scholarly journals Visiting the hegemon: Explaining diplomatic visits to the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 205316802110667
Author(s):  
Faradj Koliev ◽  
Magnus Lundgren
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Diplomacy is a chief instrument of foreign policy. Through high-level diplomatic visits, governments can facilitate cooperation and signal the quality of their relations with other states. Because host countries cannot receive an indefinite number of visits, they must make strategic decisions, prioritizing some countries over others. This reveals information about their foreign policy priorities as well as diplomatic hierarchies and practices in the system as a whole. But what determines high-level diplomatic visits? Existing scholarship disagrees. In this research note, we assess the determinants of high-level diplomatic visits to the U.S. Theoretically, we draw on previous studies and formulate structural, domestic, and practice-oriented accounts of high-level visits as tools of foreign policy. Empirically, we gather original data on diplomatic visits to the U.S. by foreign leaders from 1946 to 2012. Our main results are two-fold. First, high-level diplomatic visits to the U.S. are primarily determined by structural factors such as economic relations. Second, we find clear differences in invited country profiles during and after the Cold War, demonstrating that high-level visits are used strategically to promote shifting foreign policy priorities.

The Clinton Administration and Africa: White House Involvement and the Foreign Affairs Bureaucracies

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
John F. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
White House ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Both continuity and change capture the evolving role of the Clinton White House in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. Elements of continuity are reflected in a familiar pattern of relationships between the White House and the principal foreign policy bureaucracies, most notably the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and more recently the U.S. Department of Commerce. As cogently argued in Peter J. Schraeder’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa during the Cold War era, the White House has tended to take charge of U.S. African policies only in those relatively rare situations perceived as crises by the president and his closest advisors. In other, more routine situations—the hallmark of the myriad of U.S. African relations—the main foreign policy bureaucracies have been at the forefront of policy formulation, and “bureaucratic dominance” of the policymaking process has prevailed. Much the same pattern is visible in the Clinton administration, with the exception of President Clinton’s trip to Africa in 1998. Until that time, events in Somalia in 1993 served as the only true African crisis of the administration that was capable of focusing the ongoing attention of President Clinton and his closest advisors. Given that the United States is now disengaged from most African crises, Africa has remained a “backwater” for the White House and the wider foreign policymaking establishment.

The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir A. Lieber ◽  
Daryl G. Press
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Long Range ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Nuclear Exchange ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

For nearly half a century, the world's most powerful nuclear-armed states have been locked in a condition of mutual assured destruction. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the nuclear balance has shifted dramatically. The U.S. nuclear arsenal has steadily improved; the Russian force has sharply eroded; and Chinese nuclear modernization has progressed at a glacial pace. As a result, the United States now stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy, meaning that it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia and China with a nuclear first strike. A simple nuclear exchange model demonstrates that the United States has a potent first-strike capability. The trajectory of nuclear developments suggests that the nuclear balance will continue to shift in favor of the United States in coming years. The rise of U.S. nuclear primacy has significant implications for relations among the world's great powers, for U.S. foreign policy, and for international relations scholarship.

scholarly journals The Middle East Policy of America after the Cold War

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Kübra Dilek Azman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Middle East Policy ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Policy Discourses

The aim of this study is to discuss the Middle East policy of the United States’ (U.S.) after the Cold War. In the period following the Cold War, the Middle East has been a place that the U.S’ has projected upon as if it were its own private land. This is an attractive and important issue for political research area. In briefly, it can be divided the policies of the U.S. in the post-Cold War concerning the Middle East into three just like a tripod and these are security, economy and politics. Firstly, eliminate the danger of radical Islamic groups, especially war against to acts of terrorism, secondly; controlling oil and energy resources and the finally is ensuring the security of Israel state. This paper will examine the September 11 attacks and the U.S. Greater Middle East Project and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In that period U.S. tend to use the hard power. Than after this period, new President Barack Obama has changed the American Middle East policy discourses. The Obama’s foreign policy discourses show us that he is tend to use soft power instruments. This study argues that the U.S. foreign policy in Middle East after the Cold War has changed periodically. However the aim of Middle East policy of the U.S.’ has not changed, but the policy instruments have been changed from hard power to soft power Then, the question has been raised about the whether the U.S. will be success or not with this new policy. These concerning issues are going to be discussed.

