The President as Communicator-in-Chief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas D. Herr
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Intervention Policy ◽  
The Military

In US military intervention policy, presidents can usually benefit from substantial room for manoeuvre, which is not called into question by Congress and its members. Based on a domestic perspective of US foreign policy, this study argues that presidents deploy tropes of American exceptionalism and that such rhetoric conduces to congressional deference by setting the terms of the debate and silencing prospective criticism. Three qualitative case studies of the military interventions and their respective discourses in Kosovo in 1999, Iraq as from 2003 and Libya in 2011 show that members of Congress defer to presidential warmongering when they are left without access to a societally sustainable rebuttal.

scholarly journals Hollywood industry: Correlation between film production and political discourse

Sociologija ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Nemanja Zvijer
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Military

The paper focuses on the relation between Hollywood industry and political establishment of the USA, particularly US foreign policy and the military intervention as its specific form. Only the biggest and the most significant US military interventions were considered: World War Two, Korean War, Vietnam War, military interventions in Latin America, in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and on Balkan, concerning their treatment in Hollywood movies without analyzing them in broader socio-political context. In addition, the anticommunism in Hollywood is also considered, which was perhaps the most perennial content of the US foreign policy.

Complicating the Moral Case of Responsibility to Protect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Zunes
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Moral Case ◽  
Violent Action ◽  
The Military ◽  
Critical Moments

This chapter examines the military interventions in Kosovo and Libya (often advanced as successful humanitarian interventions), and argues that they did more harm than good. They escalated the level of killings (by regime and rebels), fanning nationalism in the first and sectarian militias in the second. The general explanations underpinning this analysis are that intervening powers are rarely neutral or impartial, and that military intervention changes the strategies of the target regime and of the rebelling parties. The chapter argues for the efficacy of strategic non-violent action internally and preventive diplomacy externally, as alternatives to military intervention. It notes the successes of non-violent movements in both case studies, and critical moments at which they could have been supported by preventive diplomacy but were not. A second theme is sensitivity to broader ramifications of military intervention for international affairs.

scholarly journals Sanctions as tools in the US foreign policy after the cold war

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Joksimovic
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

In searching for various opportunities to act in pursuing its foreign policy and endeavors to achieve a dominant role in the global processes USA has developed a broad range of instruments including a financial assistance as a way to be given support for its positions, intelligence activities, its public diplomacy, unilateral implementation of sanctions and even military interventions. The paper devotes special attention to one of these instruments - sanctions, which USA implemented in the last decade of the 20th century more than ever before. The author explores the forms and mechanisms for implementation of sanctions, the impact and effects they produce on the countries they are directed against, but also on the third parties or the countries that have been involved in the process by concurrence of events and finally on USA as the very initiator of imposing them.

The strange career of nation-building as a concept in US foreign policy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremi Suri
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Self Interest

The opening chapter of the volume approaches the peculiar US vocation for nation-building on a global scale from the perspective of domestic experience. Jeremi Suri uses the study of the post-Civil War South by C. Vann Woodward to provide for non-Americans a sense of the ideological interstices and remarkable longevity of this feature of American “exceptionalism”. Writing outside of the idiom but with full sympathy for its constituent parts and continuities, Suri describes a deep US civic culture that celebrates self-governance, popular sovereignty and open trade on an uninterrupted continuum from home to the rest of the globe. Denied the normal components of national identity, American elite and popular cultures have, from Washington’s Farewell Address of 1796 to Obama’s West Point speech of 2014, sustained a form of millennial conviction to universalise domestic beliefs. These ride above the particularities of culture, geography or ethnic encounters that necessarily confront a global power and which perforce cause alterations in tactics, but rarely for any length of time the broader strategic idiom. Equally, Suri, argues, the contradiction between national self-interest and the need to construct states and societies along recognisably US lines is repressed through narrow, ‘unionist’ perspectives. It is almost as if the American public imaginary cannot conceive of an allowable ‘other’, even though the efforts at self-fashioning undeniably create a multitude of victims.

24. The future of US foreign policy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatol Lieven
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Far East ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Life ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Transatlantic Relationship ◽  
East Russia

This chapter considers future prospects for US foreign policy on the basis of long-established patterns and other factors such as the interests and ideology of elites, the structures of political life, the country’s real or perceived national interests, and the increasingly troubled domestic scene. It first examines the ideological roots of US foreign policy before discussing some of the major contemporary challenges for US foreign policy, including relations with China, US military power, and the US political order. It then describes the basic contours of US foreign policy over the next generation with respect to the Middle East, the Far East, Russia, Europe and the transatlantic relationship, climate change, and international trade. It also presents catastrophic scenarios for American foreign policy and argues that there will no fundamental change in US global strategy whichever of the two dominant political parties is in power.

scholarly journals In search of enemies: Donald Trump’s populist foreign policy rhetoric

Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572093537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny Hall
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
New Perspective

This article asks how Donald Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric during his presidential campaign and presidency has affected US foreign policy in the area of overseas counterterrorism campaigns. Looking at two case studies – the May 2017 Arab Islamic American Summit and the US role in the counter Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) campaign, it is argued that Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has failed to accurately describe or legitimate his administration’s counterterrorism strategy, as per the conventional wisdom. Instead, Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has largely been aimed at creating a sense of crisis (as populism requires) to mobilise his domestic base. In making this argument about the purpose of Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric, not only does the article contribute a new perspective to the extant literature on elections, rhetoric, and US foreign policy, but also to the burgeoning scholarship on governing populists and their foreign policies. Although these findings could be unique to Trump, the article’s novel framework – combining International Relations and populism scholarship to elaborate on how the foreign arena can be used to generate a state of perpetual crisis – can hopefully be applied in other contexts.

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