A Useful Category of Analysis?

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Us Foreign Relations

This chapter examines the transformation of US foreign relations in the period from 1865 to 1918. Some historians have explicitly analyzed this transformation in terms of “grand strategy.” Others who have not used the concept as an analytical tool have nevertheless offered interpretations that can be easily assimilated by the concept's enthusiasts and, if so desired, given a different ideological edge. Whether the emergence of the United States as a great power is to be welcomed or lamented, both celebrants and critics can agree that it happened, and that it happened largely as a result of the deliberate peacetime melding of industrial and naval power. Although the concept of grand strategy cannot be blamed for creating the problems with the existing literature on US foreign relations from the Civil War through World War I, it tends to worsen them, in two related ways. First, the concept of grand strategy privileges the nation-state as the unit of analysis, when no less important units in this case are the sub-national and the global. Second, the “grandness” of grand strategy encourages scholars to neglect critically important details of US economic and naval power. These details are more than isolated anomalies: taken together, they compel a new explanatory paradigm.

The Conundrum of American Power in the Age of World War I

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-365
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Power Projection ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Moment

Reports of the rise of the United States to a lead role on the global stage in the early twentieth century have been greatly exaggerated. As many Americans at the time recognized, the United States continued to have less capacity for overseas power projection and remained far more dependent on the world's reigning hegemon, Great Britain, than is generally now realized. The United States, it is true, acquired an overseas empire in 1898. But it lacked the basic attributes of a great power, such as economic sovereignty, naval power, and domestic consensus on the desirability of global great-power status. Even after World War I, which was a better candidate than the Spanish-American War as the moment when the United States became a leading global power, both the material and the cultural basis of that power remained fragile.

The Unraveling

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Regulations ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
The World

The world wars of the 20th century saw the collapse of pre-war rules designed to protect merchant shipping from interference. In both wars, combatants engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare and imposed vast ocean exclusion zones, leading to unprecedented interference with ocean commerce. After World War I, the United States began to supplant Britain as the leading naval power, and it feuded with Britain over maritime rights. Other developments in the interwar period included significant state-sponsored ocean research, including activity by Germany in the Atlantic and the Soviets in the Arctic. Maritime commerce was buffeted by the shocks of the world wars. Eager to trim costs, US shipping companies experimented with “flags of convenience” to avoid new national safety and labor regulations. The question of the breadth of the territorial sea remained unresolved, as governments bickered about the appropriate outer limit of sovereign control.

Anti-Imperialism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert David Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
World War ◽  
Progressive Movement ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Policy Alternatives ◽  
The Relationship

The birth of the United States through a successful colonial revolution created a unique nation-state in which anti-imperialist sentiment existed from the nation’s founding. Three broad points are essential in understanding the relationship between anti-imperialism and U.S. foreign relations. First, the United States obviously has had more than its share of imperialist ventures over the course of its history. Perhaps the better way to address the matter is to remark on—at least in comparison to other major powers—how intense a commitment to anti-imperialism has remained among some quarters of the American public and government. Second, the strength of anti-imperialist sentiment has varied widely and often has depended upon domestic developments, such as the emergence of abolitionism before the Civil War or the changing nature of the Progressive movement following World War I. Third, anti-imperialist policy alternatives have enjoyed considerably more support in Congress than in the executive branch.

Harry S. Truman and US Foreign Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaete O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Foreign Relations ◽  
American Foreign Relations

Sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Harry S. Truman faced the daunting tasks of winning the war and ensuring future peace and stability. Chided by critics for his lack of foreign policy experience but championed by supporters for his straightforward decision-making, Truman guided the United States from World War to Cold War. The Truman presidency marked a new era in American foreign relations, with the United States emerging from World War II unmatched in economic strength and military power. The country assumed a leadership position in a postwar world primarily shaped by growing antagonism with the Soviet Union. Truman pursued an interventionist foreign policy that took measures to contain Soviet influence in Europe and stem the spread of communism in Asia. Under his leadership, the United States witnessed the dawn of the atomic age, approved billions of dollars in economic aid to rebuild Europe, supported the creation of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization, recognized the state of Israel, and intervened in the Korean peninsula. The challenges Truman confronted and the policies he implemented laid the foundation for 20th-century US foreign relations throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Grand Strategies (or Ascendant Ideas) since 1919