scholarly journals Higher education – the factor of soft power in U.S. foreign policy from the post-cold war to 2016

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-612
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Huyen Thao
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
National Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Soft power is a concept that was created by Joseph Nye in the 1990s. After the soft power theory was supplemented many times, up to now, it has been considered a theory interesting to many researchers. In 2005, he pointed out that higher education played an important role and was a factor of soft power in U.S. foreign policy. The United States (U.S) is a country that has flexible, adjustable and appropriated changes in foreign policy. The cultural and educational values in history have created the soft power and own mark of U.S , especially in the period of the Cold War (1947- 1991). At that time, higher education contributed to the training and changing of the mind of many students going to the Soviet Union. After the Cold War ended, the U.S. remained the nation's top-rank comprehensive national power in the World. This national power gave the U.S. favorable conditions to enforce and implement strategies globally. In this way, the soft power was never left behind in the U.S foreign policy, especially in higher education. So, how did the U.S. maintain this policy in the foreign policy and what outcomes did it bring to the U.S.? This article presents the higher education and the factor of soft power in the U.S. foreign policy from the Post-Cold War till 2016.

scholarly journals Why America's Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 9-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Porter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Natural Choice ◽  
The Status ◽  
Grand Strategies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Why has U.S. grand strategy persisted since the end of the Cold War? Despite shocks such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the costs of the war in Iraq—circumstances that ought to have stimulated at least a revision—the United States remains committed to a grand strategy of “primacy.” It strives for military preponderance, dominance in key regions, the containment and reassurance of allies, nuclear counterproliferation, and the economic “Open Door.” The habitual ideas of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, or the “Blob,” make U.S. grand strategy hard to change. The United States' military and economic capabilities enable the U.S. government to pursue primacy, but the embedded assumptions of the Blob make primacy the seemingly natural choice. Thanks to the Blob's constraining power, alternative grand strategies based on restraint and retrenchment are hardly entertained, and debate is narrowed mostly into questions of execution and implementation. Two cases—the presidency of Bill Clinton and the first year of the presidency of Donald Trump—demonstrate this argument. In each case, candidates promising change were elected in fluid conditions that we would expect to stimulate a reevaluation of the United States' commitments. In each case, the Blob asserted itself successfully, at least on the grand strategic fundamentals. Change in grand strategy is possible, but it would require shocks large enough to shake the assumptions of the status quo and a president willing to be an agent of change and prepared to absorb the political costs of overhauling Washington's traditional design.

Russia’s Containment and Engagement Strategies in the U.S. Foreign Policy during the Presidency of G. W. Bush

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Gerda Jakstaite
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Strategy ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Engagement Strategies ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Traditionally, Containment and Engagement strategies are considered to be the part of the United States foreign policy during the Cold War. However, recent developments in international relations indicated that these strategies are still relevant to the contemporary foreign policy of the U.S., particularly in the U.S.-Russian relations. Contradictory presidency of George W. Bush has raised a question which of the mentioned foreign policy strategies was dominating in the U.S.-Russian relations. On the one hand, U.S. officials had declared that partnership with Russia was being pursued. On the other hand, the administration of G.W. Bush favored the expansion of NATO and did not surrender the initiative of missile defense shield. This paper intends to assess which foreign policy strategy (Containment or Engagement) dominated in U.S.-Russian relations during the presidency of G.W. Bush and to analyse reasons of such domination and the ways these strategies were implemented. The results of the research indicate that G. W. Bush administration implemented different foreign policy towards Russia on the declared and practical foreign policy levels. If on the official U.S. foreign policy level Russia’s engagement strategy dominated, in the U.S. foreign policy practice, particularly influenced by the foreign policy of Russia, and to a lesser extent by the events in the international arena, the dominant foreign policy strategy towards Russia was Russia’s containment strategy.

