Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy PDF Author: Stephen W. Twing
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555877668
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In what ways does national culture influence the direction of US foreign policy? This study analyzes how certain cultural elements influenced the policy preferences and policymaking behaviours of three Cold War-era statesmen - John Foster Dulles, Averell Harriman and Robert McNamara.

Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Myths, Models, and U.S. Foreign Policy PDF Author: Stephen W. Twing
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555877668
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
In what ways does national culture influence the direction of US foreign policy? This study analyzes how certain cultural elements influenced the policy preferences and policymaking behaviours of three Cold War-era statesmen - John Foster Dulles, Averell Harriman and Robert McNamara.

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

The Myth of American Exceptionalism PDF Author: Godfrey Hodgson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300125702
Category : Exceptionalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The idea that the United States is destined to spread its unique gifts of democracy and capitalism to other countries is dangerous for Americans and for the rest of the world, warns Godfrey Hodgson in this provocative book. Hodgson, a shrewd and highly respected British commentator, argues that America is not as exceptional as it would like to think; its blindness to its own history has bred a complacent nationalism and a disastrous foreign policy that has isolated and alienated it from the global community. Tracing the development of America’s high self regard from the early days of the republic to the present era, Hodgson demonstrates how its exceptionalism has been systematically exaggerated and—in recent decades—corrupted. While there have been distinct and original elements in America’s history and political philosophy, notes Hodgson, these have always been more heavily influenced by European thought and experience than Americans have been willing to acknowledge. A stimulating and timely assessment of how America’s belief in its exceptionalism has led it astray, this book is mandatory reading for its citizens, admirers, and detractors.

Myths and [mis] Perceptions

Myths and [mis] Perceptions PDF Author: Sergio Aguayo
Publisher: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies University of Cali
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Weaving together the influences of the media, academia, government, and society at large, Aguayo traces the evolution of U.S. perceptions toward Mexico and outlines how changing U.S. views have affected events in Mexico and the bilateral relationship itself.

Magic and Mayhem

Magic and Mayhem PDF Author: Derek Leebaert
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439141673
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ are the latest in a string of blunders that includes Vietnam and an unintended war with China from 1950 to ’53, those four fiascoes being just the worst moments in nearly a lifetime of false urgencies, intelligence failures, grandiose designs, and stereotyping of enemies and allies alike. America brought down the Soviet empire at the cold war’s most dangerous juncture, but even that victory was surrounded by myths, such as the conviction that we can easily shape the destinies of other people. Magic and Mayhem is a strikingly original, closely informed investigation of two generations of America’s avoidable failures. In a perfectly timed narrative, Derek Leebaert reveals the common threads in these serial letdowns and in the consequences that await. He demonstrates why the most enterprising and innovative nation in history keeps mishandling its gravest politico-military dealings abroad and why well-credentialed men and women, deemed brilliant when they arrive in Washington, consistently end up leading the country into folly. Misjudgments of this scale arise from a pattern of self-deception best described as "magical thinking." When we think magically, we conjure up beliefs that everyone wants to be like us, that America can accomplish anything out of sheer righteousness, and that our own wizardly policymakers will enable gigantic desires like "transforming the Middle East" to happen fast. Mantras of "stability" or "democracy" get substituted for reasoned reflection. Faith is placed in high-tech silver bullets, whether drones over Pakistan or helicopters in Vietnam. Leebaert exposes these magical notions by using new archival material, exclusive interviews, his own insider experiences, and portraits of the men and women who have succumbed: George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and George W. Bush all appear differently in the light of magic, as do wise men from Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, and think tanks such as RAND and Brookings, as well as influential players from the media and, occasionally, the military, including General David Petraeus as he personifies the nation’s latest forays into counterinsurgency. Magic and Mayhem offers vital insights as to how Americans imagine, confront, and even invite danger. Only by understanding the power of illusion can we break the spell, and then better apply America’s enduring strengths in a world that will long need them.

The Balance of Power in International Relations

The Balance of Power in International Relations PDF Author: Richard Little
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521697606
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The balance of power has been a central concept in the theory and practice of international relations for the past five hundred years. It has also played a key role in some of the most important attempts to develop a theory of international politics in the contemporary study of international relations. In this 2007 book, Richard Little establishes a framework that treats the balance of power as a metaphor, a myth and a model. He then uses this framework to reassess four major texts that use the balance of power to promote a theoretical understanding of international relations: Hans J. Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948), Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society (1977), Kenneth N. Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979) and John J. Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001). These reassessments allow the author to develop a more comprehensive model of the balance of power.

