9/11 and American Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-302
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Threat Perception ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Level Of Importance ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Threat Environment

This chapter emphasizes that 9/11 dramatically altered the threat perception of U.S. policymakers. “The greater the threat,” said the strategy statement, “the greater the risk of inaction.” In this new threat environment, policymakers declared that the old tactics of deterrence and containment could not work. Although the employment of preemptive or preventative action was not entirely new in the U.S. diplomatic experience, the emphasis accorded to it was much more pronounced. Threat perception altered tactics, not goals. To justify the new tactics, President George W. Bush raised the rhetorical trope of democracy promotion to a new level of importance, and this was even more true after weapons of mass destruction were not located in Iraq. For this chapter, 9/11 raised interesting and complicated questions about the relationships between interests, values, threat perception, and the employment of power.

Bill Clinton’s “new partnership” anecdote

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Edwards ◽  
Joseph M. Valenzano III
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Threat Environment

This essay explores the composition of United States post-Cold War foreign policy rhetoric under President Bill Clinton. We contend that Bill Clinton offered a coherent and comprehensive foreign policy narrative for the direction of U.S. foreign policy discourse in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, we analyze the “new partnership” narrative that Clinton articulated in his 1998 trip to Africa as a representative anecdote for the larger body of his foreign policy discourse. This “new partnership” narrative was structured by three narrative themes: (1) America’s role as world leader; (2) reconstituting the threat environment; (3) democracy promotion as the strategy for American foreign policy. These three themes can be found throughout Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric and serve as the basis for a foreign policy narrative used by Clinton, and perhaps, future administrations.

On American Values, Unalienable Rights, and Human Rights: Some Reflections on the Pompeo Commission

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
American Values ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn July 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a Commission on Unalienable Rights, charged with a reexamination of the scope and nature of human rights–based claims. From his statements, it seems that Pompeo hopes the commission will substantiate—by appeal to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and to natural law theory—three key conservative ideas: (1) that there is too much human rights proliferation, and once we get things right, social and economic rights as well as gender emancipation and reproductive rights will no longer register as human rights; (2) that religious liberties should be strengthened under the human rights umbrella; and (3) that the unalienable rights that should guide American foreign policy neither need nor benefit from any international oversight. I aim to show that despite Pompeo's framing, the Declaration of Independence, per se, is of no help with any of this, whereas evoking natural law is only helpful in ways that reveal its own limitations as a foundation for both human rights and foreign policy in our interconnected age.

Syria under Pressure

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDERS STRINDBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Sharp Criticism ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Syria's sharp criticism of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 opened a particularly tense phase in Syrian-American relations, culminating in the May 2004 imposition of U.S. economic sanctions under the Syria Accountability Act. While accusing Damascus of being on the ““wrong side”” in the wars against terror and Iraq, Washington has raised a number of other issues, including Syria's military presence in Lebanon, its support for Hizballah and various Palestinian factions, its alleged ““interference”” in Iraq, and its possible possession of weapons of mass destruction. This report, based on numerous interviews with government officials, analysts, opposition figures, and ordinary citizens, examines Syria's reactions to these allegations, gradual changes in Syrian political culture, and various domestic developments.

scholarly journals Liberal world order and economic coercion in modern foreign policy of the U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 52-62
Author(s):  
Oğuz Alperen Turhan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Single System ◽  
Global System ◽  
Economic Coercion ◽  
The U.S

The article studies the evolution of liberal world order within the framework of conventional directions of the U.S.’ foreign policy. The purpose of this work is to reveal the peculiarities of development of the U.S.’ foreign policy in terms of liberal world order. For this purpose, the U.S.’ foreign policy is considered through the prism of Walter Russel Mead’s “four schools of American foreign policy”. The author analyzes the development and transformation of liberalism in the context of using economic coercion in the U.S.’ foreign policy. The article also considers the topical problems of development of the liberal world order faced by the realist and liberal paradigms. Representatives of both groups realize the failure of the liberal world order, but offer different strategies of defining the U.S.’ foreign policy course. Representatives of the liberal paradigm believe that the liberal world order entered a phase of self-destruction because of accelerated integration of unequal states in a single system. Realists, in their turn, claim that transformations in the structure of the global system determine the functionality of the liberal world order. Specifically, the revisionist position of Russia and China is a reaction to the imposed principles, and serves as a basis for the transition to the multipolar system. Thus, conflicts of interest between the parties cause the use of measures of coercion.

Struggle for the Turf

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-415
Author(s):  
Henry Trofimenko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The U.S

For anyone whose job is to study the United States, the memoirs of its statesmen provide more than merely entertaining reading. They not only give you a closer insight into the “kitchen” of statesmanship and political decision making; they also provide an opportunity to check the assumptions and paradigms that were constructed earlier to analyze the policy of any particular administration. The memoirs confirm that in spite of hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the U.S. press that discuss specific policies, as well as daily debates in Congress and its committees, press conferences, and official statements, the policy process is not as open as it might seem at first glance. Rather, American foreign policy is made within a very restricted circle of the “initiated”—official and unofficial presidential advisers, including selected members of the Cabinet.

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