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-172
Author(s):  
David Milne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Grand Strategies

This chapter investigates the most ascendant ideas at work in America's rise to become a global power and then a superpower after the end of World War I. Segmenting US foreign policy since 1919 by “grand strategy” would seem to require grand simplification. Even those administrations commonly identified as practicing quintessential grand strategy appear more inchoate when approached from the protagonists’ perspectives at the time. To give one such example, the sequence of foreign policy innovations that the United States spearheaded from 1945 to 1949 were collectively possessed of considerable foresight. But they were also a series of strategies advocated by various actors at different times with motives that do not necessarily reduce to a mono-strategic essence. Even in regard to post-1945 US foreign policy, a period that has been sub-divided by many distinguished scholars, it is difficult to identify clearly demarcated grand strategies that provide overarching clarity. The chapter focuses on the ascendant ideas that have informed policymaking, shaped public discourse, forced other ideas into decline, and that can perhaps even be identified as “representative” of particular eras.

Propaganda in the History of US Foreign Relations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Belmonte
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Public Information ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The U.S

From the revolutionary era to the post-9/11 years, public and private actors have attempted to shape U.S. foreign relations by persuading mass audiences to embrace particular policies, people, and ways of life. Although the U.S. government conducted wartime propaganda activities prior to the 20th century, it had no official propaganda agency until the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was formed in 1917. For the next two years, CPI aimed to generate popular support for the United States and its allies in World War I. In 1938, as part of its Good Neighbor Policy, the Franklin Roosevelt administration launched official informational and cultural exchanges with Latin America. Following American entry into World War II, the U.S. government created a new propaganda agency, the Office of War Information (OWI). Like CPI, OWI was disbanded once hostilities ended. But in the fall of 1945, to combat the threats of anti-Americanism and communism, President Harry S. Truman broke with precedent and ordered the continuation of U.S. propaganda activities in peacetime. After several reorganizations within the Department of State, all U.S. cultural and information activities came under the purview of the newly created U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1953. Following the dissolution of USIA in 1999, the State Department reassumed authority over America’s international information and cultural programs through its Office of International Information Programs.

The Truman Administration and the Separation of Powers: the Case of the Marshall Plan

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin L. Quade
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
World War ◽  
The Times ◽  
Prompt Action

Presidential responsibility for foreign policy is something of a commonplace today. Indeed, most analysts see Presidential dominance in foreign affairs as a more or less necessary result of the conditions of the times, which often demand the kind of unified and prompt action which only the Presidency is capable of in the American system. Yet it can be argued that the very factors which have brought Presidential conduct of foreign relations into the national spotlight have simultaneously worked to limit the decisiveness of his control over foreign policy. The period since World War I, and particularly since World War II, has seen the United States becoming more deeply involved in what can be called “positive” policy, policy that requires financial support, or new administrative authorizations, or the assignment of new personnel. And the natural corollary of such policies is the growth in significance of that element of government, which must give legislative authorization for any such undertakings. There has been, in a sense, a reassertion of traditional separation of powers in the area of foreign policy.

Theodore Roosevelt and US Foreign Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Close Relationship

Theodore Roosevelt played a seminal role in the rise of the United States to Great Power status at the turn of the 20th century and in debates about World War I and the League of Nations. Prior to entering the White House, TR was a leading proponent of a more ambitious foreign policy. As the 26th president he promoted US predominance in the Western Hemisphere, engaged in Great Power diplomacy, and oversaw expansion of the navy. He also laid the foundations for modern presidential statecraft with forceful advocacy of specific policy goals, a close relationship with the press, and an intense engagement with public opinion. After leaving Washington, he was among the most ardent critics of president Woodrow Wilson’s policies and helped to build support for the Allies and for preparing to enter what would become the “Great War,” or World War I. At the time of his death, he was a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Scholarly and public surveys frequently rank Roosevelt among the most successful presidents, especially in the realm of foreign policy. His influence can be observed in successors as diverse as Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Yet historians have also scrutinized his views on race, gender, imperialism, and violence, many of which appear outdated or problematic from an early-21st-century perspective. Also troubling was Roosevelt’s demonization of antiwar activists during World War I and his sometimes heavy-handed attempts to promote loyalty among citizens of German or Irish descent.

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