Grand Strategy of the Master Class

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-122
Author(s):  
Matthew Karp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Fugitive Slave

This chapter discusses the role of Southerners and slavery in US foreign policy from the antebellum era to the Civil War. Studies that explore slavery's specific impact on foreign policy have generally confined themselves to the ways that slaveholders worked to secure fugitive slave laws, enact restrictions on black sailors, or, at most, fight to add new slave states to the Union. However, the kind of domination that slaveholders desired went beyond the need to reinforce their narrow property rights, or even the desire to expand the amount of territory under slave cultivation. Antebellum slaveholders assumed national Cabinet posts to command the power of the entire United States, and then, crucially, to use that power to strengthen slavery in world politics. If grand strategy is “the intellectual architecture that gives form and structure to foreign policy,” slaveholding leaders were not merely provincial sectionalists but bold and cosmopolitan strategic thinkers. Their profound ideological commitment to slavery did not merely affect domestic politics within a divided republic; it left a deep imprint on the “strategic culture” of American foreign policy.

The United States, Moral Norms, and Governing Ideas in World Politics: A Review Essay

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 223-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathal J. Nolan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Moral Principles

Nolan reviews three works describing the influence of ethics on modern international relations, namely Code of Peace: Ethics and Security in the World of the Warlord States (Dorothy V. Jones); The Age of Rights (Louis Henkin); and Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Ethics in International Affairs (Robert W. McElroy). All present timely academic and historical arguments for existing opportunities to bring ethics into world politics. Jones and Henkin concern themselves most with moral principles involved in establishing international law and organizations, while McElroy discusses the same issues from the unique perspective of U.S. foreign policy. Nolan gives full recognition to the traditional role of democratic states, particularly the United States., in shaping the moral norms of the international system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through ethics that are Western in origin but certainly not in their inherent content.

scholarly journals Priorities and Implementation of US Foreign Policy by the D. Trump Administration

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 509-520
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
The Us ◽  
Trump Administration

The article analyzes the phenomenon of the foreign policy presidency of D. Trump. Based on the approach of neorealism theory to the analysis of foreign policy, it is pointed to the significance of four variables in implementing foreign policy: the peculiarities of the perception by the heads of foreign policy, the strategic culture of the United States, the relations between the state and the society, and the role of domestic state institutions. The author concludes that the Trump administration eliminated a number of obstacles to unilateral foreign policy, putting America first. Trump and his administration were able to coined and launch a significant number of political initiatives that were contrary to the established priorities of the US foreign policy, but not all of the declared intentions had been implemented. However, this does not mean that the administration of Joe Baden will radically revise the main foreign policy ideas of the previous administration.

2. American exceptionalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney ◽  
Jeffrey Meiser
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Military ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Identity Formations

This chapter examines how America can be described as different and exceptional. The belief in American exceptionalism is based upon a number of core realities, including American military primacy, economic dynamism, and political diversity. Understanding understanding American exceptionalism is essential for understanding not only U.S. foreign policy but also major aspects of contemporary world politics. The chapter first considers the meaning of exceptionalism, the critics of American exceptionalism, and the roots of American success. It then discusses the liberalism that makes the United States exceptional, along with peculiar American identity formations of ethnicity, religion, and ‘race’. It also explores the role of American exceptionality across the five major epochs of American foreign policy, from the nation’s founding to the present. It concludes by reflecting on the significance of the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 to the story of American exceptionalism, difference, and peculiar Americanism.

Cross-Domain Deterrence in American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Michael Nacht ◽  
Patricia Schuster ◽  
Eva C. Uribe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Domain ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter assesses the role of cross-domain deterrence in recent American foreign policy. Cross-domain deterrence is not a new phenomenon, even if our consciousness of it may be. Prominent cases from the Cold War, such as the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, can be interpreted through the lens of cross-domain deterrence and fruitfully compared with more contemporary cases, such as the Stuxnet attack on Iran. These cases illustrate the variation across domains by the adversary and U.S. responses. Considered together, the United States generally responded to these crises by initially limiting itself to the domain where a crisis started and only later expanding into other domains. The United States has typically been cautious when shifting domains and has tried to escalate in ways that would not produce adversarial retaliation.

