American Foreign Policy

American Middle Eastern Policy; A Needed New Direction

by Mark Bound

El impacto en Chile de los procesos decimonónicos de emancipación y defensa de la soberanía nacional en las Antillas mayores

by Ricardo Lopez Muñoz

El presente informe tiene ya 17 años de haber sido redactado. Fue producto del Proyecto Nº. 1940113 del Fondo Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (Fondecyt) de 1994, que tuve la suerte de adjudicarme. Los Fondecyt son convocados anualmente por la Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile.
Con todos sus defectos, me parece que este Informe aún aporta conocimientos a quien lo lea.

[Non-refereed Op-ed] Whose Arms Will Embrace You? The United States and the Beijing Consensus

by Amarnath Amarasingam

The United States is increasingly playing a game of subtle communication in the international arena. I suspect we had... more The United States is increasingly playing a game of subtle communication in the international arena. I suspect we had a passing glimpse of this at the 19th Session of the Human Rights Council, which gathered in Geneva last month. The question is: who is the United States talking to and what is it trying to say?

Amerikan Dış Politikasının Kökenleri ve Amerikan Dış Politik Kültürü

by Uluslararası İlişkiler

Gültekin Sümer, "Amerikan Dış Politikasının Kökenleri ve Amerikan Dış Politik Kültürü", Uluslararası İlişkiler, Cilt 5, Sayı 19 (Güz), 2008

Amerikan dış politik kültürünü daha iyi anlayabilmek için Amerikan dış politikasının kökenlerine eğilmemiz... more Amerikan dış politik kültürünü daha iyi anlayabilmek için Amerikan dış politikasının kökenlerine eğilmemiz gerekmektedir. ABD’nin sahip olduğu dış politik kültürün tek bir yüzünden bahsedilemez; farklı yüzleri bulunmaktadır. ABD sahip olduğu eşsiz konumla, yumuşak güç araçlarını etkili bir biçimde kullanarak klasik bir hegemonyacı bir güç olmak yerine dünyaya liderlik yapan bir güç olmayı amaç edinmiştir. Fakat dünya gücü olmanın gerekleri ile ABD’nin hegemonyacı eğilimlerinin birleşmesi ABD’nin sahip olduŞu dış politik kültürün evrim geçirerek dış politikada bir Amerikan kültünün yaratılmasıyla sonuçlanmıştır. Bunda Soğuk Savaş yapılanmasının da önemli payı olmuştur. Bu durum, ABD’yi kökenlerinden uzaklaştırmış ve dış politikasını geri dönülmez bir noktaya getirmiştir.

The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror: Lebanon and Libya as case studies

by Mattia Toaldo

Racism, Nationalism and Biopolitics: Foucault's Society Must Be Defended, 2003

by Mark Kelly

Contretemps 4, 2004

Militarism Under the Guise of Liberty: Coming to Grips with American Empire

by Matthew Schwartz

Originally published in the 2009-2010 edition of Contexts: The Annual Journal of The New School's Graduate Program in International Affairs, Vol. 5: 59-66. Corrected publisher misprint, more detailed citations and some minor edits.

Despite the political rhetoric and historical myths passed down through generations of American classrooms, the... more Despite the political rhetoric and historical myths passed down through generations of American classrooms, the history of an altruistic and principled United States as the guardian of global freedom and democracy is grossly inaccurate. America's past, like that of all states, is not without virtue. However, the most prevalent features of America's place in the world, past and present, are those of war-making, expansionism, and coercion - stifling democracy, undermining justice, and militarizing politics. Whether or not we deem these policies "imperial" by nature, America flaunts its power toward its own ruin, and to the detriment of the American people. Americans need to come to grips with the imperial past and present of the United States – the costs and consequences of which are propelling their country down a dangerous path.

Ein Yankee am Hofe des Zaren: Mark Twain und die Friends of Russian Freedom

by John Andreas Fuchs

In: Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 2/2011, S. 69-85.

