Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-234
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Faith Based

The conclusion has two main objectives. The first is to show how the International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement regimes form a broader American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The second objective is to reflect on the book’s wider implications for the study of religion in international relations and highlight areas for further research. This includes assessing the strength of the book’s theoretical framework in light of ongoing developments under the Trump administration; understanding better the changes occurring to the religious traditions and actors that America draws from and intervenes in around the world; investigating further how the American experience with the operationalization of religion in foreign policy relates and compares to similar policy changes taking place elsewhere; and reflecting more broadly on the implications for international order of the growing systematic attempt by the United States to manage and mobilize religion in twenty-first-century world politics.

Finding Faith in Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Muslim Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, religion has been systematically brought to the fore of American foreign policy. US foreign policymakers have been increasingly tasked with promoting religious freedom globally, delivering humanitarian and development aid abroad through faith-based channels, pacifying Muslim politics and reforming Islamic theologies in the context of fighting terrorism, and engaging religious actors to solve multiple conflicts and crises around the world. Across a range of different domains, religion has progressively become an explicit and organized subject and object of US foreign policy in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. If God was supposed to be vanquished by the forces of modernity and secularization, why has the United States increasingly sought to understand and manage religion abroad? In what ways have the boundaries between faith and state been redefined as religion has become operationalized in American foreign policy? What kind of world order is emerging in the twenty-first century as the most powerful state in the international system has come to intervene in sustained and systematic ways in sacred landscapes around the globe? This book addresses these questions by developing an original theoretical framework and drawing upon extensive empirical research and interviews. It argues that American foreign policy and religious forces have become ever more inextricably entangled in an age witnessing a global resurgence of religion and the emergence of a postsecular world society.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Regime Complex ◽  
Religion And State ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War religion has increasingly become an organized subject and object of American foreign policy. This has been notable with the emergence of four religious foreign policy regimes—International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement—which together constitute an American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The introduction poses the book’s three guiding questions. First, why and how did these different, yet closely related, religious foreign policy regimes emerge? Second, have the boundaries between religion and state been redefined by these regimes, and if so, how? Third, what are the global effects of the growing entanglement between faith and American foreign policy? The chapter introduces the concepts and arguments that are central to answering these questions. It also highlights the contributions made to the existing literature, discusses some definitional and methodological issues, and presents the plan of the book.

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.

The rise and rise of American exceptionalism - Sanford J. Ungar (ed.), Estrangement: America and the World, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, xii + 347 pp. - John D. Steinbruner (ed.), Restructuring American Foreign Policy, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1989, xii + 260 pp. - Inis L. Claude, American Approaches to World Affairs, Lanham, Md., New York and London: University Press of America, 1986, xi + 67 pp. - Charles W. KegleyJr. and Eugene R. Wittkopf, American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process, London: Macmillan, 1987, xiii + 681 pp. - William T.R. Fox, A Continent Apart: The United States and Canada in World Politics, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1985, xv + 188 pp. - Alan M. Rugman and Andrew D. M. Anderson, Administered Protection in America, London, New York and Sidney: Croom Helm, 1987, xi + 148 pp.

1990 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Garson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Second World

If there is a single event since the end of the Second World War that has seriously punctured America's sense of confident invulnerability it is, surely, not the withdrawal from Vietnam—that could always be explained away as a masterful reassessment of the nature of the communist threat—but the taking of American hostages by Islamic fundamentalists in Teheran in 1979. That event, more than any other, showed that America's faith in modernization, foreign aid, and a gradual injection of political liberalism as a means of drawing nations into the western orbit rested on brittle foundations. Until the Shah's overthrow Iran had seemed the perfect ally; despite the anti-libertarian blemishes of the Shah's regime, Iran had a prosperous middle class, a formidable standing in the region, a sound economy based on expensive oil, and was emerging from what was thought to be the constricting effect of Islam.

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.

The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy: The National Interest vs. Moral Abstractions

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 833-854 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
First Generation ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
American People ◽  
Full Flowering ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Republic

It is often said that the foreign policy of the United States is in need of maturing and that the American people and their government must grow up if they want to emerge victorious from the trials of our age. It would be truer to say that this generation of Americans must shed the illusions of their fathers and grandfathers and relearn the great principles of statecraft which guided the path of the republic in the first decade and—in moralistic disguise—in the first century of its existence. The United States offers the singular spectacle of a commonwealth whose political wisdom did not grow slowly through the accumulation and articulation of experiences. Quite to the contrary, the full flowering of its political wisdom was coeval with its birth as an independent nation—nay, it owed its existence and survival as an independent nation to those extraordinary qualities of political insight, historic perspective, and common sense which the first generation of Americans applied to the affairs of state.This classic age of American statecraft comes to an end with the physical disappearance of that generation of American statesmen. The rich and varied landscape in which they had planted all that is worthwhile in the tradition of Western political thought was allowed to go to waste. It became a faint and baffling remembrance, a symbol to be worshipped rather than a source of inspiration and a guide for action.

Wilsonianism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trygve Throntveit
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Historical Interpretation

An ungainly word, it has proven tenacious. Since the early Cold War, “Wilsonianism” has been employed by historians and analysts of US foreign policy to denote two historically related but ideologically and operationally distinct approaches to world politics. One is the foreign policy of the term’s eponym, President Woodrow Wilson, during and after World War I—in particular his efforts to engage the United States and other powerful nations in the cooperative maintenance of order and peace through a League of Nations. The other is the tendency of later administrations and political elites to deem an assertive, interventionist, and frequently unilateralist foreign policy necessary to advance national interests and preserve domestic institutions. Both versions of Wilsonianism have exerted massive impacts on US and international politics and culture. Yet both remain difficult to assess or even define. As historical phenomena they are frequently conflated; as philosophical labels they are ideologically freighted. Perhaps the only consensus is that the term implies the US government’s active rather than passive role in the international order. It is nevertheless important to distinguish Wilson’s “Wilsonianism” from certain doctrines and practices later attributed to him or traced to his influence. The major reasons are two. First, misconceptions surrounding the aims and outcomes of Wilson’s international policies continue to distort historical interpretation in multiple fields, including American political, cultural, and diplomatic history and the history of international relations. Second, these distortions encourage the conflation of Wilsonian internationalism with subsequent yet distinct developments in American foreign policy. The confused result promotes ideological over historical readings of the nation’s past, which in turn constrain critical and creative thinking about its present and future as a world power.

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.

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