Henry A.Wallace as Presidential Candidate: “Am I in America?”

2021 ◽  
pp. 056943452110197
Author(s):  
Per Magnus Wijkman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Truman Doctrine ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Progressive Party ◽  
Universal Military Training

Henry A. Wallace challenged the bipartisan foreign policy of President Truman in 1948. The Progressive Citizens of America opposed Truman’s “get-tough policy” (the Truman Doctrine, loyalty investigations, Universal Military Training, and the Marshall Plan) and founded the Progressive Party. Other “liberals” formed Americans for Democratic Action and supported Truman, who claimed that the Progressive Party was a Soviet construction. Wallace refused to participate in segregated meetings during his campaign in the South and was violently attacked. He advocated the need for federal measures to prohibit segregation, discrimination, the poll tax, and lynching. Wallace was resoundingly defeated but proved right in the long run: military means could not solve social problems. Instead, it spread hatred of the United States in many countries. The 1948 election determined U.S. foreign policy for over 50 years, resulting in missed opportunities to improve housing, education, and social security at home, which still has repercussions today. JEL Classifications: N42, F50

scholarly journals German Question in the Foreign Policy Strategy of the USA in the Second Half of the 1940s – 1980s

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Dmytro Lakishyk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
German Question ◽  
The Usa

The article examines US policy towards West Germany after World War II, covering a historical span from the second half of the 1940s to the 1980s. It was US policy in Europe, and in West Germany in particular, that determined the dynamics and nature of US-German relations that arose on a long-term basis after the formation of Germany in September 1949. One of the peculiarities of US-German relations was the fact that both partners found themselves embroiled in a rapidly escalating international situation after 1945. The Cold War, which broke out after the seemingly inviolable Potsdam Accords, forced the United States and Germany to be on one side of the conflict. Despite the fact that both states were yesterday’s opponents and came out of the war with completely different, at that time, incomparable, statuses. A characteristic feature of US policy on the German question in the postwar years was its controversial evolution. The American leadership had neither a conceptual plan for development, nor a clear idea of Germany’s place in the world, nor an idea of how to plan the country’s future. However, the deterioration of relations between the USA and the USSR and the birth of the two blocs forced the US government to resort to economic revival (the Marshall Plan) and military-political consolidation of Western Europe and Germany (NATO creation). US policy toward Germany has been at the heart of its wider European policy. The United States favored a strong and united Western Europe over American hegemony, trying to prevent the spread of Soviet influence. Joint participation in the suppression of communism, however, could not prevent the periodic exacerbation of relations between the United States and Germany, and at the same time did not lead to an unconditional follow-up of the West Germans in the fairway of American foreign policy.

Global versus National

Age of Iron ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 70-104
Author(s):  
Colin Dueck
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Clinton Presidency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter describes the efforts of various Republican presidents and congressional leaders to strike balances between nationalist and internationalist priorities between the 1960s and 2015. Barry Goldwater championed a hawkish Sunbelt conservatism that in the long run helped remake the Republican Party. President Nixon pursued a foreign policy based upon assumptions of great-power politics and realpolitik. President Reagan led an ideologically charged effort at anti-Communist rollback, although he was careful not to overextend the United States in any large-scale wars on the ground. Republicans during the Clinton presidency struggled to reformulate conservative foreign policy assumptions in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. George W. Bush remade conservative foreign policy into a war on terror, aiming at the democratization of the Greater Middle East. Finally, during the presidency of Barack Obama, Republican foreign policy factions once again splintered, paving the way for a conservative nationalist resurgence.

The British Foreign Office and American Foreign Policy, 1947–48

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter G. Boyle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Truman Doctrine ◽  
The Us ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
British Foreign Office

On 21 February 1947, the US Government was informed of Britain's decision to terminate aid to Greece as from 31 March 1947. This produced a flurry of activity culminating in President Harry Truman's address to Congress on 12 March 1947 in which he requested $400m. aid for Greece and Turkey and pronounced the Truman Doctrine, thereby commiting the United States to the worldwide containment of Communism by means of American aid to nations threatened either by Communist insurgency from within or by Communist aggression from abroad. Debate on the Greek-Turkish Aid Bill and on the implications of the Truman Doctrine was one of the important sources of Secretary of State George C. Marshall's speech at Havard University on 5 June 1947 which initiated the idea of the Marshall Plan, the four year programme (1948–52) of American Aid to sixteen European nations designed to build up the economics of these countries and to lessen the prospect of Communism gaining strength within them. Was Britain's sudden withdrawal of aid from Greece determined simply by financial weakness, or did British policy have a more positive and subtle aim, namely to induce the United States to commit itself decisively to a policy of containment in both its political and economic form? The British Foreign Office papers for the late 1940s, as well as the papers of other government departments such as the Treasury, which are now open as a consequence of the thirty year rule, facilitate a better understanding of British policy in 1947–48 and of the British view of American policy in those years, in particular with regard to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.