Coming to Terms with Neopatrimonialism: Soviet and American Nation-Building Projects in Afghanistan

by Steve Hess

Central Asian Survey 29:2 (June 2010): 171 – 187

The author examines how patrimonial forms of domination, as conceived in a Weberian sense, came to pervade the formal... more The author examines how patrimonial forms of domination, as conceived in a Weberian sense, came to pervade the formal bureaucratic apparatuses developed under both Soviet Marxist–Leninist (from the late 1970s) and American-coalition liberal designs (since 2001), creating hybrid states defined by neopatrimonialism. Drawing lessons from the survival and eventual collapse of the Najibullah regime following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces, the article finds that the continued extension of aid and arms, and not the presence of foreign military forces, proved most effectual in sustaining the Afghan leader's patronage-based grip on power. Arguing that the contemporary regime of Hamid Karzai has likewise adopted a neopatrimonial-type rule, these findings have clear implications for current American policy in Afghanistan. America, Afghanistan's ultimate patron, can better ensure stability in the region by extending aid to Karzai than by continuing a large and costly military occupation of the region.

The War on Terrorism

by David Cohen

This paper challenges the paradigms behind the doctrine of the War of Terrorism and proposes that it be replaced by... more This paper challenges the paradigms behind the doctrine of the War of Terrorism and proposes that it be replaced by understanding the ethnic conflicts that underly these wars. Rather than seeing separatism as a destructive force, the author argues that the United States foreign policy should be based again on principle of self-determination. Two, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, principes on which our country was based are self-determination and empire. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were proponents of self-determination, but neither was in a position to fully implement it. Today, with the existence of the United Nations, the United States has the power to reinstitute the principle through internationally supervised plebiscites, rather than war.

L'AMMINISTRAZIONE REAGAN E IL TERRORISMO MEDIORIENTALE. I CASI DEL LIBANO E DELLA LIBIA

by Mattia Toaldo

Threats Without Threateners? Exploring Intersections of Threats to the Global Commons and National Security

by Erik Nemeth

Co-authored with Gregory F. Treverton and Sinduja Srinivasan

View abstract at:  View abstract at:  http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP360

Plunderer and Protector of Cultural Property: Security-Intelligence Services Shape the Strategic Value of Art

by Erik Nemeth

View abstract at: View abstract at: http://culturalsecurity.net/cs/research.htm#plundererandprotector

Forced to Cooperate: the Brandt Government and the Nixon Administration on the Road to Helsinki

by Giovanni Bernardini

in P. Villaume & O.A. Westad (Eds.), “Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965-1985”, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010, pp. 79-100, ISBN 978-87-635-2588-6

The subject of this chapter is the analysis of the different, and substantially diverging, strategies that the Nixon... more The subject of this chapter is the analysis of the different, and substantially diverging, strategies that the Nixon Administration of the United States and the Brandt Government of the Federal Republic of Germany deployed in their first approach to a proposal for a conference on security in Europe during the early 1970s, especially concerning the problem of multilateral negotiations on military forces reductions in Europe. The sources available today at the German and American archives confirm that this topic was among the most debated inside the two respective governments, as in the course of the bilateral debates and in the wide range of multilateral (transatlantic) fora. If détente “easily [came] to represent a challenge to the stability of American-European relations”, the problem of a redefinition of a new “security” for Europe involving a broader, continuous dialogue between the countries of the two blocs proved to be the most potentially divisive between the United States and its (until then) most loyal ally in Europe, the FRG.
Moreover, the issue of a conference on European security represents a useful fil rouge in the analysis of the relations between the two countries during 1969–1972 for these main reasons:

1) initially, the proposal of a conference came neither from the two countries examined, nor from other partners of the Alliance: it was actually a long-standing Soviet aspiration, raised with greater emphasis by the “Budapest Appeal” of the Warsaw Pact at the beginning of 1969. Thanks to the sources available today, this “external” genesis allows us to understand the impact that the proposal had on the two administrations since its new launch;
2) however, during the age of the détente, the issue of European security did not represent a completely unexplored field, neither for the new American administration nor for the Social-Liberal coalition in Bonn. The “Budapest Appeal” arrived a few months after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact, but also after the transatlantic tensions of the 1960s, signified by the exit of France from the NATO integrated command, the failure of the Multilateral Force project and the fear of a “condominium” between the United States and the Soviet Union over Europe, especially after the two Superpowers signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. Thus, the debate following the Budapest Appeal did not erase but, on the contrary, quickened and emphasized the projects, the aspirations and the fears of the two governments;
3) projects and aspirations that, in their turn, were born out of a realistic evaluation of the material conditions in which the two countries found themselves at the beginning of the ’70s: the real or supposed decline of the United States as well as the consolidation of western German economic power represented important elements in the approach to the issue of European security, especially when the problem of a fairer share of the burden for the common defence was another source of tensions in transatlantic relations. The reduction of these expenses was a major thrust towards Détente;
4) finally, the interest of the debate over a conference on European security mainly comes from the broad space-time coordinates involved by the issue, including a wide spectrum of further subjects concerning the relations between the United States and western Europe, and of these within communist bloc. The spatial dimension, attempting to cover the whole continent in a sole assembly, represented a substantial innovation with regard to the situation generated by the Cold War, full of new and stimulating opportunities (political, cultural and economic), but also of risks and doubts on the survival of the western Alliance and concerning a possible common direction towards Détente.

