America's Mission

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
World Order ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Strength ◽  
The Arab Spring

This book provides a comprehensive historical review of American liberal democratic internationalism. It argues that the global strength and prestige of democracy today are due in large part to America's impact on international affairs. The book documents the extraordinary history of how American foreign policy has been used to try to promote democracy worldwide, an effort that enjoyed its greatest triumphs in the occupations of Japan and Germany but suffered huge setbacks in Latin America, Vietnam, and elsewhere. With new chapters and a new introduction and epilogue, this expanded edition also traces U.S. attempts to spread democracy more recently, under presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and assesses America's role in the Arab Spring. The book argues that liberal internationalism is built on powerful global historical trends, and the liberal internationalist streak in American foreign policy has been responsible for shaping a liberal world order conducive to American security and economic interests.

Reviving Liberal Internationalism

2018 ◽  
pp. 276-290
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Just War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Just War Doctrine ◽  
Armed Intervention

This concluding chapter argues that from early 2002 until today, American foreign policy has been premised on convictions that are both utopian and imperialist in a fashion quite foreign to the liberal internationalist tradition as it existed prior to 1990s. With its confidence in the ease of a transition from authoritarian to democratic order, its insistence on a “just war” doctrine that overthrew the Westphalian system of states by legitimizing the armed intervention of democracies against autocratic states, and its redefinition of American exceptionalism from a defense of the democratic world to a world-order project that knew no limits, neo-Wilsonianism sabotaged the very tradition from which it had emerged. The question, then, is whether the liberal internationalist tradition can be resuscitated in such a way that it contributes positively to world affairs.

Know Thyself: What Is “Wilsonianism”?

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Wilsonianism, which comprises a set of ideas called American liberal internationalism. More than a century after Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, his country is still not certain how to understand the important legacy for the country's foreign policy of the tradition that bears his name. Wilsonianism remains a living ideology whose interpretation continues either to motivate, or to serve as a cover for, a broad range of American foreign policy decisions. However, if there is no consensus on what the tradition stands for, or, worse, if there is a consensus but its claims to be part of the tradition are not borne out by the history of Wilsonianism from Wilson's day until the late 1980s, then clearly a debate is in order to provide clarity and purpose to American thinking about world affairs today.

FDR and World Order: Globalizing the Monroe Doctrine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
Liberal Democratic

This chapter examines Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal democratic internationalism and his efforts to assure American national security by constructing a stable world order based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which the United States sought to globalize in the aftermath of the Axis defeat in World War II. It first considers how FDR infused American liberalism with a healthy dose of realism about the appropriateness of democracy for other countries in the aftermath of World War II before discussing anti-imperialism as a component of American foreign policy. It also explores the United States's promotion of democracy and pursuit of a liberal world order as a means of countering Soviet imperialism. It argues that liberal democratic internationalism has been the American way of practicing balance-of-power politics in world affairs, and that the dominant logic of American foreign policy was dictated by concerns for national security.

scholarly journals Ideology, socialization and hegemony in Disciplinary International Relations

2022 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-123
Author(s):  
Randolph B Persaud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Uk ◽  
High Level

Abstract This article argues that Disciplinary International Relations (DIR) does not only explain international affairs, but it also socializes and hegemonizes publics and professionals into an ideological worldview consistent with the interest of states that underwrite the world economic and security order based on hegemonic liberalism. Considerable emphasis is placed on tracing the continuities between the early theorization of IR in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the contemporary academic/foreign policy/security ‘complex’ dedicated to the maintenance of a hegemonic world order. The article demonstrates that the call for a greater theory–policy nexus in international affairs is redundant because leading American scholars double up as policy-makers, either directly or through other avenues such as consultancies. Some of the most prominent IR scholars, such as Michael Doyle, John Lewis Gaddis, Samuel Huntington, G. John Ikenberry, Stephen Krasner, Theodore H. Moran, Joseph Nye and Anne-Marie Slaughter, among others, have served in high-level positions in the United States foreign policy and security apparatus. The article also shows the ways in which in the early days of IR theorizing in the UK, scholars such as Lionel Curtis, Alfred Zimmern and Norman Angell doubled as staunch defenders of the British Empire, albeit in the language of liberal internationalism.

