation of America’s foreign policy. While the connection between these ethnic groupings and the policy process is not anything new in American political life, the systematic study of that connection is of relatively recent vintage. There are two chief reasons for this. First, changes in American demography since the 1970s have led to a fascination with issues related to “multiculturalism” and ethnic “identity”—in the context not only of domestic public policy, but also of foreign policy. In the case of the latter, an outpouring of articles and books has appeared dedicated to the phenomenon of ethnic “lobbying,” construed widely enough so as to include discussions of the “ethnic vote.” In addition, changes in the external environment set in motion by the ending of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union have put a premium upon such new relatively new categories of analysis as “ethnic conflict” and diasporas. Widespread stories about its “decline” to the contrary notwithstanding, America remains the most powerful state in the international system; thus, it offers ethnic diasporas the promise of exerting outsized influence should they be able to make their preferences become Washington’s preferences. This article surveys leading bibliographical sources pertaining to these various themes, embracing as well the normative debates they have engendered. Also included in this article are a set of references to a trio of very significant historical cases of ethnic “politicking” in US foreign policy, for, although the systematized study of the phenomenon may be fairly recent, the phenomenon is nearly as old as American foreign policy itself. Accordingly, three “classical cases” will be discussed: the Irish Americans, the German Americans, and the Anglo-Americans. Finally, the article surveys recent writings on contemporary cases in which ethnic diasporic activism has been said to have influenced the shaping of American foreign policy toward one region in particular (the “greater” Middle East) as well as toward regional dilemmas elsewhere (including Europe, Africa, and Latin America).

21. US Predominance and the Search for a Post-Cold War Order

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter focuses on the United States’s predominance and the search for order in the post-Cold War period. George H. W. Bush, who came to power in January 1989, concentrated on world affairs and had a series of foreign successes before the end of 1991. Bush’s cautious, pragmatic, orderly approach carried both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand he escaped any major disasters abroad and avoided antagonizing the Soviet Union or rekindling the Cold War. On the other hand, he seemed to be undynamic and at the mercy of events — he failed to provide a sense of overall direction to US foreign policy once the Cold War ended. The chapter first considers US foreign policy in the 1990s before discussing the Gulf War of 1990–1991, US–Soviet relations in the 1990s, US policy towards the ‘rogue states’ during the time of Bill Clinton, and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia and Haiti.

21. US Predominance and the Search for a Post-Cold War Order

2020 ◽  
pp. 503-533
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter focuses on the predominance of the US and the search for order in the post-Cold War period. George H. W. Bush, who came to power in January 1989, concentrated on world affairs and had a series of foreign successes before the end of 1991. Bush’s cautious, pragmatic, approach carried both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, he escaped any major disasters abroad and avoided antagonizing the Soviet Union or rekindling the Cold War. On the other, he seemed to be undynamic and at the mercy of events—he failed to provide a sense of overall direction to US foreign policy once the Cold War ended. The chapter first considers US foreign policy in the 1990s, before discussing the Gulf War of 1990–1, US–Soviet relations in the 1990s, US policy towards the ‘rogue states’ during the time of Bill Clinton, and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia and Haiti.

Richard Pipes

2020 ◽  
pp. 507-512
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Comprehensive Studies

This chapter gives an obituary for Richard Pipes, who died in Boston, Massachusetts on 17 May 2018. It recalls Richard as an eminent historian of the tsarist empire and the Soviet Union, as well as a public intellectual who made a major contribution to the formulation of US foreign policy in the last decades of the Cold War. It also mentions Richard's doctoral dissertation, which reflected his lasting interest in national questions and was published under the title The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 in 1954. The chapter looks into Richard's comprehensive studies of Russia, which stresses the conspiratorial nature of the Bolsheviks and the continuities between Russian and Soviet history. It explores Richard's final book Alexander Yakovlev: The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism that was published in 2015.

Just Mild about Harry

The Columnist ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Donald A. Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Harry Truman ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Fair Deal

Harry Truman had a dim view of newspaper pundits, especially Drew Pearson. Although Pearson supported Truman’s Fair Deal, he got on the president’s wrong side by publishing perceived slights of his wife and daughter. Truman fired some of his best sources in the cabinet, but leaks continued, leading Truman to have the FBI investigate Pearson and tap his phones. Pearson regretted the collapse of the alliance with the Soviet Union but supported American foreign policy during the Cold War. In 1947 he sponsored the Freedom Train to collect food and supplies for Western Europe. Holding Defense Secretary James Forrestal responsible for the deepening Cold War, Pearson conducted a sustained attack on him. Blame for Forrestal’s suicide later fell on the columnist. Pearson also targeted Truman’s aide, General Harry Vaughn, for influence peddling and called for his dismissal. Truman responded that he would not let “any S.O.B.” dictate whom he fired.

