AMERİKAN DIŞ POLİTİKASI - Deneme Sınavı - 14

Since the 19th century, three particular ways of thinking became significant in U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, the policies of isolationism, containment, and deterrence guided U.S. actions around the world, especially during the Cold War era.

The president’s personality and personal interest in foreign policy are important factors in determining how much control s/he would like to have in America’s relations with other entities around the world. For example, whereas Abraham Lincoln showed great interest in military and foreign strategy the American Civil War (1861– 1865), Woodrow Wilson did not really show any interest in foreign affairs until when the important end-of-war treaties were being signed following World War I. Similarly, whereas some presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt worked closely with his advisors and generals during World War II, Lyndon B. Johnson managed a lot of the details about the Vietnam War to himself and had a very tight personal control over the military operations.

That the presidents are using different tactics to bypass Congress is a significant change in U.S. foreign policy making process because the presidential decisions mentioned above allegedly violate the War Powers Resolution. The War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act) is a federal law that was enacted in 1973 with the intention to check the president’s power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. Congress is a bicameral legislative institution with 100 senators serving in the Senate and 435 state representatives serving in the House of Representatives. These two bodies of Congress share full legislative power. Whereas the Senate has exclusive authority to approve– or reject–presidential nominations to executive and judicial offices the House possesses the sole authority to impeach federal officials and, in the case of indecisive Electoral College results, to elect a president.

Today, the State Department has a large corps of diplomats known for their specialized expertise, and “leads America’s foreign policy through diplomacy, advocacy, and assistance by advancing the interests of the American people, their safety and economic prosperity (The U.S. Department of State).” The department’s primary responsibility is to staff diplomatic missions abroad and carry out the directives of the president in diplomacy. Civil servants hired and trained by the Department of State mostly handle day-to-day relations with other countries; they help maintain contacts with foreign countries and monitor other governments on a regular basis.

The Department of Defense, which has three subordinate military departments - the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, and the Department of the Air Force - is charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national security and the United States Armed Forces. In short, the Defense Department provides “the military forces needed to deter war and ensure American’s national security (The U.S. Department of Defense).”

The National Security Council (NSC) is the president’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials. The NSC was created under President Truman in 1947, and since then, the Council’s two main functions have been to advise and assist the President on national security and foreign policies and to serve as the president’s main arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created in 1947, is tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence. The CIA is the only agency authorized by law to carry out and oversee covert action at the behest of the President.

In addition to the president, Congress, and certain bureaucracies, interest groups, think tanks, the press, and public opinion affect U.S. foreign policy making. As time becomes less restricted, the environment for different actors to participate in the decision making process becomes more pluralistic, paving the way for secondary actors in U.S. foreign policy making to become more influential. Therefore, a good understanding of which interest groups become more important and when in U.S. foreign policy and how public opinion shapes U.S. leaders’ decision making process is crucial for understanding the main forces behind current policies of the United States in the world.

The foreign policy of the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1989 was characterized by a strategy of “peace through strength.” In his State of the Union address in 1985, President Reagan defined some of the key concepts of this foreign policy, establishing what came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine. The doctrine served as the foundation for the Reagan administration’s support of those who were fighting against the Soviet-supported aggression. Based on this doctrine, the Reagan administration not only offered financial and logistical support to the anti-communist opposition in different parts of the world but it also followed a hard line policy against socialist and communist governments in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. Indeed, the United States provided covert support to the Contras and the mujahideen in their fight against the leftist left-leaning governments in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, respectively.

The Reagan Doctrine was the last presidential doctrine of the Cold War period, and it is widely considered to be at least partially responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

The notion of manifest destiny is that it is the destiny of the United States and a God-given right to spread across the North American continent and create what Thomas
Jefferson called “the empire of liberty.” The basis of this “empire of liberty” (Wood 2009), according to Jefferson, is republicanism and democracy. The United States, Jefferson believed, is in a unique position having been “trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and selfgovernment, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other areas of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence” (Jefferson 1809).

The four American foreign policy traditions (Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Wilsonian) identified by Mead (2013) are the patterns of behavior and ideas that are not limited to the presidencies of the presidents that they are named after.

