Download Reader US Foreign Policy part 2

Reader US Foreign Policy part 2
Internationalism
Following World War Two, the US refused to again make the mistakes of isolation and rejection of
international agreements that were made in the twenties. This time the US did not isolate and retrench,
instead helping to create the United Nations and NATO, as well as foster international trade and cooperation
through agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
THE BEGINNING OF THE COLD WAR
Europe in the late forties
Because attempts to regulate and control the use of the atomic bomb with the USSR proved
unsuccessful, the US concentrated on building up a nuclear arsenal and long-range bombers to
deter the USSR. It was generally believed the Russians were years behind in producing such
weapons, the first Soviet bomb test of 1949 came as a most unwelcome surprise.
As early as 1946 Truman realized that 'unless Russia is faced with an iron fist, another war is in
the making.' Because of this notion of containing communism (The Truman Doctrine) military aid
was given to two countries that were under Russian pressure: Greece and Turkey. More
importantly, massive aid was given to shattered Western Europe. In 1947 Secretary of State
Marshall offered aid to all countries that would join in drafting a program for recovery (including
Eastern Europe and Russia).
Russia (and its satellites in the East) refused. When a communist takeover brought
Czechoslovakia into the Eastern camp, opposition to the Marshall plan in the US itself died away,
and over three years $12 billion was spent to help Europe make a remarkable recovery.
One of the countries that benefited was the old enemy, Germany. With the British and the
reluctant French, the US created a new, sovereign (in internal matters) federal Republic of West
Germany. The USSR retaliated by blockading the three Western zones of Berlin. For over a year,
the US and Britain airlifted 2,5 million tons of food and fuel in 277,000 flights to beleaguered
Berlin. In April 1949, the Russians backed down.
The US stimulated the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), joined by 12
Western powers and later by Greece and Turkey. The Soviet’s response to this was the Warsaw
Pact; an organization of Eastern European countries headed (firmly) by the USSR.
Korea
At the end of WW2 the US had liberated the southern half of Korea from Japan, and the USSR
the northern half. It soon became clear that the USSR would only tolerate a united Korea if that
country became communist. When the American occupying forces withdrew from South Korea in
1949, it was a much weaker country than the North. In 1950 North Korea launched a surprise
attack. Truman reacted immediately by involving the Security Council of the United Nations. This
Council approved of a UN defense of South Korea and some fifteen nations sent troops. The US
took care of almost 50% of the fighting forces and most of the heavy weapons, and soon the war
was seen by Americans as an American war. When the UN forces neared the Chinese border
they found they were no longer fighting just North Korean troops, but Chinese army units as well
making use of Russian-made jet fighters. MacArthur's troops were forced back into South Korea
with heavy losses. By 1951, the war had bogged down and was developing along the same
patterns as the later war in Vietnam would. Negotiations dragged on through 1952, until in 1953
finally an agreement was reached. The US had not (yet) lost a war for the first time, but they had
not clearly won either. De demarcation line that had split Korea before the war still cut the country
in half.
The fifties
In the period 1950 -1960 people in America were still enjoying the prosperity that the war had
brought by ending the depression. All this led to a feeling of complacency and consensus among
most Americans. They thought of their country as a great country, as an open and liberal society
that had discovered the secret of eternal progress. They also believed that the working class had
disappeared and that everyone now belonged to the middle class (although this was not
necessarily the case). The lower incomes actually got a lower share of the national income. It was
only the middle class that had become somewhat larger and that had profited from the rise in
income.
In the USA, people are not held together by a common history, the only way in which people are
held together is by common ideas. It was therefore that the feeling of consensus in this period
was very important because it gave everybody a strong sense of being one nation. In a situation
like this deviating from common ideas is seen as a threat. One of the most important obsessions
in this period - though it was in fact an unreal danger - was the idea of the threat of communism;
a.k.a. The Red Scare.
In this atmosphere, Senator McCarthy - a dubious senator from Wisconsin who had discovered
that anti-communism was good - accused the State Department of employing communists. The
accusation was vague and an investigation by a Senate Committee proved it to be non-sense.
Not only civil servants were under scrutiny, but also scientists, actors, and filmmakers. In some
cases people were sent to the electric chair for being communist spies. The end
came when McCarthy began to attack the military, which fought back and hired a very good
lawyer. The whole investigation of the military was televised and because this also turned public
opinion around, it meant the end of McCarthy.