Imagination and Its Failures

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
Marjorie L. Jeffrey
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
It Support ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Working Out

This chapter investigates American foreign policy, looking at the persistence of a neoconservative foreign policy in the conservative movement and why it has not been discarded despite its obvious limitations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the American Right faced an existential question: Would it support the continuation of a semi-imperial foreign policy, or would it seek to redirect political energies toward domestic policy? The 1992 Republican primary and the victory of the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, against his challenger, Pat Buchanan, answered that question. Until the election of 2016, both major parties were in agreement on matters of foreign policy, except for working out the details. The chapter studies the philosophic claims of the interventionist, or “neoconservative,” wing of the American conservative movement, against the foreign policy prescriptions of the American Founders, as well as those of such truly conservative modern critics as George Kennan and Buchanan.

scholarly journals Bush’s ‘Beyond Containment’ strategy toward the Eastern Bloc in 1989 within the US Foreign Policy context

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-392
Author(s):  
David Mareček
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
First Year ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Containment Policy ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This paper explores the foreign policy of US President George H. W. Bush and his administration towards the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. The article also focuses on two historically significant American foreign policy strategies that were implemented during the earlier years of the Cold War: containment and détente. The rapidly changing international environment and Bush’s Beyond Containment policy which, aimed to respond to these changes, became the basis for the following research questions: 1) How did American conception of foreign policy approach to Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary or Poland change under the Bush administration in 1989 in comparison to the period of implementation of the containment or détente? 2) How did the American perception of the retreating Soviet power within the bipolar international structure affect American diplomatic relations with the Eastern European governments? The aim of the paper is to put Bush’s foreign policy in his first year in office in the American ‘Cold War’ foreign policy context and to compare the classical American political strategies with Bush’s foreign policy in 1989.

scholarly journals Superpower Dominance: The Yum Kippur Case

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 667-675
Author(s):  
Mohamad Hasan Soueidan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

The Yum Kippur War, or as the Egyptians call it The October War, is one of the most important wars in the history of the Middle East between the coalition of Egypt and Syria versus Israel. It occurred at a time when the two superpowers then, the Americans and the Soviet Union, were in engaging in what was called the Cold War. For that every Superpower used to support a certain party of conflict to assure the balance of global dominance isn't affected. This paper reviews American foreign policy during the war in 1973. It concentrates on how the American institutions and foreign policy activists acted and influenced the outcome of the war. The paper finally conducts a counter analysis on what could have happened if the Americans didn’t support the Israelis in the war.

scholarly journals Manifestation of the Internal Systemic Conflict in Mongolia

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 17-25
Author(s):  
K. Demberel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Investment Boom ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second Period

The article deals with the issue of Mongolia's foreign policy during the Cold War. This period is divided into two parts. The first period, 1945-1960s, is a period of conflict between two systems: socialism and capitalism. In this first period of the Cold War Mongolia managed to establish diplomatic relations with socialist countries of Eastern Europe, as the “system allowed”. The second period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, is the period of the conflict of the socialist system, the period of the Soviet-Chinese confrontation. During this period Mongolia's foreign policy changed dramatically and focused on the Soviet Union. This was due to the Soviet investment «boom» that began in 1960s and the entry of Soviet troops on the territory of Mongolia in 1967. The Soviet military intervention into Mongolia was one of the main reasons for cooling the Soviet-Chinese relations. And military withdrawal contributed to the improvement of Soviet-Chinese relations until the mid-1980s and one of the conditions for improving relations with their neighbors. The internal systemic conflict had a serious impact on Mongolia's foreign policy over those years.

14. US foreign policy in Russia

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rutland ◽  
Gregory Dubinsky
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Vladimir Putin

This chapter examines U.S. foreign policy in Russia. The end of the Cold War lifted the threat of nuclear annihilation and transformed the international security landscape. The United States interpreted the collapse of the Soviet Union as evidence that it had ‘won’ the Cold War, and that its values and interests would prevail in the future world order. The chapter first provides an overview of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 before discussing U.S.–Russian relations under Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, respectively. It then turns to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its enlargement, the Kosovo crisis, and the ‘Great Game’ in Eurasia. It also analyses the rise of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia and the deterioration of U.S.–Russian relations and concludes with an assessment of the cautious partnership between the two countries.

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