Wilson and a World Safe for Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The World

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's comprehensive program for world order that came to constitute the foundation of liberal democratic internationalism, also known as Wilsonianism. Wilson's policy, designed “to make the world safe for democracy,” was not a radical departure from traditional American national security policy. His proposals to restructure world politics on the basis of a liberal world order were consistent with basic propositions of past American foreign policy. The chapter first considers the theory and practice underlying Wilsonianism before discussing the dilemma of Wilson's policy in Europe. It also explores the virtues of Wilsonianism for the postwar world, such as its acknowledgment of the fundamental political importance of nationalism. Finally, it emphasizes the resurgence of Wilsonianism in American foreign policy in the aftermath of World War II.

scholarly journals Sino-Russian cooperation potential within the BRICS framework

2016 ◽  
pp. 37-40
Author(s):  
V. Ya. Vorobiev
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

The article describes history of the BRICS group and its activities as a phenomenon of new multipolar world order. It studies Sino-Russian interactions in the BRICS against the background of Beijing’s foreign policy. The aim of China in international affairs, in the author’s opinion, is to avoid spoiling relations with any country and to secure the status of the second global superpower. The global balance of power is being increasingly determined not by West vs. Non-West opposition, but by new rivalry-conjugation: USA vs. China.

scholarly journals The History of American Foreign Policy Thought: Debates about the US Sovereignty in the Late 20th – Early 21st Centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Aleksei D. Katkov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

In the 1990s the end of the Cold War and the US’s efforts to build a “new world order” actualized in scientific discourse the problem of understanding the principle of state sovereignty. Moreover, due to the WTO accession, the discussion among United States’ scholars intensified about the preservation of sovereignty of their own state. As a result, both the US authorities and most experts advocate the inviolability of the sovereignty of their country, noting, however, that it might be temporarily limited by different international obligations, first of all by economic agreements, but this does not affect it radically and the possibility of withdrawing from various kinds of contracts remains. At the same time, the last superpower’s foreign policy actions at the end of the 20th century (interference in the internal affairs of Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Yugoslavia, etc.) clearly illustrate the disregard for the sovereignty of other states. In an attempt to explain this policy, they argued that sovereignty, while remaining a significant principle in general, can be lost, which opens up the legitimate path to the internationalization of a conflict. All in all, despite the fact that such an understanding of sovereignty as a conditional principle, is not new in itself, the United States took some steps to extend this understanding to the whole world, granting itself the right to single-handedly determine cases where and why sovereign rights are lost.

The Irony of American Liberal Internationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Primary Basis ◽  
Secondary Track ◽  
The Cold War

This epilogue discusses the irony of American liberal democratic internationalism that became apparent by late 2011: it has been instrumental in establishing the United States' preeminence in international affairs between 1945 and 2001, but has also contributed much to its decline thereafter. If containment had been the primary basis of American foreign policy during the Cold War, there was also a secondary track, which consolidated the political and economic unity of the liberal democratic regimes through multilateral organizations under U.S. leadership. Under the auspices of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, democracy was envisioned as having a “universal” appeal capable of promoting international peace. The epilogue considers some of the negative consequences of Wilsonianism as well as some of the forces challenging the future role of liberalism. It argues that the fate of liberal democratic internationalism depends in large part on the behavior of those who guide the policies of the democratic world.

Reagan ’s Democratic Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Current Strength ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
Constructive Engagement

This chapter examines Ronald Reagan's commitment to the tenets of liberal democratic internationalism, and in particular his promotion of a global “democratic revolution” characterized by an apparent contradiction between activism and moderation in American foreign policy. It begins with a discussion of the Reagan administration's strategy that called for a a minimal effort on its part to realize its vision of a world order dominated by democratic governments, with emphasis on three key operational programs: “constructive engagement”; the push for antistatist, free markets abroad; and the Reagan Doctrine. The chapter then considers the role played by the Reagan administration's policies to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the succeeding prestige of democratic governance worldwide. It argues that the American role in the spread of democracy worldwide in the twentieth century was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause for the current strength of democratic government.

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