AMERİKAN DIŞ POLİTİKASI

The rise of the Soviet Union as a major power undercut U.S. plans for a unipolar world based on free
trade and democracy. Foreign policy became a binary choice between the Soviet bloc or America. The answer is C.

During the Second World War (1939-45), America and Great Britain joined in common cause with the Soviet Union to defeat the Axis Powers of fascist Germany, Italy and Japan. The answer is A.

In 1944, Britain and America established with the Bretton Woods conference three major goals: 1) make
funds available for postwar reconstruction and development; 2) to control the currency chaos  that follows wars by making funds contingent upon sound monetary practices; 3) reduce or eliminate trade barriers. From Bretton Woods came the World Bank and the IMF. The president of the World Bank has traditionally been American, the managing director for the IMF, European. The answer is D.

America had warm relations with the Vietnamese since the waning days of the Second World War. Ho Chi Minh’s partisans provided America with intelligence without pay (to the astonishment of the Americans)! Roosevelt for his part was hostile to a return of imperialism and openly complained that the French had done nothing for the Vietnamese in a hundred years of rule. Instead, he proposed an international trusteeship that would lead to eventual independence Vietnamese. This proposal was flatly
rejected by the French and British. When Ho took it upon himself to declare Vietnam’s independence, a band struck up the Star-Spangled Banner (Patti). Ho’s speech quoted liberally from America’s own Declaration of Independence: Compatriots of the entire nation assembled: “We hold truths that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This immortal statement is extracted from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. Understood in the broader sense, this means: “All the peoples on the earth are born equal; every person has the right to live to be happy and free.” The answer is B.

Jean Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN, argued there was a fundamental difference between authoritarian government (dictator on the right), and totalitarian (dictator on the left) -- authoritarian governments can eventually reform into democracies, totalitarian dictators cannot (the Kirkpatrick Doctrine). Moreover, authoritarian dictators have greater respect for private property and market forces. America placed a greater importance on private property than free elections. Nowhere are these principles more clearly demonstrated than America’s policies towards Latin America. The answer is B.

the Soviets became the first to successfully launch a satellite into orbit. Every 98 minutes Sputnik announced its presence overhead with a steady beep. Americans could well imagine a similar rocket carrying a nuclear warhead. The public, including John F. Kennedy, believed that the Soviets were “turning out missiles like sausages from a conveyor belt” (to quote Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev). Kennedy accused Eisenhower of failing to close the Missile Gap between the U.S. and USSR. The answer is C.

Middle East diplomacy was and is marked by an irreconcilable relationship between Arabs and Jews, originating from the search for a Jewish homeland in the late 19th century on Arab lands. The answer is A.

The questions of Zionism (Jewish resettlement in Palestine) forced an intractable problem on first the Ottoman Empire, then the British, to which there were no good solutions. The answer is E.

The overthrow of the Egypt’s monarch in 1952 by a military officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser represented to the United States the unleashing of a force beyond their control: Nasserism. This was the first successful national movement and it represented a third way, neither monarchical nor communist. Nasser reveled in this independent role. He purchased weapons from the Soviets. He recognized the Peoples Republic of China. isenhower complained how Nasser played “East against West by blackmailing both.” When Eisenhower cut aid to Egypt’s Aswan High Dam in 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain conspired with France and Israel to take it back by military force. The Israelis invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Eisenhower was furious that he was not consulted and that this action would further inflame nationalist sentiment. He, along with the Soviet Union, joined in the UN’s condemnation
of the attack on Egypt and the operation withered. Nasser immediately became a hero to the Arab world--a strike at imperialism and Zionism. The answer is C.

Economic downturns had a major impact on American foreign policy during the 1970s, and so too for the Soviets during the 1980s. The oil crisis of 1973 contributed to the stagflationof the 1970s, which was particularly acute in the United States. Stagflation: Usually economic production stagnates, or an economy growing too rapidly leads to inflation. The 1970s experienced these two phenomena together. The answer is A.

In 1944 at an idyllic New Hampshire resort, Britain and America established with the Bretton Woods conference three major goals: 1) make funds available for postwar reconstruction and development; 2) to control the currency chaos that follows wars by making funds contingent upon sound monetary practices; 3) reduce or eliminate trade barriers. From Bretton Woods came the World Bank and the IMF. The president of the World Bank has traditionally been American, the managing director for the IMF, European.

Faced with the very real fear that the communists would capitalize on Western European impoverishment to further their gains, Truman scrapped any last vestiges of the Morgenthau Plan and requested $17 billion in funds (with $12 billion ultimately allocated and spent, or 100 billion in today’s dollars). This came to be known as the Marshall Plan. Most funds went to the economic engines of Europe: Britain, France and West Germany. The Marshall Plan was a living demonstration of the economic might and success of the capitalist model. By 1950, Western Europe exceeded its pre-war production by 25 percent.

In 1944 at an idyllic New Hampshire resort, Britain and America established with the Bretton Woods conference three major goals: 1) make funds available for postwar reconstruction and development; 2) to control the currency chaos that follows wars by making funds contingent upon sound monetary practices; 3) reduce or eliminate trade barriers. From Bretton Woods came the World Bank and the IMF. The president of the World Bank has traditionally been American, the managing director for the IMF, European.

The Helsinki Accords, in fact turned out to be a surprisingly effective cudgel that later presidents could use against the Soviet government. When Carter came to power, he promised to make the United States the moral beacon that it had once been, but also to continue the policy of détente. Carter suspended military aid to Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Uganda for human-rights abuses. He returned the Panama Canal and maintained good relations with the USSR. However, a more aggressive Soviet posture, culminating with the invasion of Afghanistan, forced Carter’s hand. Already by 1978, Carter announced that while he wanted to “increase our collaboration with the Soviet Union…. [they] can choose either confrontation or cooperation. The United States is adequately prepared to meet either choice (Carter, 1978: 1050-57).” By 1980, America boycotted the Moscow Olympics, embargoed grain and ended the SALT II negotiations. With his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, providing a new, bolder vision for Carter, the President laid out his foreign policy doctrine at the State of the Union speech in January 1989. Brzezinski, a Polish émigré, was under no illusions when it came to Soviet policy and advocated a hard stance against their recent aggression. “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force (Carter, 1980).” Détente was over.

