Connecting Central Eurasia to the Middle East in American Foreign Policy Towards Afghanistan and Pakistan: 1979-Present

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Bromley
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Central Eurasia ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Soviet Invasion

AbstractDuring the Cold War, United States (US) policies towards the Middle East and towards Afghanistan and Pakistan were largely unrelated. India's non-alignment and relations with the Soviet Union were reasons for close US-Pakistani relations, but the Chinese success in the war with India in 1962 also highlighted the importance to the West of India's position. 1979 marked a major turning point in US foreign policy towards the Middle East and Central Eurasia (CEA) because of the two events which were to shape so much of politics and geopolitics in those regions as well as in the wider international system: namely, the Iranian revolution in February and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December. Taken together, these developments posed a major challenge to US strategy towards the Soviet Union, to the wider Middle East and to relations with China, Pakistan, and India. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan during 1988/89, the US lost interest in Afghanistan and followed the policies of Pakistan for most of the 1990s. Then came 9/11 and President Musharraf took the historic decision to break with the Taliban. In March 2003, the US began its second war against Iraq. Whatever the rationale for the conflict, the outcome has been to turn the future of Iraq into a key fault-line of geopolitics in the Greater Middle East. Now, with the instability following the collapse of the Soviet Empire in CEA, the defeat of the Taliban and the ongoing future of Iraq, the US faces what the Department of Defense describes as an "arc of instability" running from the Middle East through CEA to Northeast Asia. This is the region that lies at the centre of planning for the "long war" announced in the Pentagon's 2006 quadrennial review.

10. The U.S. Navy in the Twenty-First Century

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-122
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Hot Spots ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The U.S

The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not erase the need for a global U.S. Navy, as events in the Middle East and elsewhere provoked serial crises that led to the dispatch of U.S. naval combat groups to various hot spots around the world. ‘The U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century’ explains how the U.S. Navy continues to fulfill many of its historic missions—suppressing pirates, protecting trade, and pursuing drug runners. It is also a potent instrument of American foreign policy and a barometer of American concern. In addition to its deterrent and peacekeeping roles, the U.S. Navy also acts as a first responder to natural or man-made disasters that call for humane intervention.

When the Levee Breaks: The Impact of the Sino-Soviet Split and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia on Romanian-Soviet Relations, 1967–1970

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mircea Munteanu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New Evidence

Romania's position regarding the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was the culmination of almost a decade of increasingly autonomous moves vis-à-vis Moscow. Based on new evidence from the Romanian archives, this article paints a more complete picture of Nicolae Ceauşescu's reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, placing it in the context of the international system and especially the Sino-Soviet split. Following the invasion, Romania remained just as committed as before to the goal of ensuring its maneuverability on the world scene, especially with regard to sovereignty and independence. Although Romanian leaders tried not to provoke the Soviet Union outright, they did not back down on important issues concerning Sino-Romanian relations and did not embrace Moscow's call for a common Warsaw Pact foreign policy. Romania did agree to certain compromises, but only because Ceauşescu believed that Romania would remain largely unaffected by them.

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).

Yugoslavia’s Foreign Policy in Balkan Perspective: Tracking between the Superpowers and Non-Alignment

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
John R. Lampe
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
European Trade ◽  
Special Relationships ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Foreign Ministry

From 1960 forward, Yugoslavia based its independent foreign policy on three “special relationships”, balancing its accommodation with the Soviet Union by close relations with the United States and the new Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Paying special attention to the roles of Yugoslavia’s Foreign Ministry and the US State Department as well as President Tito, this article addresses three crucial periods in which the intersection of Yugoslavia’s relations with the US, the USSR and the NAM prompted a decisive turn in its foreign policy. In 1961–63, Tito’s support for the NAM damaged its US relations to Soviet benefit. But in 1967–71, NAM indifference to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia turned Tito back toward the US, as advocated by his Foreign Ministry. And in 1976-79, Soviet and Bulgarian efforts to coopt the NAM through Cuba’s Presidency prompted a successful rebuff led by Yugoslavia and appreciated in Washington. After 1979, however, Belgrade’s post Tito reliance on economic relations with the NAM members had unintended and damaging domestic consequences, obstructing the Slovenian and Croatian commitment to West European trade while also dividing Bosnian Muslims from Bosnian Serbs.

scholarly journals The US policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Reagan administration

2016 ◽  
pp. 176-191
Author(s):  
Olesya Pavlyuk
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us

The foreign policy approaches and methods of establishing bilateral relations between Washington and Tehran and the actual implementation of the US “containment” policy towards Iran are analyzed in the article. The author argues that the Middle Eastern vector of US foreign policy was formed according to the three security challenges in the region and Iranian involvement in them: the Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the kidnapping of American hostages in Beirut 1982. Background and progress of Iran-Iraq war were the result of striking contradictions between regional and world leaders in the Middle East. In fact, since the early 1980s. this military confrontation substantially affect the US relationship with IRI. In this context, the key point was the blatant US support of the Iraq and its government. Reagan administration continued the foreign policy of J. Carter and considered the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to the Gulf region, including through military intervention in Afghanistan and its close ties with radical countries like Libya and Syria. In the Middle East, the White House has focused its efforts on negotiations on a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1978. Before the revolution in 1979, Iran was crucial to US interests in the Middle East. First, as a frontline state with an extended 2000-km border with the Soviet Union, as well as a springboard for American intelligence. In addition, Iran was one of the few Muslim countries to recognize Israel, and exported oil to it. However, the after the Islamic revolution, Iran became the periphery to US priorities in the region.