No War Without Dictatorship, No Peace Without Democracy: Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-191
Author(s):  
Aaron Wildavsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Basis ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Government

I wish to consider the possibility that a good part of the opposition to the main lines of American foreign policy is based on deep-seated objections to the political and economic systems of the United States. This is not to say that existing policy is necessarily wise or that there may not be good and sufficient reasons for wishing to change it. Indeed, at any time and place, the United States might well be overestimating the threat from the Soviet Union or using too much force. What I wish to suggest is that across-the-board criticism of American policy as inherently aggressive and repressive, regardless of circumstance – a litany of criticism so constant that it does not alert us to the need for explanation – has a structural basis in the rise of a political culture that is opposed to existing authority.To the extent that this criticism is structural, that is, inherent in domestic politics, the problem of fashioning foreign policies that can obtain widespread support is much more difficult than it is commonly perceived to be. For if the objection is to American ways of life and, therefore, “to the government for which it stands,” only a transformation of power relationships at home, together with a vast redistribution of economic resources, would satisfy these critics. If the objection is not only to what we do but, more fundamentally, to who we are, looking to changes in foreign policy to shore up domestic support is radically to confuse the causal connections and, therefore, the order of priorities.

China–Turkey Relations from the Perspective of Neoclassical Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 234779892110626
Author(s):  
Mustafa Cüneyt Özşahin ◽  
Federico Donelli ◽  
Riccardo Gasco
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Neoclassical Realism ◽  
Middle Power ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Middle Powers

There is plenty of studies focusing on China’s global outreach through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In tandem with this, the extensive literature on China depicts it as the next hegemon to succeed in the USA. Along this line, flourishing ties with various Asian nations, including the Middle Eastern countries, as a result of China’s recent foreign policy activism has been addressed extensively. While most research has been stressing the rising assertiveness of China in world politics, only a limited number of studies have touched upon the responses from middle or small powers against China’s ascent. Drawing from neoclassical realism, this article contends two levels of analysis for delineating the interaction between Turkey, a middle power, and China, a rising great power. First, the exchange between Turkey and the USA is vital in determining the cordial relations between Turkey and China. Alteration in the American policy vis-à-vis Turkey in the wake of the Arab Spring is relevant to Turkey’s growing relations with China. Second, is the rising anti-Westernism of foreign policy elites as part of the alteration in the strategic culture of Turkish politics, which makes Turkey’s rapprochement with China possible. Nevertheless, it should be noted that these two levels are intertwined and feed each other. Consequently, employing a neoclassical realist approach, the article argues that the middle powers’ stance against a rising hegemon is conditional upon the bilateral relations with the current hegemon and peculiarities of domestic politics.

Beyond Coalitions of the Willing: Assessing U.S. Multilateralism

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Patrick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
Unilateral Action ◽  
The U.S

Contemporary debates over the appropriate balance of unilateralism and multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy reflect disagreements not simply about the practical effectiveness of these alternative options but also about their legitimacy. Advocates of multilateral and unilateral action alike tend to bundle prudential calculations with normative claims, making assessments about costs and benefits difficult to disentangle from ethical arguments about fairness, justice, morality and obligation. Greater clarity may be possible by classifying U.S. foreign policy into six analytical categories, based on whether the aims pursued are nationalist, internationalist, or cosmopolitan and the strategies adopted to realize them are unilateral or multilateral. Each set of aims has different ethical justifications that generate and help to explain divergent attitudes and judgments about the role of multilateral cooperation in U.S. foreign policy. The article sheds new light on alleged U.S. unilateralism, showing that the U.S. decision to go it alone–or to act with others–can be motivated by the desire to advance the narrow interests of the United States, to advance the interests of all states, or to advance the interests of humanity at large. The article suggests that purely nationalist policies, whether pursued through unilateral or multilateral means, will become increasingly untenable and illegitimate as world politics becomes institutionalized and as humanity becomes integrated, albeit slowly, into a single cosmopolitan community.

23. US decline or primacy? A debate

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Layne ◽  
William Wohlforth ◽  
Stephen G. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
External Driver ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Us Decline

This chapter focuses on the debate over whether U.S. power is in decline and if so, what is the best grand strategy that the United States needs to pursue. Three leading experts offer their views on the issue and its significance for U.S. foreign policy: Christopher Layne, William Wohlforth, and Steven Brooks. Layne argues that the United States is now in inexorable decline and attributes it to the end of unipolarity. He identifies two specific drivers of American decline, one external and one domestic. The external driver of U.S. decline is the emergence of new great powers in world politics, while domestic drivers include debt, deficits, and the dollar’s uncertain future. In contrast, Wohlforth and Brooks assert that the United States remains the sole superpower, and that multipolarity is not just around the corner.

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