scholarly journals BIDEN’S APPROACH TOWARDS RUSSIA: A “RESET LIGHT”?

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/2021) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Vladimir Trapara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
First Year ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The topic of this paper is foreign policy course towards Russia employed by the incumbent United States president, Joseph Biden, during his first year in office. Motivated by the recent Biden-Putin bilateral summit and Biden’s remark on the U.S. and Russia as “two great powers”, the author presents a research question whether this event could be observed as the beginning of a “reset light” approach in Washington’s Russia policy. Unlike the previous “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations this time the goal would not be rapprochement, but structured confrontation between the two countries (such as the one which prevented escalation during the Cold War), with cooperation in areas where it is possible. Having considered Obama/Trump legacy, put Biden’s rhetoric and actions in current international and domestic context, and analyzed different issues over which Russia and the U.S. are in conflict/can cooperate, the author concludes that Biden’s approach can be considered a “reset light”, but that its success in the longer run is uncertain.

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 Globalization, values, interests

2003 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjana Radojicic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The nature of the international politics, after the Cold War directed by the U.S. as the only current super-power, are considered in the text. The author?s intention is to stress the main points of divergence between moralistic-valuable rhetoric and the foreign policy practice of the U.S. In that sense, the examples of the American stand, i.e. the active treatment of the Yugoslav crisis, on the one hand, and the crisis in the Persian Gulf, on the other hand, is considered. The author?s conclusion is that the foreign policy of the only current super-power is still directed by interests rather then by values. In the concluding part, the author presents an anthropologic argument in favor of reestablishing "balance of power" as the only guarantee for peace and stability of the world.

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.

John Leighton Stuart and U.S.-Chinese Communist Rapprochement in 1949: Was There Another “Lost Chance in China”?

1982 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-ming Shaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
June July ◽  
The Cold War

Reverend John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962) served as U.S. ambassador to China from July 1946 until August 1949. In the many discussions of his ambassadorship the one diplomatic mission that has aroused the most speculation and debate was his abortive trip to Beijing, contemplated in June–July 1949, to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Some students of Sino-American relations have claimed that had this trip been made the misunderstanding and subsequent hostility between the United States and the People's Republic of China in the post-1949 period could have been avoided; therefore, the unmaking of this trip constituted another “lost chance in China” in establishing a working relationship between the two countries. But others have thought that given the realities of the Cold War in 1949 and the internal political constraints existing in each country, no substantial result could have been gained from such a trip. Therefore, the thesis of a “lost chance in China” was more an unfounded speculation than a credible affirmation.

US grand strategy after the Cold War: Can realism explain it? Should realism guide it?

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M Walt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Policy Elites

This article uses realism to explain past US grand strategy and prescribe what it should be today. Throughout its history, the United States has generally acted as realism depicts. The end of the Cold War reduced the structural constraints that states normally face in anarchy, and a bipartisan coalition of foreign policy elites attempted to use this favorable position to expand the US-led ‘liberal world order’. Their efforts mostly failed, however, and the United States should now return to a more realistic strategy – offshore balancing – that served it well in the past. Washington should rely on local allies to uphold the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East and focus on leading a balancing coalition in Asia. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump lacks the knowledge, competence, and character to pursue this sensible course, and his cavalier approach to foreign policy is likely to damage America’s international position significantly.

An Ordinary Soviet Death

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Rational Argument ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter describes the timing and motivations of the USSR's promotion of atheist doctrine. At the outset, it seems, the Soviets expected Orthodoxy to wither away, invalidated by rational argument and the regime's own record of socialist achievement. This did not happen, but Soviet officialdom did not take full cognizance of the fact until the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Then it was that the Soviet Union's confrontation with the West came to be recast in religious terms as an epic battle between atheist communism on the one hand and on the other that self-styled standard-bearer of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the United States. So, here indeed, in Soviet atheism, is a secular church militant—doctrinally armed, fortified by the concentrated power of the modern state, and, as many believed, with the wind of history at its back. It speaks the language of liberation, but what it delivers is something much darker. The chapter then considers the place of ritual in the Soviet secularist project.

Chilean Copper and U.S. Companies

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Sebastián Hurtado-Torres
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Chilean Copper ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter focuses on the role of copper policies in the relations between the United States and Chile during the Frei administration, especially as they relate to the developmental efforts of the Christian Democratic project. During the Frei administration, the political debate on copper policies reached a climax. Since U.S. capitals were among the most significant actors in the story, the discussions around the issue of copper converged with the ideological visions of the United States and the Cold War held by the different Chilean political parties. As the Frei administration tried to introduce the most comprehensive and consistent reform around the structure of the property of the Gran Minería del Cobre, the forces in competition in the arena of Chilean politics stood by their ideological convictions, regarding both copper and the United States, in their opposition or grudging support for the policies proposed by the Christian Democratic government. Moreover, the U.S. government became deeply involved in the matter of copper in Chile, first by pressuring the Chilean government into rolling back a price increase in 1965 and then, mostly through the personal efforts of Ambassador Edward Korry, by mediating in the negotiation between the Frei administration and Anaconda on the nationalization of the U.S. company's largest mine, Chuquicamata, in 1969.

Marinera with the Yankees

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-124
Author(s):  
Iñigo García-Bryce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Asylum ◽  
Student Leader ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter explores Haya’s changing relationship with the United States. As an exiled student leader he denounced “Yankee imperialism” and alarmed observers in the U.S. State Department. Yet once he entered Peruvian politics, Haya understood the importance of cultivating U.S.-Latin American relations. While in hiding he maintained relations with U.S. intellectuals and politicians and sought U.S. support for his embattled party. His writings increasingly embraced democracy and he maneuvered to position APRA as an ally in the U.S. fight fascism during the 1930s and 40s, and then communism during the Cold War. The five years he spent in Lima’s Colombian embassy awaiting the resolution of his political asylum case, made him into an international symbol of the democratic fight against dictatorship. He would always remain a critic of U.S. support for dictatorships in Latin America.

1. Theories of US foreign policy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines some of the competing theories that have been advanced to explain U.S. foreign policy. In trying to explain the foreign policy of the United States, a number of competing theories have been developed by International Relations scholars. Some theories focus on the role of the international system in shaping American foreign policy while others argue that various domestic factors are the driving force. The chapter first considers some of the obstacles to constructing a theory of foreign policy before discussing some of the competing theories of American foreign policy, including defensive realism, offensive realism, liberalism, Marxism, neoclassical realism, and constructivism. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the theoretical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the debate over the most appropriate grand strategy that the United States should follow in the post-Cold War era.

scholarly journals Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 113-145
Author(s):  
Ethan B. Kapstein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Development ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This article sheds light on the role of foreign direct investment as an instrument for economic development and, in turn, for the advancement of U.S. foreign policy goals during the Cold War. From the earliest days of the Cold War, and especially after the U.S.-Soviet competition for influence in the developing world began in the 1950s, the United States sought to promote private enterprise on behalf of U.S. goals. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, U.S. officials believed that foreign investment would suffice to fuel international development, obviating the need for official development assistance. These hopes, however, were largely disappointed. On the one hand, U.S.-based multinational companies preferred to invest in the industrial world; on the other hand, some Third World governments were uninterested in promoting private enterprise rather than state-led development. In part because foreign investment did not meet expectations, the U.S. government ended up elaborating an official foreign aid program instead.

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