The United States and the Global Struggle for Democracy

Author(s):  
Tony Smith

This book offers a historical account of American efforts “to make the world safe for democracy” and the results of these attempts in the context of their own ambitions. It also examines how American foreign policy has contributed to the increase in the number, strength, and prestige of liberal democratic governments worldwide at the end of the twentieth century. The book focuses on American liberal democratic internationalism and the United States's democratizing mission on a selected group of countries such as Japan, Germany, Iran, and the Philippines, along with the impact of this agenda on world politics as a whole. To better understand the American operational code with respect to liberal democratic internationalism, this chapter analyzes the nature of American liberal democracy and cites a historical example that reflects the character of American liberal democratic internationalism in the twentieth century: the Reconstruction after the Civil War.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luqman Raheem ◽  
Nasir Durid

The regional factor has always played an important role in the political developments of various countries and political experiences, as this factor constituted the role of the direct incubator for all the successful and failed experiences of political development throughout our time. The process of democratization is considered one of the most important political experiments of our time, which gained wide momentum after the Second World War. Especially after the peoples of the world realized the importance and preference of this system compared to the rest of the political systems. After the end of the Cold War, the world witnessed a remarkable trend towards liberal democracy, exhilarated by the euphoria of the victory of the Western camp led by the United States of America over its eastern historical opponent (led by the Soviet Union). Liberal democracy and its sovereignty over the world, rather they unleashed an unbridled optimism that says: ""The peoples and societies of the world are moving towards adopting the model of liberal democracy, because it is the model most responsive to the aspirations of human freedom and the release of his energies.


Author(s):  
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe

This chapter examines U.S. foreign policy after 9/11 with a view to looking at continuities as well as the disjunctions of Washington’s engagement with the world. It first considers the impact of 9/11 on the United States, particularly its foreign policy, before discussing the influence of neo-conservatism on the making of U.S. foreign policy during the presidency of George W. Bush. It then analyses debates about the nature of U.S. foreign policy over the last few decades and its ability to create antagonisms that can and have returned to haunt the United States both at home and abroad. It also explores how increasing belief in the utility of military power set the parameters of U.S. foreign policy after 9/11, along with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and concludes with an assessment of Barak Obama’s approach with regards to terrorism and his foreign policy agenda more generally.


Author(s):  
Tony Smith

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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 122-154
Author(s):  
Tobias Boes

This chapter illustrates how Thomas Mann created a novel role for the artist: fully engaged with the political events of the day through a variety of twentieth-century media and yet fiercely protective of an independent stance. The 1930s was a decade in which governments of various stripes throughout the world discovered the value of employing artists to drum up support within a populist base. And Mann was a patriotic resident of the United States who throughout the war years carefully refrained from criticizing his adoptive country. But his voice and his aims were always unmistakably his own, and he agitated for the United States because he equated the American cause with that of liberal democracy, not because of any government commission. The chapter further explains that Mann's relocation to California can serve as a symbolic marker of this transition. Indeed, it was during his residency in Pacific Palisades as well that he reached the apogee of his trajectory as an anti-Nazi celebrity in the eyes of the American public.


2020 ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Marina Lebedeva

The article considers international negotiations as a resource of influence and creation in world politics, which is part of the social and humanitarian resource. The article analyzes the negotiation practice and research of international negotiations, starting from the second half of the twentieth century, i.e. from the moment when international negotiations receive intensive development. It is shown that at this time a huge practical and research experience was accumulated on the technology of negotiations, the role and place of negotiations in the world, which made up a social and humanitarian resource for world politics. At the end of the twentieth – beginning of the twentieth centuries there is a decline in negotiation activity and, accordingly, decline research on international negotiations, which was caused by: 1) a change in the nature of conflicts that have largely ceased to be interstate in nature and which began to arise on ethnic and religious grounds with many decentralized participants; 2) a significant reduction in the role of Russian-American relations in the world after the collapse of the USSR. Namely, the Russian-American negotiations, primarily in the field of disarmament, were the most important in international relations of the second half of the twentieth century. As a result, in the 21 st century, the number of international negotiations not only decreased, but treaties reached in the past began to be denounced, primarily by the United States. It is shown that this situation is caused by deep processes of transformation of the political organization of the world, covering its various levels, both national and supranational. As a result, a situation of uncertainty and unpredictability is created, which does not contribute to the search for negotiated solutions. However, the political organization of the world can only be transformed through negotiations. Given the scale of this transformation and the huge number of actors in the modern world, international negotiations will become of great importance, serving as a resource for building a new political organization of the world.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Källén ◽  
Johan Hegardt

