Peaceful Change in US Foreign Policy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
The World ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The chapter discusses the US advocacy of liberal principles and pursuit of hegemony as its contribution to peaceful change. In the nineteenth century, the United States forcefully asserted its leadership over the Western Hemisphere, although it did not have the military capabilities to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Under Woodrow Wilson, the United States promoted the ideals of collective security, self-determination, and international institutions. These ideas were implemented in the World War II settlement, when the United States helped to establish new institutions: Bretton Woods and the United Nations. The United States helped to integrate the USSR and China into the international community through the détente strategy, including linkage and triangular diplomacy. After the Cold War ended, Bill Clinton sought to engage China through increased trade and membership in the World Trade Organization and decided to expand NATO to include members of the former Soviet alliance.

‘America’ and Europe, 1914–1945

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Ellwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mass Communications ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Stability ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Second World

The First World War cost Europe the leadership of the world. But the United States of Woodrow Wilson was not ready to take its place. The 1920s brought Europe to a crossroads where mass democracy, mass production, and mass communications—the latter two dominated by American innovations— transformed ideas of sovereignty, modernity, and identity everywhere. The financial crash of 1929 destroyed illusions about the United States as the land of the future, and helped legitimize the totalitarians. European democrats looked to the 1930s New Deal as their last best hope. During the Second World War Roosevelt rebuilt the global order, with the United Nations and other new institutions. But the United States was now looking to ‘retire’ Europe from the world scene, and build a new universe based on America’s experience of the link between mass prosperity and democratic stability.

The 1906 Intervention in Cuba

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-81
Author(s):  
Payam Ghalehdar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter serves as an introduction to the first three case studies of the book’s empirical analysis, which comprise Part I. It sketches the evolution of US attitudes toward states in the Western Hemisphere. It shows how US interpretations of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine became more hegemonic with the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary and how US expectations toward hemispheric states were relaxed in the interwar years, culminating in the Good Neighbor Policy. The chapter briefly illustrates how the attenuation of hegemonic expectations allowed Franklin D. Roosevelt to abstain from intervening in the 1933 Cuban Crisis. The aftermath of World War II put an end to the Good Neighbor Policy. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, John F. Kennedy expanded hegemonic expectations again, now to include domestic economic policy decisions of hemispheric states. The chapter concludes by showing that after the end of the Cold War, the United States has continued to harbor hegemonic expectations toward the Western Hemisphere.

4. The American century?

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
American Power ◽  
American Century ◽  
The World

Despite rejecting the internationalist marriage Woodrow Wilson had arranged for it with the world, America was still the strongest state in the international system. ‘The American century?’ explains how the myth of isolationism emerged in this period, and why it was so powerful. The Depression did more damage to America’s role in the world than anything in the decades before it, yet in the late 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt began rebuilding the structures of American power. Thanks to Roosevelt, during World War II the United States transitioned from a major, but often peripheral actor on the world scene, to one of the most powerful states the world has ever seen.

Howard Fast and the Refashioning of Postwar Protest

Prospects ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 489-513
Author(s):  
Lily Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
The Road ◽  
American Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

The American Century began in 1945. In the Cold War national narrative that arose in the United States after World War II, America was the hero of the world, a glorious empire called to victory in the war and destined to help others along the road to the American Dream. This narrative advanced a tropology that anchored the construction of the United States as culturally supreme and morally preeminent. It was a nationalistic, self-congratulating celebration — and in the midst of it Howard Fast appeared, the ultimate “Party” crasher.

The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the policies pursued by the American government to deal with the problem of Eastern Europe in 1945. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union, it was said, sought to communize eastern Europe; the western powers, and especially the United States, were deeply opposed to that policy; and the clash that developed played the key role in triggering the Cold War. But historians in recent years have been moving away from that sort of interpretation. American policy is also being seen in a new light by many historians. Increasingly the argument seems to be that U.S. leaders in 1945 did not really care much about eastern Europe—that their commitment to representative government in that region was surprisingly thin and that by the end of 1945 they had more or less come to the conclusion that the sort of political system the Soviets were setting up in that part of the world was something the United States could live with.

