Transcript george w

Post Cold War Foreign Policy
American Foreign Policy- Cold War
• Defend the U.S. and allies from
Communist expansion.
• “I believe it must be the policy of the
United States to support free people
who are resisting the attempted
subjugation by armed minorities or
outside pressures… If we falter… we
may endanger the peace of the
world – and we shall surely endanger
the welfare of our own nation.”
(Truman, 1947)
Foreign Policy Without a Global enemy
• American foreign policy since the
Cold War has been one without a
global enemy, and therefore it has
become much less focused.
6 Themes to U.S. Foreign Policy
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•
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The protection of American global hegemony
The promotion of globalization.
The promotion of an ever-growing "zone of democratic peace"
The repeated employment of military power to ease humanitarian
disasters
• The isolation and punishment of a handful of "rogue" states that
allegedly threatened regional stability and American security;
• Growing concerns about the vulnerability of the United States to attacks
from these regimes as well as from transnational terrorist groups.
1. The Preservation of American Global
Superpower Status
• At century's end the American economy had experienced the longest
peacetime expansion in its history.
• Low inflation, sustained growth, and rising worker productivity had
made it the engine of global prosperity and technological change.
• Americans owned more than half of the world's computers and
received more than half of the world's royalties and licensing fees.
The eight largest high-tech companies were headquartered in the
United States.
American Pop Culture Hegemony
• American pop culture was virtually found everywhere, with Michael
Jordan posters, McDonald's golden arches, and Hollywood movies its
most familiar symbols.
• The United States retained the globe's most powerful and expensive
military establishment with expenditures larger than all of the other
nations combined.
• The technological gap between American weapons systems and those
of other nations, already evident in the Gulf War of 1991, had
become enormous by the 1999 Kosovo air campaign against the
Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
• At the same time, American global commitments expanded. U.S.
ground troops landed in Somalia in 1992 to help end a famine (
• Entered Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 as "peacekeepers."
• American aircraft carriers protected Taiwan from the People's
Republic of China, patrolled the Persian Gulf, and sailed the Indian
Ocean.
2. Promoting Globalization
• Post–Cold War American foreign policy believed that by fostering
globalization, the growth of both the U.S. and the world economy
would be increased.
• Integration of markets, finance, and technologies in a way that shrunk
space and time.
• U.S. foreign policy makers saw globalization as an economic tool that
could be managed to open foreign markets, stimulate American
exports in goods and services, and bring economic growth and
prosperity to large portions of the world.
3. Promoting Democracy
• President Bush called for Europe to be whole and free.
• Soon he began to speak more broadly of a growing zone of the
democratic peace.
• Democracies do not fight wars with each other.
• Successor policy to the strategy of containment, the George H. W.
Bush administration offered a "new world order," which, among other
things, included the notion that the United States should help to
widen the "zone of the democratic peace."
• Post–Cold War American foreign policy generally promoted
democracy where economic and security interests and clear
democratization trends existed.
• In those regions where U.S. interests required working with
authoritarian regimes and where prospects for democratization were
bleak, no effort was made to promote democracy.
• Indeed, a rough agreement emerged among American political elites
in support of this pragmatic approach to democracy promotion.
4. Humanitarian Interventions
• The use of military force to save civilian lives in the absence of vital
national interests.
• Generated heated political and scholarly debates about their
advisability, efficacy, and legitimacy.
• During the Cold War humanitarian interventions were rare, unilateral,
and generally condemned by the international community.
Yugoslav Wars Video
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpKYia5PN3c
Yugoslav Wars
• Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia were allowed to secede from the
Yugoslav federation.
• After Muslims held an independence referendum in multiethnic BosniaHerzegovina that was boycotted by its Serbian residents, a horrific war
broke out among Croats, Serbs, and Muslims. The Bosnian Serbs undertook
a systematic "ethnic cleansing campaign" designed to rid the republic of its
Muslim population.
• The Bush administration, while recognizing the independence of a Muslimled Bosnia, maintained that the Balkans constituted a European problem
and refused to send U.S. forces there as part of a UN "peacekeeping"
operation, even though several members of NATO did so.
Dayton Peace Accords
• Despite the worst fighting in Europe
since World War II, the Clinton
administration did little until August
1995, when, after an exceptionally
heinous slaughter of Muslim civilians in
the town of Srebrenica, NATO carried out
five days of bombing that had the
ultimate effect of bringing all of the
factions to the negotiating table in
Dayton, Ohio.
• At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• U.S. entered the U.N. Coalition.
5. Isolating and Punishing Rogue States
• Mainly Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya
• Choose to remain outside the family of democratic nations but also
assault these basic values.
• Ruled by coercive cliques that suppressed human rights and
promoted radical ideologies.
• Exhibited a chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside
world
• Their siege mentality had led them to attempt to develop weapons of
mass destruction and missile delivery systems.
• As the sole super-power, the United States [had] a special
responsibility … to neutralize, contain and, through selective pressure,
perhaps eventually transform" these miscreants into good global
citizens.
• The first Bush administration had agreed with Lake's analysis and in
1991 adopted a "two-war" strategy designed to enable U.S. forces to
fight and win two regional wars simultaneously against "renegade"
nations.
• The second Bush administration emphasized the urgent need to
develop a national missile defense to protect the United States from
weapons launched by rogue states.
• To be classified as a rogue, a state had to commit four transgressions:
pursue weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, severely
abuse its own citizens, and stridently criticize the United States.
• Officials in the Clinton administration repeatedly argued that a
national missile defense system needed to be constructed to protect
the United States against nuclear missile attacks from rogue states
such as North Korea.
• George W. Bush's decision to end talks with Pyongyang suggested to
many observers that he preferred to pursue national missile defense.
• This post–Cold War strategy of regional containment reflected an
effort by the United States to define acceptable international
behavior.
• As a hegemonic state it was, perhaps, appropriate that Washington
attempted to write these rules. Yet it inevitably risked exposing the
United States to charges of arrogance and imperiousness.
6. Defending the American Homeland
• The United States, because of its overwhelming military superiority,
would not be threatened in the foreseeable future with traditional
enemies.
• National security planners pointed to the dangers posed by terrorist
assaults on the American homeland.
• These might include nuclear missiles launched by rogue states,
national plagues caused by biological agents, and the destruction of
the American financial system through the use of computer viruses by
unknown enemies.
• In 2000, the U.S. Commission on National Security said that a direct
attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the
next quarter century.
• The commission proposed that the Coast Guard, Customs Service,
Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Border Patrol be unified
as a new homeland security body, whose director would have cabinet
status.
September
th
11
Attacks
• For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States
confronted a direct threat to its physical and moral well-being,
• One that seemed extraordinarily elusive, ruthless, and multi-headed.
• Some commentators suggested that the period between the
breaching of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 and the attacks of 11
September 2001 be renamed "the interwar era."
Activity
• With your table, determine whether or not you agree with the U.S.
actions after the end of the Cold War. Write at least 6 things that you
agree or disagree with. Then we will write them on the board. Work
with your tables.