Understanding and Improving U.S. Financial Sanctions

Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Harris ◽  
Robert B. Kahn

This chapter uses the Iran and Russia cases to understand how modern U.S. financial sanctions operate (including how they interact with traditional tools of foreign policy) and how to better incorporate them into the United States’ standing arsenal of foreign policy tools. It does so by considering three broad sets of questions: First, how has the use of financial sanctions evolved over the past fifteen years? Second, what are the main ways in which financial sanctions impose costs on sanctioned countries? Finally, how should U.S. policymakers alter the use of financial sanctions to maximize their impact, sustain their strength, and minimize problematic side effects?

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Campbell Craig

This article reviews three recent books critical of America's new “imperial” foreign policy, examines whether the United States can properly be compared to empires of the past, and identifies three aspects of contemporary American policy that may well be called imperialist. It also addresses some of the main objections to recent U.S. foreign policy made by American realist scholars and argues that traditional interstate realism can no longer readily apply to the problem ofAmerican unipolar preponderance over an anarchical, nuclear-armed world.


Uncertainty ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Kostas Kampourakis ◽  
Kevin McCain

Whereas vaccines have helped save millions of lives over the past several decades, today there is a significant anti-vaccination (anti-vaxx) movement, especially in the United States, that questions their safety. The problem is that these anti-vaxx arguments focus on rare cases of side effects or—even worse—on unfounded connections between the administration of vaccines and particular conditions such as autism. Such reactions make people overlook the fact that several diseases that in the past killed millions of people have been completely or almost completely eradicated thanks to vaccines. Even though vaccine side effects are a real possibility, one has to weigh the risk of facing those (which is very low and arise in relatively rare cases) against the hundreds or thousands of children who, thanks to the vaccine, will avoid hospitalization or even death. Uncertainties always exist, and we cannot be absolutely certain about the efficacy and safety of any vaccine. But for many of them, there is solid evidence that the problems are rare, and certainly the affected individuals are a lot fewer than those who might suffer and even die from the disease.


1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bernell

The bitter rivalry between the United States and Cuba has occupied a position as one of the principal political disputes in the Western Hemisphere for the past 35 years. Since the rise of Fidel Castro, the governments of these two countries have placed themselves on opposite sides of almost every major regional and global issue. They have long held vastly different ideas about what constitutes a good and just government, what kind of international behavior is legitimate, and the ends that foreign policy should serve. Moreover, they have not only harbored political differences but also maintained a very intense dislike of one another. The United States has attempted to sustain a picture of Cuba as an international outlaw, the source of much turmoil, crisis, and mischief in the world. Adding a personal dimension to the attacks, the United States has also sought to demonize Castro, creating and continually portraying an image of him as the embodiment of evil.


Subject The Trump administration's policy on the Libya conflict. Significance In recent weeks, the United States has pursued a more active foreign policy towards Libya. This is a departure from its position of the past eight years of ‘leading from the back’ on Libya and comes as US President Donald Trump faces an impeachment investigation and elections in November 2020. With the vote approaching, Trump's opponents have increasingly criticised his position on Moscow, drawing attention to the presence of Russian mercenaries in Libya. Impacts Ties with Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and the relative influence Russia has with them, will weigh on the administration’s thinking. The State Department may push more actively for a ceasefire when a conference of external actors in Libya takes place in Berlin. A ceasefire could fragment the forces fighting Haftar without robust external guarantees that his forces would not violate it.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-475
Author(s):  
ASA MCKERCHER ◽  
TIMOTHY ANDREWS SAYLE

AbstractFor the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography of Canada's Cold War international relations, the communist powers are largely missing. Hoping to challenge this limited focus, we frame our article around two Canada–US air defence exercises held in 1959 and 1960. While historians have viewed these exercises within the context of Canada's relationship with the United States, we highlight the wider Cold War framework in which Canadian policy was formed. After all, these exercises occurred during the mini-détente of the late 1950s and the collapse of the Paris summit in May 1960. As we demonstrate, the failure to take full account of the Cold War is a shortcoming of much of the writing on Canadian international relations, and so we offer an example of the need to take seriously Canada's foreign policy toward the communist bloc.


1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-437
Author(s):  
J. B. Duroselle

We are living at a time when events move more rapidly than in the past. It is therefore very difficult, even in an article for a review, to sum up the situation, and still more difficult to see even a short distance into the future. This is true for any country, even for those, like the United States and the Soviet Union, which have greater autonomy and greater power in the bipolar world in which we live. But it is probably in the case of France that the task is most difficult of all, for in this country the general problems are complicated by a particular kind of crisis growing out of internal conditions. As I write these lines, it is impossible for me to have the slightest idea as to what French foreign policy will be when the article is published.


1972 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard N. Cooper

A Casual reading of contemporary news reports suggests that during the past decade economic issues have taken on growing importance in the relations of non-Communist developed countries. The disputes between the United States and Japan over textiles, between the United States and the European Economic Community over agricultural trade, and between France and Germany over currency alignments come readily to mind. It is perhaps symbolic of the enormous success of early postwar foreign policy that issues no graver than these play such a prominent part in relations among countries that, earlier in the century, were sporadically at each other's throats.


Author(s):  
Tran Truong Thuy

This chapter examines the main issues for Vietnam since the launch of its Doi Moi (“renovation”) policy in the mid-1980s and its foreign policy in the past, present, and near future. The chapter also analyzes the country’s relationship with its two most important partners—China and the United States—with the main focus on the interactions among key players in the South China Sea.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Rosato ◽  
John Schuessler

What kind of policy can the United States pursue that ensures its security while minimizing the likelihood of war? We describe and defend a realist theory of foreign policy to guide American decision makers. Briefly, the theory says that if they want to ensure their security, great powers such as the United States should balance against other great powers. They should also take a relaxed view toward developments involving minor powers and, at most, should balance against hostile minor powers that inhabit strategically important regions of the world. We then show that had the great powers followed our theory's prescriptions, some of the most important wars of the past century might have been averted. Specifically, the world wars might not have occurred, and the United States might not have gone to war in either Vietnam or Iraq. In other words, realism as we conceive it offers the prospect of security without war. At the same time, we also argue that if the United States adopts an alternative liberal foreign policy, this is likely to result in more, rather than fewer, wars. We conclude by offering some theoretically-based proposals about how US decision makers should deal with China and Iran.


1987 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
William O. Beeman

In the past nine years the Islamic Republic of Iran has posed the most difficult of all foreign policy problems for the United States—a problem usually confronted by marriage counselors rather than diplomats, for Iran is the nation that the United States cannot live with and cannot live without.


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