While America cast the Cold War as a struggle between democratic free nations and totalitarian communism, in reality, the choice was less clear. As in the case of Vietnam, democratic elections might lead to a communist government, which then may come under the sway of the Soviet Union, who could manipulate the levers of power towards permanent rule. On the other side, the leader who supports private property or American interests may also have authoritarian tendencies. Jean Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN, argued there was a fundamental difference between authoritarian government (dictator on the right), and totalitarian (dictator on the left) -- authoritarian governments can eventually reform into democracies, totalitarian dictators cannot (the Kirkpatrick Doctrine). Moreover, authoritarian dictators have greater respect for private property and market forces (Kirkpatrick, 1983). America placed a greater importance on private property than free elections. Nowhere are these principles more clearly demonstrated than America’s policies towards Latin America.

Kennedy, like Eisenhower before him, shared a distrust of the military and sought to bring it firmly under the civilian authority of McNamara. When Cuba fell to communist rule under Fidel Castro, the CIA made over one hundred attempts on Castro’s life, in violation of the UN Charter. In 1975, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Senate formed the Church Committee (chaired by Frank Church) to investigate CIA assassination attempts against foreign leaders. The Committee confirmed eight attempts against Castro between 1960 and 1965, some of which included the use of the Mafia. The Committee also revealed the CIA had engaged in illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance and human experimentation. The Cubans themselves put the total number of assassination attempts at 638. The most embarrassing CIA fiasco was the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Kennedy inherited the plan from the Eisenhower administration. The CIA, operating on a 13-million-dollar budget, recruited 1,400 Cuban exiles, including many spies for Castro. Kennedy, who was afraid of America’s involvement becoming public, made frequent last-minute changes, particularly the location of the invasion and the decision to call off air strikes. Castro’s forces had little trouble capturing or killing the brigade of exiles, caught on coral reefs and mangrove trees, and exposed to withering gunfire from the air and the jungles. Ultimately, the whole scheme became public, and it became apparent that the United States had lied at the UN about its involvement (Jones, 2008).

The drop in hard currency from falling oil prices coupled with the mounting pressures of the war in Afghanistan and Reagan’s arms race strained the USSR to its breaking point. The new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, was departure from the Soviet old guard, who had been dying off in rapid succession during the early 1980s. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he was young, dynamic and willing to experiment. Crucially, he recognized that reform was needed. He offered up “glasnost” (openness) and “perestroika” (restructuring). The Soviets needed to reduce its military costs. To the West, he was a man we could do business with. The two leaders met in October 1986 in Reykjavik. While the summit Stagflation – Usually economic production stagnates, or an economy growing too rapidly leads to inflation. The 1970s experienced these two phenomena together. 123 American Foreign Policy did not produce any breakthroughs, largely because of Reagan’s unwillingness to negotiate away SDI research, it did pave the way for the Washington Summit in December 1987. There the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty was signed, the only one of its kind eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons (National Security Archive). At both summits, Gorbachev was willing to go much further than the Americans in eliminating nuclear weapons and sought genuine collaboration on ending the war in Afghanistan. For his part, Reagan pushed hard on human rights violations, as delineated by the Helsinki Accords.

The first test of containment came from Greece. Its royalist dictatorship had long been closely supported by Britain but had now slipped into a civil war with communist insurgents. Britain was no longer equipped to cope. Britain and the United States saw the war as a test by the newly empowered Soviet Union, carrying out a policy of global expansionism. In fact, Greek Communists were funded by Marshall Josip Tito of Yugoslavia, not Stalin, who adhered to his earlier understanding with Churchill (Lane, 2009). Soviet-Turkish tensions were likewise rising over whether to internationalize the Turkish Straights. Recognizing that Britain was no longer able to protect the Greek government from a communist insurgency, Truman went to Congress with a bold request. He told a joint session of Congress that American reconstruction and military aid was imperative if Greece was to survive as free nation.

During a visit to Berlin in 1987, Reagan called out Gorbachev in a speech: “We welcome openness and change;…There is one sign the Soviets could make that would be unmistakable…if you seek peace…if you seek liberalization…Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The Soviets erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stem the outflow of East Germans to the West. It stood as both a physical and symbolic barrier. It served as a reminder that the Soviet system was a failure if the only way to retain its citizens was to lock them behind a wall. Both the Carter and Reagan administrations supported Eastern European dissidents. In the Soviet Union, Helsinki Watch Groups sprouted to monitor the Soviet compliance to the Helsinki Accords.

While America cast the Cold War as a struggle between democratic free nations and totalitarian communism, in reality, the choice was less clear. As in the case of Vietnam, democratic elections might lead to a communist government, which then may come under the sway of the Soviet Union, who could manipulate the levers of power towards permanent rule. On the other side, the leader who supports private property or American interests may also have authoritarian tendencies. Jean Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the UN, argued there was a fundamental difference between authoritarian government (dictator on the right), and totalitarian (dictator on the left) -- authoritarian governments can eventually reform into democracies, totalitarian dictators cannot (the Kirkpatrick Doctrine). Moreover, authoritarian dictators have greater respect for private property and market forces (Kirkpatrick, 1983). America placed a greater importance on private property than free elections. Nowhere are these principles more clearly demonstrated than America’s policies towards Latin America.