American Foreign Policy: 1900-2000 - Research Proposal Example

American Foreign Policy: 1900-2000 Introduction The United s foreign policy is the manner in which it interacts with foreign nations and comes up with the principles of interaction that are supposed to guide its organizations, corporations and citizens. The office of the United States Secretary of State can be equated to that of the foreign minister in other countries and is officially mandated to deal with the state-to-state diplomacy even though the president has the final authority as far as foreign policy is concerned. This policy encompasses a definition of the national interest and the approaches that are chosen both to protect and to reach the milestones that are associated with the policy. The United States Foreign Policy Agenda defines the goals of the foreign policy1 and mentions that they are supposed to build and sustain a world that is more democratic, secure and prosperous for the benefit of the American people and also the international community. Consequently, the United States Committee on foreign affairs has several goals that are within its jurisdiction that it states as being export controls that include non-production of technology that is of a nuclear nature and nuclear hardware; measures that are meant to encourage commercial relationships with the foreign nations and the protection of the American businesses that are beyond its borders. It also has jurisdiction in international education and also the protection of the citizens of United States that are abroad and also their expatriation. This foreign policy has been a subject of a lot of discourse, praise and criticism both domestically and across the borders. The president of the United States negotiates treaties with foreign nations that are based on the advice and the consent that he gets from the Senate but the treaties then only becomes applicable when it is ratified by more than two thirds of the senate. The President being the Commander in Chief of the of the United States Armed Forces is bestowed with wide authority over the armed forces but only the Congress has the authority to declare a war and the budget that caters for both the civilians and the military is controlled by the Congress. Foreign policy in the 20th century The growth in the involvement of the United States in global affairs in the twentieth century presented an obligation to integrate and coordinate the American foreign policy with the capability that the military had. As a matter of fact, after the Second World War, the escalating importance of military power in relation to national policy led to the adoption of the national security policy that involves military, diplomatic and economic attributes of the national policy.2 The widening of the involvement that the United States had in global issues throughout the twentieth century presented broad challenges in the fields of foreign and defense policy and before the Spanish-American War took place, the bureaucratic direction of the foreign and military policy could be considered to be an issue that was reticent. This war and the trappings of empire that the United States was able to acquire towards the end of the nineteenth century acted as the catalysts that brought about changes in the organization of the military services. The overseas dependencies, such as the Philippines, that the United States had acquired made the coordination of the Army and the Navy policy a priority in a manner that it had not been since when the civil war had taken place. In 1903 the Secretary of war and the secretary of the navy issued a joint order that brought into being the joint Army Navy Board that was general referred to as the Joint Board which had eight members originally where four came from the Navy’s General Board while the rest came from the Army’s newly developed General staff. The military departments and the State Department had a lot of interaction during the interwar years even though the development of the formal coordination was not even. Therefore, as from 1922, particular officers from the State Department started attending courses and delivering lectures to the army and the Navy war colleges. Later on in 1935, the then Secretary of State Cordell Hull granted a joint board request by designating a Far East expert to sit with the Joint Planning Committee so that the United States military position in the Far East could be reviewed. The key development that has taken place in the history of the United States apart from the American Revolution is the change away from non-interventionism that occurred prior to and after the First World War and also the development to become a world power and also a worldwide authority. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the United States foreign policy was characterized by a change away from the realist school to the Wilsonian school of international relations. Two world wars took place between 1900 and 2000 in which the United States and the countries that were allied to it emerged victorious and therefore increased the reputation that they had internationally. The Wilsonianism program that was developed by President Wilson was an idea that encompassed the Fourteen Points whose primary goals were to spread democracy and challenge militarism so that wars could come to an end and this became the root of the German surrender and Paris peace Conference that took place in 1919. The treaty of Versailles that came out of it showed conformity that was not sufficient with Wilson’s fourteen points and this made the United States to have specific treaties for particular nations. The objections that were raised by the senate also consequently made the US not to join the League of Nations that had come into being as a part of the initiative of President Wilson. The United States decided to adopt an autonomous path in the 1920’s and posted success in disarming the navy as well as the refund of the German economy. This made New York to be elevated to be the financial capital of the world but the Wall Street Crash that took place in 1929 had the effect of plunging the whole world into the Great Depression. In President Roosevelt’s period during the Second World war, he mention four basic liberties that were supposed to be accessible to everyone in the world which included the freedom of speech and religion, as well as the freedom that is characterized by want and fear. He went on to assist in the creation of the terms that were to guide the world after the war among the possible allies at the Atlantic Conference. Here, particular points were considered that were meant to make amendments to the failures that had previously been experiences which was a step towards the creation of the United Nations. American policy was able to threaten Japan and accordingly make it move out of China3 and also prevent it from attacking the Soviet Union but Japan responded to this with an attack that took place at Pearl Harbor in 1941. This therefore meant that the United States was at war with three nations, Japan, Germany and Italy. The United States took advantage of the close working relation that it had developed with Winston Churchill of the Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union to send its forces into the pacific to engage with Japan and into North Africa to engage with Germany and Italy. It also sent them to Europe where they were supposed to engage Italy with the help of the French and the Italian forces in 1944. A huge degree of the of the War effort that the United States put in was directed at tactical bombers which were used to destroy the cities of Japan and Germany. The use of the National Interest during the Second World War to the Cold War period became confused to some degree by the simultaneous and escalated use of the parallel terms “national security” and also the “national security interest”. In spite of the similarities that were present in these two terms, the latter terms were not perceived to be the same as the broader concept of “national interest” which also entails the national security. After the Cold War was over, the interest that the United States held in preserving the status quo did not go through any change but it continually became harder to predict any threats to the status quo that were similar to the ones that had been experienced from1917 all the way to 1990 which again reflected the confusion that existed between “national interest” and “national security”. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be noted that the American foreign policy had a huge influence on the twentieth century world and this contribution can be seen to be both good and bad. It must be stressed that the American foreign policy has been able to play a central role in the defeat of fascism and communism and this goes on to show that the world is more habitable without the Nazis and the regimes that existed in the Soviet Union.4 The American foreign policy has been molded by concepts and impulses that have been in constant competition such as the frontier experience that looked to the United States to expand abroad while the other came from the immigration experiences which had sought to isolate the United States from the world that was corrupt and was getting even more corrupt. This idea of isolation is being diminished by the globalization of most of the national economies but the Republican Party still has crusaders that support the isolation ideas. This happens through the resistance that the exhibits to American interventions abroad, to foreign aid programs and also to the UN, the IMF and many other international organizations. As demonstrated in the Persian Gulf War and the Humanitarian intervention that took place in Somalia, the United States has shown a will to collaborate with other states. It has also shown its commitment to work within the international consensus on the correct goals and means of foreign policy. Nevertheless, this new type of security cooperation is still being disputed and the future of the security cooperation that America is a part of remains to be hazy.5 Bibliography Burt, Sally and Añorve Daniel. GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON US FOREIGN POLICY. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Doenecke, Justus D and Stoler, Mark A. Debating FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELTS FOREIGN POLICIES, 1933-1945. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Hogan, Michael J. THE AMBIGUOUS LEGACY. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lake, David A. ENTANGLING RELATIONS. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Millett, Allan Reed and Murray, Williamson. MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Read More