Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: Evaluating a Model of Crisis Activity for the United States

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States

Visions of Japan and Other “Countries” in the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-67
Author(s):  
Gideon Fujiwara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Regional Diversity ◽  
Northern Island ◽  
The World

This chapter begins by outlining Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival and the “opening” of Hakodate port. It analyses the crises of foreign policy and domestic politics of the United States and Japan after a historic treaty was signed to “open” Japan. With such awareness, the chapter documents Hirao Rosen's journeys to Ezo in 1855 and how he rediscovered “Japan,” its regional diversity, and its place within a larger global community. It reviews Rosen's observation on the governance of Matsumae castle town and Hakodate, as well as the diverse populations residing there. As an ethnographic scholar, he was perplexed to see peoples from the United States, England, and other European countries interacting freely, while noticing stark contrasts between the cultures and mannerisms of the Japanese and the Westerners. The chapter also discusses Rosen's documents on the local and Japanese cultures he encountered on the northern island, as well as the commonalities and differences in the seasonal festivals and ceremonies practiced locally and transmitted there from Tsugaru, Nanbu, and elsewhere in Japan. Ultimately, it focuses on Rosen's ethnographic inquiries on Tsugaru and Japan, and his engagement with kokugaku.

The Peace Movement since 1945

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leilah Danielson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Activism

Peace activism in the United States between 1945 and the 2010s focused mostly on opposition to U.S. foreign policy, efforts to strengthen and foster international cooperation, and support for nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. The onset of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union marginalized a reviving postwar American peace movement emerging from concerns about atomic and nuclear power and worldwide nationalist politics that everywhere seemed to foster conflict, not peace. Still, peace activism continued to evolve in dynamic ways and to influence domestic politics and international relations. Most significantly, peace activists pioneered the use of Gandhian nonviolence in the United States and provided critical assistance to the African American civil rights movement, led the postwar antinuclear campaign, played a major role in the movement against the war in Vietnam, helped to move the liberal establishment (briefly) toward a more dovish foreign policy in the early 1970s, and helped to shape the political culture of American radicalism. Despite these achievements, the peace movement never regained the political legitimacy and prestige it held in the years before World War II, and it struggled with internal divisions about ideology, priorities, and tactics. Peace activist histories in the 20th century tended to emphasize organizational or biographical approaches that sometimes carried hagiographic overtones. More recently, historians have applied the methods of cultural history, examining the role of religion, gender, and race in structuring peace activism. The transnational and global turn in the historical discipline has also begun to make inroads in peace scholarship. These are promising new directions because they situate peace activism within larger historical and cultural developments and relate peace history to broader historiographical debates and trends.

scholarly journals What Determines Foreign Policy in Latin America? Systemic versus Domestic Factors in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, 1946–2008

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Octavio Amorim Neto ◽  
Andrés Malamud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The Political ◽  
Un General Assembly ◽  
Systemic Variables

AbstractIs it domestic politics or the international system that more decisively influences foreign policy? This article focuses on Latin America's three largest powers to identify patterns and compare outcomes in their relations with the regional hegemon, the United States. Through a statistical analysis of voting behavior in the UN General Assembly, we examine systemic variables (both realist and liberal) and domestic variables (institutional, ideological, and bureaucratic) to determine their relative weights between 1946 and 2008. The study includes 4,900 votes, the tabulation of 1,500 ministers according to their ideological persuasion, all annual trade entries, and an assessment of the political strength of presidents, cabinets, and parties per year. The findings show that while Argentina's voting behavior has been determined mostly by domestic factors and Mexico's by realist systemic ones, Brazil's has a more complex blend of determinants, but also with a prevalence of realist systemic variables.

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.

Obama's wavering: US foreign policy on the Egyptian crisis, 2011–13

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Fabbrini ◽  
Amr Yossef
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Experience ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Impact

The existing literature explains the wavering course of President Barack Obama's policy on the 2001–03 Egyptian crisis as attributed to either his personal characteristics (lack of an international experience, predisposition to sermonize rather than to strategize) or to the impact of the decline of the United States as a global superpower (inability to influence foreign actors and contexts). Although both explanations are worthy of consideration, this article seeks to demonstrate that they are insufficient when accounting for the uncertainties shown by the United States during the Egyptian crisis. Domestic factors, particularly the internally divided US political elite and a foreign policy team with different views, played a crucial intervening role in defining the features of US foreign policy. It was domestic politics that made the Obama administration ineffective in dealing with the new scenario that emerged in the Middle East and in Egypt in particular.