Review: Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It (2009)

by Tim Stevens

Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.33, No.5 (October 2010), pp.790-792.

“Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’: American Imperial Designs of the Early Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries”

by Adam Burns

In 1898, following the short Spanish-American War, the United States was left in possession of several formerly... more In 1898, following the short Spanish-American War, the United States was left in possession of several formerly Spanish-run insular colonies. Uniquely, the US chose to annex some occupied islands with neither the promise of potential statehood, nor a timeframe or even a guarantee for their future independence.
William H. Taft was appointed the first US Civil Governor of the Philippines in 1901. Instead of independence, Taft envisaged a long-term imperial relationship between the United States and the Philippines. Facing guerrilla warfare, Taft formulated a 'policy of attraction' to win over the Filipino population to US rule and create a lasting imperial bond.This included the building of schools, involvement of Filipinos in the government of the Philippines and a sustained campaign to lower US trade barriers.
The degree of commitment involved in Taft's policy of attraction alarmed many US politicians, and in 1916 a promise of independence was given to the Philippines. Independence came about in 1946. Taft's policy could have provided an alternative precedent to that which US administrations have followed: a relatively brief period of nation-building, followed by a relatively rapid withdrawal.The Filipino experience offers intriguing comparisons with future US intervention around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two Decades Out of the Whirlpool: Past (and possible Future) United States Interventions in Latin America

by David P. Fields

This paper examines the history of U.S. interventions in
Latin America and attempts to explain their frequency... more This paper examines the history of U.S. interventions in
Latin America and attempts to explain their frequency by
highlighting two factors—besides security and economic
interests--that have made American interventions in Latin
America so common. First, immense differences in size and
influence between the United States and the States of Latin
America have made interventions appear to be a low risk
solution to crises that threaten American interests in the
region. Second, when U.S government concerns and
aspirations for Latin America converge with the general fears
and aspirations of American foreign policy, interventions
become much more likely. Such a convergence pushes Latin
American issues high up the U.S. foreign policy agenda
because of the region’s proximity to the United States and
the perception that the costs of intervening are low.  The
leads proponents of intervention to begin asking questions
like “if we cannot stop communism/revolutions/drugtrafficking in Latin America, where can we stop it?”

This article traces how these factors influenced the decision
to intervene in Latin America during the era of Dollar
Diplomacy and during the Cold War. It concludes with three
possible scenarios that could lead to a reemergence of an
American interventionist policy in Latin America.    It makes
the argument that even though the United States has not
intervened in Latin America during the twenty-two years, it
is far from clear that American interventions in Latin
America will be consigned to the past.

Bush: The Sequel

by Rodger A. Payne

Payne, R. A. (August 2001), Bush: The Sequel. International Studies Perspectives, 2: 305–315.

This article examines the likely foreign policy initiatives of the U.S. under the leadership of George W. Bush. The... more This article examines the likely foreign policy initiatives of the U.S. under the leadership of George W. Bush. The new president has outlined a fairly thorough critique of America's international behavior in the 1990s. Because a leader's public statements arguably serve to persuade various audiences and to build support for policy change, the article takes Bush's words quite seriously—along with those spoken or written by his closest foreign affairs advisors. Bush intends to abandon the so-called Clinton Doctrine and deploy national missile defenses. He is critical of American policies toward China and Russia, but has not presented bold new initiatives toward those powers. Under the rubric of “compassionate conservatism,” Bush may alter U.S. relations toward the Global South in some interesting ways. The president and his advisors often purport to be realists, but the article demonstrates that their own words belie this claim as they often justify policies based on ideals rather than the pursuit of power.

Is an Outlaw State Calling the Shots?

by Rodger A. Payne

International Studies Perspectives, May 2001, Vol 2, No. 2.

American Foreign Policy Legitimacy and the Global Public Sphere

by Rodger A. Payne

Coauthered with Nayef H. Samhat, Peace review, 18(2),2006, 251 - 259.