scholarly journals The United States in a World of Great Power Competition

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-94
Author(s):  
J. Mankoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The adoption of the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) marked Washington’s official pivot to “great power competition” as the conceptual framework for U.S. foreign policy. The shift to great power competition as the foundation for U.S. foreign policy represents an acknowledgment that the “forever wars” in the Middle East had become an expensive, strategically dubious distraction from the more pressing challenge posed by a revanchist Russia and a rising China. The template for much of the “new” thinking about great power competition is the Cold War – the last time the U.S. faced a peer competitor – whose shadow hangs over much thinking about U.S. policy toward Beijing and Moscow. In many ways, though, the Cold War was an outlier in the history of U.S. foreign policy, a product of very specific circumstances that are unlikely to be replicated in the 21st century. A danger exists in seeing the Cold War as a typical example of great power competition, or in using it as a template for U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century. Great power competition is usually a chronic condition, which is to say, more or less incurable. In order for a country like the United States to enter a new era of great power competition with China and Russia, it will need to convince the American public that the stakes are high and the dangers are great enough to justify the costs. Without the ideological or existential stakes of the Cold War, public support for an assertive strategy of containing Chinese and Russian influence will likely be hard to maintain. Rather, the U.S. is likely to continue the reversion toward its pre-Cold War pattern of seeking to insulate itself from the dangers of the world, and increasingly pass the burden of resisting the expansion of Chinese and Russian influence to others.

Russian-Japanese Relations: Long-Term Development Factors

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 68-85
Author(s):  
D. V. Streltsov
Keyword(s):  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
External Energy ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Personal Diplomacy

The article analyzes long-term external and internal factors determining the course of development of Russian-Japanese relations in 2019-2020. On the one hand, the anti-Russian component in Tokyo's foreign policy is shaped by its membership in the Security Treaty with the United States and its solidarity with the sanctions policy of the Group of Seven towards Russia. On the other hand, Japan and Russia are both interested interest in political cooperation in creating multilateral dialog mechanisms of international security in East Asia, resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, and easing tensions around territorial disputes in the East China and South China seas. Among the economic factors, the author focuses on the significant place of Russia in the context of Japan's task of diversifying sources of external energy supplies, as well as on Russia's desire to avoid unilateral dependence on the Chinese market while reorienting the system of foreign economic relations from the West to the East. Personal diplomacy of political leaders plays a significant role in relations between Russia and Japan, and, above all, close personal relationships and frequent meetings between Prime Minister Abe and President Putin, which make it possible to partially compensate the unfavorable image of the partner country in the public opinion of both Russia and Japan. Against the background of a deadlock in the Peace Treaty talks which emerged in 2019, the search for a way out of the diplomatic impasse is on the agenda. In the author's opinion, it would be appropriate at the first stage to proceed to the conclusion of a basic agreement on the basis bilateral relations, which would be "untied" from the Peace Treaty. In addition, Russia could stop criticizing Japan for its security policy and show greater understanding of the Japanese initiative in the field of quality infrastructure. In turn, Japan could take a number of strategic decisions on cooperation with Russia and announce them in the Prime Minister's keynote speech. In addition, Tokyo could stop positioning the issue of the peace Treaty as the main issue in relations with Russia, which would allow our countries to "untie" bilateral relations from the problem of border demarcation and focus on their positive agenda.

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.

The Invisible Hand of Diplomacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376
Author(s):  
Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First Time ◽  
Simple Narrative ◽  
The U.S

In December 1977, a tiny group of U.S. glove makers—most of whom were African American and Latina women—launched a petition before the U.S. International Trade Commission calling for protection from rising imports. Their target was China. Represented by the Work Glove Manufacturers Association, their petition called for quotas on a particular kind of glove entering the United States from China: cotton work gloves. This was a watershed moment. For the first time since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, U.S. workers singled out Chinese goods in pursuit of import relief. Because they were such a small group taking on a country as large as China, their supporters championed the cause as one of David versus Goliath. Yet the case has been forgotten, partly because the glove workers lost. Here I uncover their story, bringing the history of 1970s deindustrialization in the United States into conversation with U.S.-China rapprochement, one of the most significant political transformations of the Cold War. The case, and indeed the loss itself, reveals the tensions between the interests of U.S. workers, corporations, and diplomats. Yet the case does not provide a simple narrative of U.S. workers’ interests being suppressed by diplomats and policymakers nurturing globalized trade ties. Instead, it also underscored the conflicting interests within the U.S. labor movement at a time when manufacturing companies were moving their production jobs to East Asia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document