Olov Janse was an archaeologist with a remarkable life. From his birth in Sweden 1892 to his death in the United States 1985, he travelled several times across the world and was present in some of the most important episodes of 20th century world history. His works and networks connected museums and political institutions in Sweden, France, Vietnam and the United States: from the Swedish History Museum, the Museum of Far Easter Antiquities, the French Musée d’antiquites nationales, the Cernuchi museum, and the French research institute EFEO in Hanoi, to UNESCO, the Harvard Peabody Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S. Department of State. He left behind artefacts and documents in museum collections and archives across the world. But his name is largely unknown, and his most important contributions – the connection of people and ideas between continents and contexts – have remained invisible in historical accounts of all these institutions. He was, in every sense, an archaeologist in-between. This book follows in the footsteps of Olov Janse and his wife Renée, as they move between continents and contexts, connecting key actors and institutions in social and professional networks across the world. It tells the formidable story of an archaeologist navigating through world politics, from a late 19th century industrial town in Sweden, to early 20th century Parisian museums, to French Indochina and the Philippines in the 1930s, to the formation of UNESCO in 1946, and ending with public diplomacy for the U.S. Department of State at the verge of the Vietnam War.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.


1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan

This paper seeks to understand the impact of current global politicaland socioeconomic conditions on the construction of identity. I advancean argument based on a two-step logic. First, I challenge the characterizationof current socioeconomic conditions as one of globalization bymarshaling arguments and evidence that strongly suggest that along withglobalization, there are simultaneous processes of localization proliferatingin the world today. I contend that current conditions are indicative ofthings far exceeding the scope of globalization and that they can bedescribed more accurately as ccglocalization.~H’2a ving established thisclaim, I show how the processes of glocalization affect the constructionof Muslim identity.Why do I explore the relationship between glocalization and identityconstruction? Because it is significant. Those conversant with current theoreticaldebates within the discipline of international relations’ are awarethat identity has emerged as a significant explanatory construct in internationalrelations theory in the post-Cold War era.4 In this article, I discussthe emergence of identity as an important concept in world politics.The contemporary field of international relations is defined by threephilosophically distinct research programs? rationalists: constructivists,’and interpretivists.’ The moot issue is essentially a search for the mostimportant variable that can help explain or understand the behavior ofinternational actors and subsequently explain the nature of world politicsin order to minimize war and maximize peace.Rationalists contend that actors are basically rational actors who seekthe maximization of their interests, interests being understood primarilyin material terms and often calculated by utility functions maximizinggiven preferences? Interpretivists include postmodernists, critical theorists,and feminists, all of whom argue that basically the extant worldpolitical praxis or discourses “constitute” international agents and therebydetermine their actions, even as they reproduce world politics by ...


1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A. LEE

This study represents part of a long-term research program to investigate the influence of U.K. accountants on the development of professional accountancy in other parts of the world. It examines the impact of a small group of Scottish chartered accountants who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Set against a general theory of emigration, the study's main results reveal the significant involvement of this group in the founding and development of U.S. accountancy. The influence is predominantly with respect to public accountancy and its main institutional organizations. Several of the individuals achieved considerable eminence in U.S. public accountancy.


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