Realism and Democracy

Realism and Democracy

Author: Elliott Abrams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-09-12

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1108415628

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This book makes a realpolitik argument for supporting democracy in the Arab world, drawing on four decades of policy experience.


Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy

Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy

Author: Richard Haass

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780876092125

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What cannot be disputed is that economic sanctions are increasingly at the center of American foreign policy: to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, promote human rights, discourage aggression, protect the environment, and thwart drug trafficking.


Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy

Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy

Author: Kenneth A. Schultz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-07-26

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780521796699

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Kenneth Schultz explores the effects of democratic politics on the use and success of coercive diplomacy. He argues that open political competition between the government and opposition parties influences the decision to use threats in international crises, how rival states interpret those threats, and whether or not crises can be settled short of war. The relative transparency of their political processes means that, while democratic governments cannot easily conceal domestic constraints against using force, they can also credibly demonstrate resolve when their threats enjoy strong domestic support. As a result, compared to their non-democratic counterparts, democracies are more selective about making threats, but those they do make are more likely to be successful - that is, to gain a favorable outcome without resort to war. Schultz develops his argument through a series of game-theoretic models and tests the resulting hypothesis using both statistical analyses and historical case studies.


America's Deadliest Export

America's Deadliest Export

Author: William Blum

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Published: 2022-10-20

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1350374571

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'A fireball of terse information.'Oliver Stone'A remarkable collection. Blum concentrates on matters of great current significance, and does not pull his punches. They land, backed with evidence and acute analysis.'Noam ChomskyFor over sixty-five years, the United States war machine has been on automatic pilot. Since World War II we have been conditioned to believe that America's motives in 'exporting' democracy are honorable, even noble.In this startling and provocative book, William Blum, a leading dissident chronicler of US foreign policy and the author of controversial bestseller Rogue State, argues that nothing could be further from the truth.Moreover, unless this fallacy is unlearned, and until people understand fully the worldwide suffering American policy has caused, we will never be able to stop the monster.


Freedom on the Offensive

Freedom on the Offensive

Author: William Michael Schmidli

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1501765167

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In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century. Reagan used democracy promotion to refashion the bipartisan Cold War consensus that had collapsed in the late 1960s amid opposition to the Vietnam War. Over the course of the 1980s, the initiative led to a greater institutionalization of human rights—narrowly defined to include political rights and civil liberties and to exclude social and economic rights—as a US foreign policy priority. Democracy promotion thus served to legitimize a distinctive form of US interventionism and to underpin the Reagan administration's aggressive Cold War foreign policies. Drawing on newly available archival materials, and featuring a range of perspectives from top-level policymakers and politicians to grassroots activists and militants, this study makes a defining contribution to our understanding of human rights ideas and the projection of American power during the final decade of the Cold War. Using Reagan's undeclared war on Nicaragua as a case study in US interventionism, Freedom on the Offensive explores how democracy promotion emerged as the centerpiece of an increasingly robust US human rights agenda. Yet, this initiative also became intertwined with deeply undemocratic practices that misled the American people, violated US law, and contributed to immense human and material destruction. Pursued through civil society or low-cost military interventions and rooted in the neoliberal imperatives of US-led globalization, Reagan's democracy promotion initiative had major implications for post–Cold War US foreign policy.


Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations

Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations

Author: Christopher McKnight Nichols

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-08-09

Total Pages: 725

ISBN-13: 0231554273

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Winner, 2023 Joseph Fletcher Prize for Best Edited Book in Historical International Relations, History Section, International Studies Association Ideology drives American foreign policy in ways seen and unseen. Racialized notions of subjecthood and civilization underlay the political revolution of eighteenth-century white colonizers; neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and unilateralism propelled the post–Cold War United States to unleash catastrophe in the Middle East. Ideologies order and explain the world, project the illusion of controllable outcomes, and often explain success and failure. How does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? This book explores the ideological landscape of international relations from the colonial era to the present. Contributors examine ideologies developed to justify—or resist—white settler colonialism and free-trade imperialism, and they discuss the role of nationalism in immigration policy. The book reveals new insights on the role of ideas at the intersection of U.S. foreign and domestic policy and politics. It shows how the ideals coded as “civilization,” “freedom,” and “democracy” legitimized U.S. military interventions and enabled foreign leaders to turn American power to their benefit. The book traces the ideological struggle over competing visions of democracy and of American democracy’s place in the world and in history. It highlights sources beyond the realm of traditional diplomatic history, including nonstate actors and historically marginalized voices. Featuring the foremost specialists as well as rising stars, this book offers a foundational statement on the intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy.


Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy

Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy

Author: Uzra S. Zeya

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press

Published: 2020-11-05

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13: 9780876091883

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"America's network of international relationships is its foremost strategic asset, even as the agency charged with advancing U.S. interests through diplomacy-the Department of State (DOS)-has fallen into a deep and sustained period of crisis," write former diplomats Uzra S. Zeya and Jon Finer. In Revitalizing the State Department and American Diplomacy, they argue that "left unaddressed, the challenges that DOS faces risk causing irreparable damage to America's standing and influence in the world, ability to advance its interests overseas, and security and prosperity at home." The authors note that "despite the decades-long failure to implement essential reforms-and even in the face of sustained hostility from the [Donald J. Trump] administration-diplomacy remains the best tool the United States has to advance its foreign policy interests." "But many of the challenges facing the DOS have existed for decades," they explain. "Deficits in diversity, institutional culture, and professionalization are endemic to the State Department as an institution, and a diminished policy role for career officials persisted under previous administrations." Zeya and Finer identify areas in greatest need of reform and offer the following recommendations for the next secretary of state: Twenty-First-Century Statecraft. The State Department should develop "greater expertise in the range of issues that will be essential to American leadership in the twenty-first century," which include climate change, pandemic disease, shifting global power, economic competitiveness, equity, anticorruption, and technological transformation. Institutional Reform. "Make the State Department a diverse, equitable, and inclusive institution" by underscoring diversity as a national security priority, overcoming a risk-averse culture, delayering and decentralizing decision-making, and bridging the career-noncareer divide. Workforce Expansion. "Urgent attention needs to be devoted to revitalizing the professional path and retention of the current DOS workforce," which has seen "a brain drain of senior talent" and "Civil Service staffing frozen at 2017 levels." The authors suggest greater flexibility in career paths and enabling return, as well as rebooting and expanding training and continuous learning. Beyond the Near Term. "The State Department would also benefit from some longer-term thinking" including amending the Foreign Service Act, implementing unified national security budgeting, and establishing a Diplomatic Reserve Corps. "When properly empowered and entrusted with significant responsibilities, American diplomats play essential roles in consequential outcomes for the country," the authors write. Revitalizing the State Department and restoring diplomacy "means addressing deficiencies in DOS policy focus and capacity, institutional culture, and workforce diversity and flexibility, while laying the groundwork to cement these and other changes through legislation," the authors conclude. Finer was chief of staff and director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State. He is currently on leave as an adjunct senior fellow at CFR. Zeya is CEO and president of the Alliance for Peacebuilding and previously had a twenty-seven-year diplomatic career.


Martha Graham's Cold War

Martha Graham's Cold War

Author: Victoria Phillips

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0190610360

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""I am not a propagandist," declared the matriarch of American modern dance Martha Graham while on her State Department funded-tour in 1955. Graham's claim inspires questions: the United States government exported Graham and her company internationally to over twenty-seven countries in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Near and Far East, and Russia representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, and planned under George H.W. Bush. Although in the diplomatic field, she was titled "The Picasso of modern dance," and "Forever Modern" in later years, Graham proclaimed, "I am not a modernist." During the Cold War, the reconfigured history of modernism as apolitical in its expression of "the heart and soul of mankind," suited political needs abroad. In addition, she declared, "I am not a feminist," yet she intersected with politically powerful women from Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Dulles, sister of Eisenhower's Dulles brothers in the State Department and CIA, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Betty Ford, and political matriarch Barbara Bush. While bringing religious characters on the frontier and biblical characters to the stage in a battle against the atheist communists, Graham explained, "I am not a missionary." Her work promoted the United States as modern, culturally sophisticated, racially and culturally integrated. To her abstract and mythic works, she added the trope of the American frontier. With her tours and Cold War modernism, Graham demonstrates the power of the individual, immigrants, republicanism, and, ultimately freedom from walls and metaphorical fences with cultural diplomacy with the unfettered language of movement and dance"--


The Crisis of American Foreign Policy

The Crisis of American Foreign Policy

Author: G. John Ikenberry

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0691139695

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Was George W. Bush the true heir of Woodrow Wilson, the architect of liberal internationalism? Was the Iraq War a result of liberal ideas about America's right to promote democracy abroad? In this timely book, four distinguished scholars of American foreign policy discuss the relationship between the ideals of Woodrow Wilson and those of George W. Bush. The Crisis of American Foreign Policy exposes the challenges resulting from Bush's foreign policy and ponders America's place in the international arena. Led by John Ikenberry, one of today's foremost foreign policy thinkers, this provocative collection examines the traditions of liberal internationalism that have dominated American foreign policy since the end of World War II. Tony Smith argues that Bush and the neoconservatives followed Wilson in their commitment to promoting democracy abroad. Thomas Knock and Anne-Marie Slaughter disagree and contend that Wilson focused on the building of a collaborative and rule-centered world order, an idea the Bush administration actively resisted. The authors ask if the United States is still capable of leading a cooperative effort to handle the pressing issues of the new century, or if the country will have to go it alone, pursuing policies without regard to the interests of other governments. Addressing current events in the context of historical policies, this book considers America's position on the global stage and what future directions might be possible for the nation in the post-Bush era.


The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Author: William Appleman Williams

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780393304930

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In this pioneering book, "the man who has really put the counter-tradition together in its modern form" (Saturday Review) examines the profound contradictions between America's ideals and its uses of its vast power, from the Open Door Notes of 1898 to the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War.