Wilsonianism’s core feature is the belief of its proponents in the benevolent nature of American power. They argue that the American military, political, and economic power can and should be used to promote democracy and liberal values abroad. They argue that the best way to ensure American security and prosperity is to create an international system that is populated by states that share similar values and institutions like the United States. This liberal internationalism is best encapsulated in Woodrow Wilson’s famous phrase, “the world must be made safe for democracy” when he declared war on Germany in 1917 (Wilson 1917). Wilsonianism and internationalism in their different variations have been the dominant foreign policy traditions since the end of the Second World War.

The second is named after President Andrew Jackson. The Jacksonians are populist nationalists who argue in favor of a muscular foreign policy and strong military to defend American interests. However, unlike Hamiltonians who are in favor of strong relations between business and the federal government, Jacksonians are distrustful of business elites and are only willing to use American military might to defend the homeland rather than pursue commercial interests abroad. Unlike Wilsonians, they also oppose the use of American military power to promote democracy and liberal values abroad.

The Monroe Doctrine was a response to fear of re-conquest of Latin America by European powers. The major principles of the Monroe Doctrine are as follows:

The Louisiana Purchase was the first of several important land acquisitions that the United States carried out throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The other notable land deals that expanded the United States are:

The Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848 that resulted in the annexation of California should be seen in this particular frame. The causes of the Mexican-American War are three-fold. First, President James Knox Polk embraced the idea of “manifest destiny” and offered the Mexican government to sell its large swathes of the southwest land in 1845, but Polk’s offer met with unequivocal refusal of the Mexican leadership (Bauer 1992). Second, Guardino (2017) avers that an increasingly large number of Americans marched towards the southwest of the country in search of fertile land and natural resources including coal, oil, and gold. Mass migration towards today’s California and the Mexican government’s refusal to sell southwestern lands to the US engendered tensions between the two nations. Last, Bauer (1992) argues that the Mexican-American War became inevitable in the wake of the Texas War of Independence, which began in 1835 as an uprising against the Mexican government in the south.

The causes of the 1898 Spanish-American War were the uprising in Cuba against the Spanish suzerainty and the sinking of the American battleship USS Maine (Chaves 2007). First, the Cuban bid for independence from Spain began in February 1895, which met with fierce clampdown by the Spanish forces on the island. Due to its proximity to the US, the Cuban struggle and Spain’s repressive measures to stifle the rebellion grabbed the headlines in American newspapers and engendered public sympathy for the Cuban rebellion. Furthermore, in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, the US administrations had long intended to stave off any foreign interference in the continent’s backyard and the Cuban rebellion provided the US leadership with an expedient cause for a new war. Second, the public support for waging a war with Spain over Cuba skyrocketed when the American battleship USS Maine, which was sent to American property and citizens in Cuba in the aftermath of anti-Spanish insurrection in Havana, came under attack and sank (Quesada 2007). While the cause and culprits for the sinking of the USS Maine have remained a mystery to this day, such a provocative incident galvanized the public into support for war as warmongering and flexing American muscle in the Western Hemisphere became a popular chorus in the country.

There are three important implications of the US-led open door policy (Bucknall 1990:55-56). First, in the wake of the 1898 Spanish-American war, the US became an imperial power and supplanted its isolationist and regional foreign policy vision with a global one, and the open door policy was the first port of call for the newfound informal empire. Second, the open door policy pronounced the US recognition of China’s ascension to a major power status and of China’s territorial integrity as well as its sovereignty. Third, since the Congress of Vienna, the open door policy has been the first multilateral attempt to bring stability into international system by delineating each major power’s sphere of economic and political influence in the world including those of the new major powers, i.e., the US, Japan, and China.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick diplomacy is also known as the “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”. While the Monroe Doctrine was a passive US policy toward foreign powers in the Western hemisphere based only on rhetoric, President Roosevelt’s big stick policy signaled the US willingness to become a policeman of the region and its resolve to go to war with the imperial powers overseas. Although it was viewed as a diplomatic document couched in political and military jargon, the Roosevelt Corollary had Hamiltonian economic rationale, too. The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 stated that the US would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors and did not violate commercial rights of the United States. That said, in the long term, the Roosevelt Corollary played lesser role in regulating the relations between the Western Hemisphere and Europe, yet the corollary did serve as a policy instrument for American intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean.