Leadership Experience in the Cold War

Author(s):  
Sylvia Ellis

The 1960 presidential election was the first modern campaign and one that took place at the height of the Cold War. The closeness of the election outcome led scholars to ask what tipped the balance in John F. Kennedy’s favor. However, as Robert Divine pointed out some years ago, we can also ask why did he not win more convincingly given recent American defeats abroad? Although numerous foreign policy issues engaged the candidates during the 1960 campaign, this chapter focuses on the three major issues that came to life during the campaign—Cuba, the Soviets, and the tiny offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu—and to argue that Kennedy fumbled in his handling of all three but still managed to convince enough of the US electorate that he could be trusted to lead the nation on the world stage.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Zahir Ahmad KHALEQI ◽  
Jamaluddin Sadruddin Oghli

With the dissolution of the USSR, the world entered a unipolar period after the cold war. In this period, the US wants to influence the region by establishing warm relations during the independence and establishment processes in the former Soviet regions with the claims of world domination. China and Russia, dissatisfied with these expansionist policies of the USA and western countries. China and Russia took the border problems between them for many years against the threats in the region and established the Shanghai 5th organization in 1996 to establish security and commercial cooperation and to remove the USA from the region. With the participation of Uzbekistan in 2001, the name of the organization was changed to Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). when Turkey started to be hesitated from EU membership process in recent years, Turkey's foreign policy orientation of Eurasia and as an alternative to membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has started to be discussed. In 2012, Turkey was accepted as a dialogue country in the SCO that could not yet enter the full membership process. In this study, primarily the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and mentioning about the structure of the aforementioned organization, within the framework of the advantages and disadvantages of being the SCO member for Turkey and its possible relations were examined.


Author(s):  
Alida TOMJA ◽  
Daniel BORAKAJ

The restructuring of the international order at the end of the Cold War created a unipolar system with the United States at the top, but at the same time, restored the language of empire and their categorization as an imperial power. Moreover, the foreign policy pursued by George W. Bush administration after September 11, 2001, prompted many researchers to describe the US role in the world as inseparable from this term. The debate is widely increased in recent years and the dilemma is whether to refer them as imperial or hegemonic power of this system. If it’s hegemonic nature would be purely obvious, then how can be explained that many researchers do not hesitate to define America as empire, especially after September 11, 2001? Based on the literature that deals with the US imperial character, this paper aims to answer the above questions, and to highlight that United States, do not possess anything as an imperial power beyond their Republican core.


Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney

The end of the Cold War left the USA as uncontested hegemon and shaper of the globalization and international order. Yet the international order has been unintentionally but repeatedly shaken by American interventionism and affronts to both allies and rivals. This is particularly the case in the Middle East as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the nuclear negotiations with Iran show. Therefore, the once unquestioned authority and power of the USA have been challenged at home as well as abroad. By bringing disorder rather than order to the world, US behavior in these conflicts has also caused domestic exhaustion and division. This, in turn, has led to a more restrained and as of late isolationist foreign policy from the USA, leaving the role as shaper of the international order increasingly to others.


2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Joksimovic

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M Walt

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.


Author(s):  
Beverley Hooper

From the early 1970s, the US-China relationship was central to diplomatic reporting, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to Peking in October 1971, President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972, and the establishment the following year of small liaison offices in Peking and Washington. Following each of Kissinger’s further visits in 1973 and 1974, senior diplomats virtually queued up at the liaison office to find out what progress, if any, had been made towards the normalization of US-China relations. Peking’s diplomats, like some of their colleagues elsewhere in the world, did not always see eye-to-eye with their foreign ministries. There was little chance of their becoming overly attached to Communist China, as the Japanologists and Arabists were sometimes accused of doing for Japan and Arab countries. At the same time, living and breathing the PRC led some diplomats to regard Chinese Communism as being rather more nuanced—and the government somewhat less belligerent—than the Cold War images portrayed in the West, particularly the United States.


Author(s):  
Richard Saull

This chapter examines US foreign policy during the Cold War, beginning with an overview of the main historical developments in US policy. It first considers the origins of the Cold War and containment, focusing on the breakdown of the wartime alliance between the United States and the USSR, the emergence of US–Soviet diplomatic hostility and geopolitical confrontation, and how the Cold War spread beyond Europe. It then explains how the communist revolution in China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 propelled the US towards a much bolder and more ambitious containment policy. It also looks at US military interventions in the third world, the US role in the ending of the Cold War, and the geopolitical, ideational, and/or socio-economic factors that influenced American foreign policy during the Cold War. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the dual concerns of US foreign policy.


Author(s):  
Bertjan Verbeek ◽  
Andrej Zaslove

This chapter discusses the impact of international politics on the rise of populist parties as well as the impact of populism on the foreign policy of the countries in which populist parties are present. It argues that the end of the Cold War, the advent of globalization, and the impact of regional organizations (e.g. the European Union) presented opportunity structures that facilitated the rise of populist parties. Similarly, the chapter argues that the effect of populist parties on their countries’ foreign policy is largely due to their attaching ideology. The chapter thus distinguishes between four types of populist parties, each attaching salience to different foreign policy issues: the populist radical right, the populist market liberal, the populist regionalist, and the populist left.


Author(s):  
Ilmi Dwiastuti

AbstractSince the fall of the Shah, the US-Iran relations have changed significantly. During the Shah regime, US-Iran experience a warm relationship through economic and military partnerships, however, it changed since the Iran revolution until today. Iran turned out to be one of the axis of evil during the Bush administration. The fall of the Shah also changes the direction of the foreign policy of the US. It then led to the proposition of whether the US foreign policy has been more anti-Iranian than pro-Arab with the fall of the Shah. This paper seeks to answer this question through historical analysis. It examines the US policy during the Cold War era and the post-Cold War. Therefore, the US policy in the region is not always anti-Iranian than the pro-Arab case. The changed regional architecture influences the priorities of the President of the US at that time to put aside Iran's issue, as it happened on George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administration. Thus, the characteristic of the leader also heavily influences US posture in Iran, as Bush and Trump's personality and policies are clearly against Iran. However, despite the dynamic relations of the US-Iran, Iran has always been one of the threats for the US interest in the Persian Gulf since the Shah has fallen.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-55
Author(s):  
Sebastián Hurtado-Torres

This article discusses the reactions of governments and political leaders around the world to the victory of Salvador Allende in the Chilean presidential election of 1970—reactions that were shaped by a combination of ideological considerations, the diplomatic interests of particular states in the context of the Cold War, and an image of Chilean democratic exceptionalism purveyed by Chilean diplomats and largely assumed by a surprising number of people abroad. Reactions to Allende's victory in 1970 reflected the ideological divisions in Chilean politics as well as the tensions and anxieties of an international order that was then beginning to experience a series of significant changes as a result of the East-West détente. Paradoxically, Allende's ideological foreign policy, one of the main reasons for which his election was both dreaded and welcomed in different parts of the world, foretold some of the changes that would take place in the international system in the 1970s.


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