Phantom Peace

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-80
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kolander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Strategic Alliance ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
To Come

The themes of national security and domestic politics intersect in the second chapter. Based on the papers of Henry “Scoop” Jackson and J. William Fulbright, the chapter uses the conflict between the two Democratic senators to show how the growing Soviet presence in the Middle East, combined with the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, brought about a major upheaval within the Democratic Party as well as a rise in conservative support for Israel from the halls of Congress. Jackson, who ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and Fulbright, the longest-tenured chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, staked out very different positions for the proper relationship between the United States and Israel. A discussion about the Jackson-Fulbright conflict encourages broader thinking about congressional participation in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and also exposes significant political fault lines that would complicate the making of U.S. policy toward Israel for years to come. The United States and Israel developed a strategic alliance during this period, in addition to the special relationship, which involved an enormous increase in weapons sales from the United States to Israel.

Vietnam and the Soldiers' Revolt: The Politics of a Forgotten History

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Seidman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of Interest ◽  
Global Power ◽  
History Of

It has been nearly fifty years since the height of the Vietnam War—or, as it is known in Vietnam, the American War—and yet its memory continues to loom large over U.S. politics, culture, and foreign policy. The battle to define the war's lessons and legacies has been a proxy for larger clashes over domestic politics, national identity, and U.S. global power. One of its most debated areas has been the mass antiwar movement that achieved its greatest heights in the United States but also operated globally. Within this, and for the antiwar left especially, a major point of interest has been the history of soldier protest during the war.… Activists looked back to this history for good reason.… Soldiers, such potent symbols of U.S. patriotism, turned their guns around—metaphorically, but also, at times, literally—during a time of war.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

Against Slave Power? Slavery and Runaway Slaves in Mexico-United States Relations, 1821–1857

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-170
Author(s):  
Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
The Us ◽  
El Alto ◽  
Upper South ◽  
Lower South

This work analyses the diplomatic conflicts that slavery and the problem of runaway slaves provoked in relations between Mexico and the United States from 1821 to 1857. Slavery became a source of conflict after the colonization of Texas. Later, after the US-Mexico War, slaves ran away into Mexican territory, and therefore slaveholders and politicians in Texas wanted a treaty of extradition that included a stipulation for the return of fugitives. This article contests recent historiography that considers the South (as a region) and southern politicians as strongly influential in the design of foreign policy, putting into question the actual power not only of the South but also of the United States as a whole. The problem of slavery divided the United States and rendered the pursuit of a proslavery foreign policy increasingly difficult. In addition, the South never acted as a unified bloc; there were considerable differences between the upper South and the lower South. These differences are noticeable in the fact that southerners in Congress never sought with enough energy a treaty of extradition with Mexico. The article also argues that Mexico found the necessary leeway to defend its own interests, even with the stark differential of wealth and resources existing between the two countries. El presente trabajo analiza los conflictos diplomáticos entre México y Estados Unidos que fueron provocados por la esclavitud y el problema de los esclavos fugitivos entre 1821 y 1857. La esclavitud se convirtió en fuente de conflicto tras la colonización de Texas. Más tarde, después de la guerra Mexico-Estados Unidos, algunos esclavos se fugaron al territorio mexicano y por lo tanto dueños y políticos solicitaron un tratado de extradición que incluyera una estipulación para el retorno de los fugitivos. Este artículo disputa la idea de la historiografía reciente que considera al Sur (en cuanto región), así como a los políticos sureños, como grandes influencias en el diseño de la política exterior, y pone en tela de juicio el verdadero poder no sólo del Sur sino de Estados Unidos en su conjunto. El problema de la esclavitud dividió a Estados Unidos y dificultó cada vez más el impulso de una política exterior que favoreciera la esclavitud. Además, el Sur jamás operó como unidad: había diferencias marcadas entre el Alto Sur y el Bajo Sur. Estas diferencias se observan en el hecho de que los sureños en el Congreso jamás se esforzaron en buscar con suficiente energía un tratado de extradición con México. El artículo también sostiene que México halló el margen de maniobra necesario para defender sus propios intereses, pese a los fuertes contrastes de riqueza y recursos entre los dos países.

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