U.S. Foreign Policy: Patterns and Processes Values

1
U.S. Foreign Policy Patterns and Processes
(Values)

• Sociologist Harold Laski said, in 1947, that
  millions of people owe the daily meaning of their
  lives to the U.S., what it does, whom it decides
  to identify as an enemy, what forces it
  determines in world politics to be dangerous to
  one of its principal values freedom. If that
  were true in 1947 its many times more true today.

2
U.S. Foreign Policy Patterns and Processes
(Values)

• By virtue of its size, wealth, military power,
  etc., its actions dictate many of lifes vagaries
  to persons across the globe. For its part, the
  U.S. is largely simply going about its business
  as it sees it. Namely, part of the social
  contract into which the U.S. government had
  entered with its people (some 300-plus million
  now) is to protect property rights and,
  importantly for the world, protect its peoples
  safety. But these actions have extraordinary
  consequences for the worlds peoples.

3
U.S. Foreign Policy Patterns and Processes

• Like many if not most governments, the U.S.
  government seeks to ensure peace and
  prosperity, stability and security, and
  democracy and defense. These are some of
  Americas enduring valuesvalues that have
  endured since the countrys origins. What
  specific values does the U.S. (mythology)
  represent?

4
U.S. Foreign Policy Patterns and Processes
(Goals)

• Consequently, in a world in which no supra-state
  entity may arbitrate disputes, Americas pursuit
  of its values invariable causes it to come into
  contact with others, peoples pursuing their own
  values, ideologies, pursuing what it is they
  pursue. Thats generally where values give rise
  to specific goals and or objectives.
• Examples

5
U.S. Foreign Policy Patterns and Processes
(Goals)

• When the American Colonials sought to pursue
  their values free of Englands (the Crowns
  interference), the war of 1812 resulted
• When Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany pursued
  their own goalsbecoming militarily,
  economically, and politically powerful states
  such that they could never again be dictated to
  by others, their actions conflicted with
  Americas own values of prosperity, security, and
  democracy
• When the USSR failed to keep to the agreements it
  had signed governing the administration of a
  post-war Europe, again respective nation-states
  pursuing goals based on their values resulted in
  major conflict.

6
Understanding Continuity

• In order to understand the argument that
  continuity best characterizes U.S. foreign policy
  over time, one must begin with a definition of
  foreign policy.

7
U.S. Foreign Policy A Conceptual Definition

• Americas of any others foreign policy is the
  goals and or objectives that U.S. policymakers
  (decisionmakers) seek to attain abroad, the value
  that give rise to those goals (i.e., the
  principles and ideology, ethos ), and the means
  through which said goals-objectives are pursued.
  (Kegely and Wittkopf, 6th edition, NY St.
  Martins Press, 1996, p. 4.)

8
Kegely and Wittkopf ReduxValues

• For Kegley and Wittkopf, as is the case with many
  governments (states), the things they most value
  are peace and prosperity stability and security
  democracy and defense.
• Since the late 1940s (or through the duration of
  the Cold War and longer), the objectives the US
  sought arising from said goals were.

9
U.S. Foreign PolicyGoals-Objectives

• Americas History
• Liberal commercialism (mercantilism)
• Monroe Doctrine (1820s onward)
• Isolationism
• Following World War II
• Liberal commercialism
• Monroe Doctrine
• Internationalism or globalism
• Anti-Communism (or broadly tyranny)
• Containment of communisms source (the USSR)

10
The Interwar Period 1991-2001USFP Goals

• Commercial liberalism
• The Cold Wars stability and predictability
• Access to the worlds oil reserves
• Anti-proliferation initiative deterrence as
  instrument
• Democratic Dominos
• General rule of law, lack of tyranny, and
  stability in international institutions
• U.S. hegemony and resulting Democracy as uniquely
  defined by U.S.
• Global trade regimes with adjudication framework.

11
What Are Empirical Patterns

• Observable patternsas indicators of the
  dependent variablethey means simply observable,
  generalizable, trends in U.S. foreign policy (the
  tenets of USFP).
• For instance, when they note that Containment was
  a generalizable trend, they do not claim
  invariance.

