The First Cold Warrior
The First Cold Warrior

Author: Elizabeth Edwards Spalding

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2006-05-26

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0813138396

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From the first days of his unexpected presidency in April 1945 through the landmark NSC 68 of 1950, Harry Truman was central to the formation of America's grand strategy during the Cold War and the subsequent remaking of U.S. foreign policy. Others are frequently associated with the terminology of and responses to the perceived global Communist threat after the Second World War: Walter Lippmann popularized the term "cold war," and George F. Kennan first used the word "containment" in a strategic sense. Although Kennan, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall have been seen as the most influential architects of American Cold War foreign policy, The First Cold Warrior draws on archives and other primary sources to demonstrate that Harry Truman was the key decision maker in the critical period between 1945 and 1950. In a significant reassessment of the thirty-third president and his political beliefs, Elizabeth Edwards Spalding contends that it was Truman himself who defined and articulated the theoretical underpinnings of containment. His practical leadership style was characterized by policies and institutions such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Berlin airlift, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. Part of Truman's unique approach -- shaped by his religious faith and dedication to anti-communism -- was to emphasize the importance of free peoples, democratic institutions, and sovereign nations. With these values, he fashioned a new liberal internationalism, distinct from both Woodrow Wilson's progressive internationalism and Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal pragmatism, which still shapes our politics. Truman deserves greater credit for understanding the challenges of his time and for being America's first cold warrior. This reconsideration of Truman's overlooked statesmanship provides a model for interpreting the international crises facing the United States in this new era of ideological conflict.

The Americanization of European Union Democracy Promotion
The Americanization of European Union Democracy Promotion

Author: José M. Magone

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2023-11-03

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1788113187

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The Americanization of European Union Democracy Promotion: Ideology, Diversity, and United States Hegemony is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of the origins, development and growing prominence of international democracy promotion in the past hundred years.

The Grand Design
The Grand Design

Author: Oliver P. Richmond

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0190850442

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The guiding principle of peacebuilding over the past quarter century has been "liberal peace": the promotion of democracy, capitalism, and respect for human rights in an effort to prevent a reoccurrence of the nationalism, fascism, and economic collapse that led to World War II. This tactichas been relatively successful in reducing war between countries, but it has failed to produce lasting peace at the local level. The goals of peacebuilding have changed over time and place, but have always been built around intervention, with the goal of creating "progress" in post-conflictcountries.As Oliver P. Richmond argues in this book, the concept of peace connects the imperial era with the liberal era, and now, neoliberal eras of states and markets, and perhaps with the developing era of technology and mobility. But recent studies have shown that only a minority of modern peaceagreements survive for more than a few years. All of this begs the question of the legitimacy and effectiveness of the liberal peace agenda, particularly for scholars looking at the historical development, justifications, and tools for intervention.This book examines the development of the "grand design" and various subsequent attempts to develop a peaceful international order, and its implications for the current international peace architecture. Richmond examines six main theoretical-historical stages in this process, which have produced asubstantial, though fragile, international peace architecture, always entangled with, and hindered by, what might be described as a counter-peace framework. He contends that post-WWII liberal peace, which has aimed to balance liberty with regulation through law, democracy, human rights, and freetrade, has recently given way to a retrogressive, technologically driven neoliberal peace, which is more oriented towards free trade, counter-terrorism and insurgency, surveillance, and state security. The Grand Design provides a sweeping look at the troubled history of peacebuilding in order toconsider what the next-stage, "post-liberal peace," might look like.

The Fight Over Freedom in 20th- and 21st-Century International Discourse
The Fight Over Freedom in 20th- and 21st-Century International Discourse

Author: Rita Augestad Knudsen

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 3030464296

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This book shows how international discourse citing ‘self-determination’ over the last hundred years has functioned as a battleground between two ideas of freedom: a ‘radical’ idea of freedom, and a ‘liberal-conservative’ idea of freedom. The book examines each of the major moments in which ‘self-determination’ has been a central part of the language of high-level international politics and law: the early 20th century discourse of V.I. Lenin and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the aftermath of the First World War and the formulation of the UN Charter, the 1950-1960s UN debates on ‘self-determination’, and the 2008-2010 International Court of Justice case on Kosovo’s declaration of independence. At each of these moments in history, ‘self-determination’ was at the top of the international agenda. And at each moment, a fight over the meaning of freedom played out in ‘self-determination’ discourse. Besides providing insights into the historical times in which self-determination was prominently cited internationally, the book offers a recasting and renewal of international debates on freedom in international discourse.