scholarly journals La liberté est-elle divisible? Comment rapprocher les concepts de mission et de sécurité dans une politique étrangère américaine

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-531
Author(s):  
Cathal J. Nolan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Diplomacy ◽  
American Mission

This article seeks to outline the complex pattern of liberty and national security in international relations through a survey of the historical relationship between those concerns in the foreign policy of what is still the world's most important democratic country, the United States. This study is not a history per se of American diplomacy concerning this cluster of issues, although it is historical in approach. Nor is it directly concerned with an on-going theoretical debate over whether or not democracies are inherently more peaceful than other types of states, despite drawing upon elements of that debate and having implications for it. Instead, what is presented here is an interpretive survey of the importance in U.S. foreign policy of a set of key ideas about international order — specifically, the attempt to resolve ideas of "American mission " with the requirements of security, through increasingly active linkage of U.S. national security to the internal character of foreign regimes. It then explores how that tension became manifest in two policy settings : the United Nations, one of America's major multilateral relationship s, and the Soviet Union, its principal bilateral relationship. In short, this study is concerned with governing ideas in American diplomacy; with how such ideas arise and are sustained or challenged; with how they have been disseminated among allies (and even adversaries) ; and the implications of the reality that the United States have succeeded in imbedding these notions in the structures of the international System. The essay concludes with what should prove a controversial, qualified approval of the new 'liberal realism' evident in American foreign policy in the early 1990s.

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 La complexité de valeurs dans la politique étrangère de l'administration Reagan face à l'Iran

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-551
Author(s):  
André Lecours
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Classic Problem ◽  
A Value ◽  
Complexity Problem

The formulation of a policy that will satisfy several values and interests more or less compatible is a classic problem of political decision making. This phenomenon by which there can be, in a foreign policy issue for example, several divergent values and interests was named value-complexity by Alexander George. When facing a value complexity problem, a decision maker must choose some values and some interests over others. The choice he makes will not necessarily be the one made by other decision makers. This can result in a serious impediment to the decision making process. The American foreign policy towards the Middle East faced, for the major part of the Cold War era, a value-complexity problem because it looked to reconcile four hard-to reconcile values and interests. The Reagan government was confronted rather acutely with this problem in the making of its Iranian policies. The administration was split in at least two factions over Iran : one who thought primarily of containing the Soviet Union in the Middle East region and the other for whom the political stability of moderate regimes threatened by revolutionnary Iran should be the most important priority. The existence of these factions, consequence of value-complexity, produced the making and the implementation of two distinct Iranian policies.

scholarly journals EXPLORING AND EXPLAINING THE ECONOMIC POLITICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN IRAN AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SECOND PAHLAVI ERA EMPHASIZING THE SYSTEM THEORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimia Zare ◽  
Habibollah Saeeidinia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

Iran and Russia have common interests, especially in political terms, because of the common borders and territorial neighborhood. This has led to a specific sensitivity to how the two countries are approaching each other. Despite the importance of the two countries' relations, it is observed that in the history of the relations between Iran and Russia, various issues and issues have always been hindered by the close relations between the two countries. The beginning of Iran-Soviet relations during the Second Pahlavi era was accompanied by issues such as World War II and subsequent events. The relations between the two countries were influenced by the factors and system variables of the international system, such as the Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry, the Second World War and the entry of the Allies into Iran, the deconstruction of the relations between the two post-Cold War superpowers, and so on.The main question of the current research is that the political relations between Iran and Russia influenced by the second Pahlavi period?To answer this question, the hypothesis was that Iran's political economic relations were fluctuating in the second Pahlavi era and influenced by the changing system theory of the international system with the Soviet Union. The findings suggest that various variables such as the structure of the international system and international events, including World War II, the arrival of controversial forces in Iran, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, the US and Soviet policies, and the variables such as the issue of oil Azerbaijan's autonomy, Tudeh's actions in Iran, the issue of fisheries and borders. Also, the policies adopted by Iranian politicians, including negative balance policy, positive nationalism and independent national policy, have affected Iran-Soviet relations. In a general conclusion, from 1320 (1942) to 1357 (1979), the relationship between Iran and Russia has been an upward trend towards peaceful coexistence. But expansion of further relations in the economic, technical and cultural fields has been political rather than political.

scholarly journals UNITED STATES: A REVIEW OF THE US MIDDLE EAST POLICY FROM HARRY TRUMAN TO BILL CLINTON

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Kardo RACHED ◽  
Salam ABDULRAHMAN
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
American President ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Middle East Policy

Since the Second World War, the Middle East has been mentioned in connection with the national interest of America manifested by US presidents. This paper looks at the US foreign policy in the Middle East from Truman to Clinton on the premise that the US foreign policy has contributed to creating a breeding ground for dissatisfaction toward the US In this context, the paper focuses on the doctrines in use from the time of President Truman to Clinton. Thus, every American president has a doctrine, and this doctrine tells what political line the president follows regarding domestic and foreign policies. Keywords: Middle-East, Israel, US national interest, Soviet Union, Natural resources, ideologies.

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