Cuban American Literatures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo L. Ortiz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Literature ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Colonial Oppression ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The 19Th Century

Cuba’s historical relationship with the United States predates both countries’ emergence into full political sovereignty and consists of forms of political, economic, and cultural interaction and exchange that have intimately bound the two societies since well before the 19th century. The United States spent the 1800s emerging as an independent nation and increasingly as a regional power in the western hemisphere. Populations from smaller neighboring societies were emerging from colonial rule and often sought protection in the United States from colonial oppression, even as they saw the United States’ own imperial ambitions as a looming threat. Cuban-American literature therefore can trace its roots to a collection of key figures who sought refuge in the United States in the 19th century, but it did not flourish until well into the 20th when geopolitical conditions following World War II and extending into the Cold War era made the United States a natural destination for a significant population of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s Communist Revolution. Most arrived first as refugees, then as exiles, and finally as immigrants settling into homes and making families and lives in their new country. This population has also produced a robust literary culture all its own with deep ties and important contributions to the greater US literary tradition. Cuban-American literary production has proliferated into the 21st century, exploring complex themes beyond national and cultural identity, including gender, sexuality, race, class, and ideology.

Rayon Goes to War

Fake Silk ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul David Blanc
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Viscose Rayon ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Rayon Production ◽  
Silk Industry ◽  
The World ◽  
The Military ◽  
Potential Use

This chapter examines the use of viscose rayon as a strategic maté by both sides during World War II. Viscose may have been coming into its own in World War II, but the military roots of the viscose rayon industry go much farther back than that. In fact, in the 1920s a recurring critique of the rapidly expanding artificial silk industry was rayon's potential use as a platform for rapid conversion to munitions manufacturing. This concern was driven in large part by the close chemical and manufacturing links between artificial silk made through the nitrocellulose process and the production of explosives. The United States entered the war after the initial European epidemic of toxic jaundice from tetrachlorethane. For Germany and Italy, rayon meant textile independence. In Japan, silk played this role. In the United States, the rayon production boom of the World War II era was only one small part of a far larger mobilization effort. Unfortunately, there was no parallel war time expansion in experimental research into the dangers of carbon disulfide.

Spruille Braden Versus George Messersmith: World War II, the Cold War, and Argentine Policy, 1945-1947

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger R. Trask
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
World War ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

Between 1945 and 1947, Argentina posed a complex and exasperating problem for the United States as it endeavored to develop policy to guide its relations with Latin America. Among the questions involved were how to deal with an alleged neofascist dictator in Argentina, how to preserve the aura of the so-called Good Neighbor policy, whether to provide arms and economic aid to Latin America, and whether to enter into a collective security agreement for the western hemisphere.

scholarly journals Models of a New World: towards a Synthesis

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
R. Väyrynen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

Three alternative world orders can be imagined in the post-World War II international relations. During most of the Cold War a bipolar order, centered on the possession of nuclear weapons, existed. This world order was incomplete, however. The United States and the Soviet Union faced each other with equal capacity to destroy each other, but in terms of economic and global influence the United States was superior. The strengthening of economic and technological dynamics increased further the U.S. influence, but also sparked the power of non-states actors, including transnational corporations and banks, independent of states. Simultaneously with the globalization of the world, one could witness the rise of non-state actors in the military and political fields. The emergence of the world order of the third type has sometimes been called the neomedieval world in which some central tenets of feudalism has re-emerged. None of these world order models can be said to dominate in today’s world and none of them is likely to emerge victorious any time soon. In recent times., globalization has suffered from various setbacks and state-centric relations have reemerged. Their focus is not, however, any more on the military competition between the United States and Russia, although some of its elements remain in the arms competition between them. Globalization has brought in new ingredients in the rivalries between states and it has appeared most visibly in the U.S.-Chinese rivalry for economic and technological dominance of the globalized world economy. In other words, a new type of economic bipolarity is winning ground and is only secondarily manifesting itself in military relations. Patterns of warfare has in recent decades been colored by fighting of non-state military forces and the rise of new feudal patterns of behavior, but they have not been pronounced enough to justify the labeling of the entire world order by the name.

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