scholarly journals US Foreign Policy at the Initial Stage of the Cold War

1970 ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
D. Lakishyk ◽  
D. Puhachova-Lakishyk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Far East ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

The article examines the formation of the main directions of the US foreign policy strategy at the beginning of the Cold War. The focus is on determining the vectors of the United States in relation to the spatial priorities of the US foreign policy, the particular interests in the respective regions, the content of means and methods of influence for the realization of their own geopolitical interests. It is argued that the main regions that the United States identified for itself in the early postwar years were Europe, the Middle and Far East, and the Middle East and North Africa were the peripheral ones (attention was also paid to Latin America). It is stated that the most important priorities of American foreign policy were around the perimeter of the zone of influence of the USSR, which entered the postwar world as an alternative to the US center  of power. Attention is also paid to US foreign policy initiatives such as the Marshall Plan and the 4th Point Program, which have played a pivotal role inshaping American foreign policy in the postwar period.

“Digging for Deferments”

Rough Draft ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Amy J. Rutenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Military Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Defense ◽  
War Department ◽  
Common Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Universal Military Training

This chapter argues that proposals for universal military training (UMT) for all American men failed for several reasons. Opponents of UMT attacked the idea’s efficacy for national defense, but they also questioned the assumptions that military training made men or should be an obligation of citizenship. Despite the support of the War Department, three presidents, and the majority of American citizens, UMT failed to gain legislative traction, in part because Americans did not share a common definition of masculine citizenship. The failure of UMT confirmed that military service in the United States would be selective rather than compulsory and that it would not be directly tied to masculine forms of citizenship. Its failure reinforced the notion that there were alternative acceptable ways of being a man and a citizen in the United States.

Isolationism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justus D. Doenecke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Option ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
The North ◽  
The 1950S

For the United States, isolationism is best defined as avoidance of wars outside the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Europe; opposition to binding military alliances; and the unilateral freedom to act politically and commercially unrestrained by mandatory commitments to other nations. Until the controversy over American entry into the League of Nations, isolationism was never subject to debate. The United States could expand its territory, protect its commerce, and even fight foreign powers without violating its traditional tenets. Once President Woodrow Wilson sought membership in the League, however, Americans saw isolationism as a foreign policy option, not simply something taken for granted. A fundamental foreign policy tenet now became a faction, limited to a group of people branded as “isolationists.” Its high point came during the years 1934–1937, when Congress, noting the challenge of the totalitarian nations to the international status quo, passed the neutrality acts to insulate the country from global entanglements. Once World War II broke out in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt increasingly sought American participation on the side of the Allies. Isolationists unsuccessfully fought FDR’s legislative proposals, beginning with repeal of the arms embargo and ending with the convoying of supplies to Britain. The America First Committee (1940–1941), however, so effectively mobilized anti-interventionist opinion as to make the president more cautious in his diplomacy. If the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor permanently ended classic isolationism, by 1945 a “new isolationism” voiced suspicion of the United Nations, the Truman Doctrine, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and U.S. participation in the Korean War. Yet, because the “new isolationists” increasingly advocated militant unilateral measures to confront Communist Russia and China, often doing so to advance the fortunes of the Republican party, they exposed themselves to charges of inconsistency and generally faded away in the 1950s. Since the 1950s, many Americans have opposed various military involvements— including the ones in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan— but few envision returning to an era when the United States avoids all commitments.

scholarly journals US Multilateral Aid in Transition: Implications for Development Cooperation

2020 ◽  
pp. 499-516
Author(s):  
Tony Pipa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Cooperation ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Multilateral Aid ◽  
Specific Interests ◽  
Trump Administration

AbstractThe United States, whose leadership through the Marshall Plan created the basis for modern-day development cooperation, has veered abruptly from its traditional role. An analysis of US funding trends shows that it has increasingly shifted from collective to specific interests, even as it has increased its multilateral aid. The United States is now actively shunning multilateral settings as part of its America First foreign policy, even when multilateral policies reinforce the international development priorities of the Trump administration, and its growing geopolitical competition with China is spilling into development assistance. This chapter explores the implications for development cooperation and whether these changes signal a more durable shift in US perspective.

Pursuing Hegemony

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-42
Author(s):  
William O. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
The North ◽  
Truman Doctrine ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter describes how the United States forged the American Century while pursuing hegemony from 1945 through 1949. More than consultation with friends and allies was necessary after the onset of the Cold War. To demonstrate the nation’s credibility, the Department of State, through the efforts of George Marshall, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson, fashioned programs for military aid and economic assistance, namely, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan. The former prefigured the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whereas the Marshall Plan, thanks to the work of the Economic Cooperation Administration, became a model for economic reconstruction in strategically vital places in Western Europe and beyond, most notably Japan.

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