12
Patterns-Tenets

• Rather, of course there were variation in
  containment. (For example, Johns Gaddis
  Strategies of Containment containment was
  generalizable but small incremental changes over
  time) Indeed, if one were to consider
  Containment from Truman to say Carter, one would
  perforce find differences. (Ikes was called
  Massive Retaliation, JFKs Flexible Response, and
  so on.) Rather, he means that at a more general
  or abstract level they all engaged in Containment
  as tenet or pattern.

13
Continuity vs. Change and Level of Abstraction

• Clearly marginal, rhetorical changes occur at
  each administration. Indeed, as we witness
  presidential elections we tend to witness
  candidates and parties pretend they're tremendous
  differences between them

14
Melanson

• Unfortunately, Melanson never explicity defines
  foreign policy he assume his reader knows what
  he means (an unhelpful assumption).
• We can infer from his structured, comparative
  questions (preface) that he asks of each
  administration. (Some, for our purposes will be
  of secondary importance only)

15
Melanson

• What were the domestic priorities of each admin.?
  (only insofar as relevant to USFP)
• How did each administration perceive the
  problem of governance?
• What were the relationships between 1 2 and an
  administrations foreign policy?
• What were the grand designs, strategic
  objectives, and tactics (tactics?)

16
Melanson

• 5. How did each admin attempt to legitimate
  its foreign policy to the bureaucracy and to the
  public? (Possibly relevant)
• 6. Did the administration succeed in
  re-establishing consensus?

17
Melanson

• Consensus.
• Melanson argues that consensus characterized
  the pre-Vietnam war period in U.S. foreign
  policy. That consensus was lost accordingly.
• Melanson notes that consensus can mean multiple
  things so he divides the phrase into three
  principal meanings.

18
Melanson

• Policy Consensus. It means a fundamental set of
  propositions about the nature of the
  international system, the requirements of
  American Security, and the nations proper
  orientation . . . (p. 6). By orientation he
  means how the U.S. perceives itself as fitted
  into the system at a given time. He further
  suggests that policy consensus includes the
  so-called foreign-policy establishment (elites
  and attentive public) but even to some extent the
  wider public. Clearly, the former leads the
  latter and the latter more or less goes
  alongperhaps they dont fully realize what it is
  they support but they have no particular cause
  antithetical to the consensus so they acquiesce.

19
Melanson

• He enumerates 6 aspect of the Cold War policy
  consensus
• The U.S. was alone (c. 1945) in the free world
  as a nation with the material and moral
  wherewithal to create and ensure a just and
  stable international order.
• Pluralistic-democratic societies
• Commercial liberalism or laissez-faire economics

20
Melanson

• Modernity had led to an increasingly
  interdependent world making U.S. security
  inseparable from global security
• Soviet Communism comprised the worlds tyranny
  and sought to inspire others to their side
  together these movements constituted the primary
  threat to stable world order

21
Melanson

• Containment represented the best way to obviate
  the expansion of Soviet-inspired tyranny as the
  Soviets soon had nukes containment became the
  only sane way despite US rhetoric from time to
  time about rolling back USSR
• The U.S. must posses a nuclear force sufficient
  to compel then deter Soviet aggression

22
Melanson

• A stable open (liberal) world economywhich was
  engineered at Bretton Woods in 1944required
  American leadership (the U.S. initially the only
  power that could provide liquidity and/or
  manufactured products)
• Modernity yielding intl regimes and IOs the US
  must provide the primary leadership to ensure the
  direction these organization followed

23
Melanson

• Cultural Consensus. Pretty much what as it
  sounds. The masses, insofar as they
  contemplated U.S.s role in the world believed
  everyone aspired for the same things Americans
  did liberty, individualism, popular
  sovereignty, equality of opportunity, political
  freedoms, so on.

24
Melanson

• Procedural Consensus. Basic agreement between the
  major branches of government on Americas role in
  the world (jettisoning isolationism fofr
  internationalism) AND the relationship between
  the Executive and Legislative branches. In an
  age of crisis management Congress was
  ill-equipped therefore the Executive would
  handle most and report back to Congress.

25
Bolton

• Each of these types of consensus (but notably
  procedural) led Congress to acquiesce to a strong
  president model. Their one caveat was creation
  of the NSC to help-watch the Executive.