American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy

American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy PDF Author: S. McEvoy-Levy
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0333977831
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The book examines a critical time and place in recent world history (the end of the Cold War) and the strategies and values employed in the public diplomacy of the Bush and Clinton Administrations to build domestic and international consensus. It provides insight into the uses of Presidential power and provides a model and an illustration of how the role of rhetoric may be used to study the foreign policy of the United States.

The Peace of Illusions

The Peace of Illusions PDF Author: Christopher Layne
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801474118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he calls "offshore balancing": rather than wield power to dominate other states, the U.S. government should engage in diplomacy to balance large states against one another. The United States should intervene, Layne asserts, only when another state threatens, regionally or locally, to destroy the established balance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Layne traces the form and aims of U.S. foreign policy since 1940, examining alternatives foregone and identifying the strategic aims of different administrations. His offshore-balancing notion, if put into practice with the goal of extending the "American Century," would be a sea change in current strategy. Layne has much to say about present-day governmental decision making, which he examines from the perspectives of both international relations theory and American diplomatic history.

The Atlantic Realists

The Atlantic Realists PDF Author: Matthew Specter
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150362997X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
In The Atlantic Realists, intellectual historian Matthew Specter offers a boldly revisionist interpretation of "realism," a prevalent stance in post-WWII US foreign policy and public discourse and the dominant international relations theory during the Cold War. Challenging the common view of realism as a set of universally binding truths about international affairs, Specter argues that its major features emerged from a century-long dialogue between American and German intellectuals beginning in the late nineteenth century. Specter uncovers an "Atlantic realist" tradition of reflection on the prerogatives of empire and the nature of power politics conditioned by fin de siècle imperial competition, two world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Focusing on key figures in the evolution of realist thought, including Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and Wilhelm Grewe, this book traces the development of the realist worldview over a century, dismantling myths about the national interest, Realpolitik, and the "art" of statesmanship.

The Truth Is Our Weapon

The Truth Is Our Weapon PDF Author: Chris Tudda
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807131407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, deployed a tactic Chris Tudda calls “rhetorical diplomacy”— sounding a belligerent note of anti-Communism in speeches, addresses, press conferences, and private meetings with allies and with Moscow. Yet all the while, Tudda discloses, the two were confidentially committed to a contradictory course—the establishment of a strong system of collective security in Western Europe, peaceful accommodation of the Soviet Union, and the maintenance of a new, albeit divided Germany. Tudda explores the Eisenhower administration’s pursuit of these two mutually exclusive diplomatic strategies and reveals how failure to reconcile them endangered the fragile peace of the 1950s. He builds his argument through three case studies: of the administration’s badgering the French and their allies to ratify the European Defense Community, of its threat to liberate Eastern Europe from Moscow’s rule, and of its forcing the issue of German reunification. By emphasizing the threat from the Soviet Union, Eisenhower and Dulles were trying to promote an activist rather than an isolationist foreign policy. But their rhetorical diplomacy intensified Cold War tensions with European allies as well as with Moscow and effectively overwhelmed the administration’s true diplomatic aims. Based on American, British, Eastern European, and Soviet primary sources—many only recently unearthed—The Truth Is Our Weapon is a major contribution to the historiography of Eisenhower’s diplomacy and an important statement about the implications of public and private policy making.

Mechanistic Realism and US Foreign Policy

Mechanistic Realism and US Foreign Policy PDF Author: Johannes Gullestad Rø
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136202943
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
This book aims to reinvigorate realist international relations theory by developing a catalogue of micro-mechanisms able to explain security policy decision-making. Typically, realism discounts the role of individuals and uses states as the unit of analysis. By examining instead the mental operations of those who act on behalf of the state, a better understanding of security policy formation is attainable. The book demonstrates how realism can be translated from a systemic "grand theory" into a catalogue of psychologically plausible mechanisms applicable to individual decision-makers. This catalogue, here called "Mechanistic Realism", may be employed to investigate the cognitive precursors to security policy. The explanatory power of Mechanistic Realism is demonstrated through a meticulous analysis of what transpired inside the George W. Bush administration, as its members forged a response to the 2001 terrorist attacks. Through the exploration of individual-level data, Mechanistic Realism provides a more comprehensive analysis of the US response. The book concludes that international relations (IR) scholars would benefit analytically by assembling the most pertinent mechanisms into an explanatory toolbox rather than developing and applying grand theories. Mechanistic Realism is a first step in this direction. This book should be of great interest to students of IR, foreign policy, American politics, and security studies in general. .