Foreign policy 1960-1965
At the time Kennedy took office, there was the danger that the communists would increase their
power by fostering revolutions and subversion in countries, assuming that the US would not risk a
nuclear war for some far-off land. One of the areas where this could easily happen, experts
pointed out, was South Vietnam. A more immediate threat was posed by Fidel Castro's Cuba,
which had freed itself from dictatorship in 1959 and was becoming more and more anti-American.
Despite his association with idealism and the Peace Corps, it was Kennedy who sanctioned a
(failed) invasion of Cuban guerillas against Castro (the Bay of Pigs incident), sent military
advisors and 'technicians' to Vietnam and who actually increased the US conventional fighting
forces.
Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, which cost Kennedy goodwill in Latin America, the US were
confronted in Europe. West Berlin was a thorn in the Russian’s Side side, as Cuba was for the
Americans. The wealthy and modern life in the West could be witnessed (and compared) by
thousands of East Germans. Refugees slipped out of the East in Berlin, and its black market
siphoned off much-needed currency. When Kennedy refused to give control of all access to the
city to the Russians, Krushjev threatened thermonuclear war and in the Summer of 1961 sealed
off East Berlin and East Germany, first with barbed wire, soon with a wall.
The Cuba crisis
In July 1961 American planes spotted shiploads of Russian engineers and equipment arriving on
Cuba. In October it was established that the Russians were building missile sites which could
launch missiles deep into America. Kennedy's response was to institute a naval and air blockade
of the island. Twenty-five Russian ships were bound for Cuba and it was not certain what would
happen if they refused to stop. In negotiations with the Russians it was made clear that the US
were serious. Krushjev backed down and promised to remove the missiles if the Americans
ended the blockade and promised not to invade Cuba. This outcome of the Cuba crisis, which
had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, boosted Kennedy's popularity but also left
Castro the space to export his revolution to Latin American countries in the sixties and to Africa in
the seventies and early eighties, thus remaining a constant irritating factor close to the United
States.
Vietnam
In the early sixties, the United Sates were already more involved in Vietnam than the public was
aware of. After World War Two the American government had counted on the French to stem the
spread of communism in Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam).
The Americans promised to help Vietnam and Laos to create stable states. North Vietnam was
using widespread discontent in these countries to train and supply bands of Vietnamese
communists (the Viet Cong). By 1959, the government of South Vietnam ruled over the cities and
main lines of communication, all the countryside was controlled by the Viet Cong. Military
advisors from the United States trained the South Vietnamese army and military aid grew
steadily. Kennedy attempted more economic aid to gain the support of the peasants, but the
situation grew worse. In spite of misgivings, Kennedy sent more military advisors, and by 1963
they numbered over 15,000. At the end of 1963, the army seized control in South Vietnam, further
complicating the issue for the United States. They supposedly helped democracy, but instead
bolstered a junta. In 1964, two American destroyers patrolling the Bay of Tonkin were attacked by
Vietnamese torpedo boats (later research casts some doubts on the nature of this attack, it may
have been provoked, to say the least). President Johnson asked and got permission from
Congress to 'take all measures to protect the American forces and prevent further aggression in
the region.' Without a real declaration of war, this resolution was used by Johnson and later by
Nixon to lead the US into a full-scale involvement which would turn into the US' longest, most
costly, most protested war and the first one they clearly lost.
In 1965 US armed forces in Vietnam grew from 23,000 to 180,000, in 1966 360,000 and by 1967
500,000.
Kennedy assassinated
In the fall of 1963 conservatives in Congress were blocking Kennedy's proposals for a Civil Rights
Bill and his tax measures. To get support from the South Kennedy visited Florida and then Texas.
On Friday, November 22 Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. Jack Ruby. Despite an investigation
headed by Chief Justice Warren, which stated that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a lone killer,
rumors of conspiracies have persisted to this very day.
For Americans, the assassination was a traumatic experience. Kennedy was a charismatic
symbol of what one could achieve. He had been President in years in which America seemed to
be come up in the world as the center and standard of civilization. The assassination brought to
the surface things people thought had disappeared: fears of a nation divided in North and South,
irrationality and hatred. The 22nd of November 1963 seemed to many the end of a time of hope
and the beginning of a long downward slide into troubles and violence. Even former opponents
declared, when interviewed, that Kennedy's death was felt as a loss of someone close and dear.
1968
In 1968, the forces that were dividing the nation came to a head. The war in Vietnam had become
increasingly unpopular, as its brutality was televised and more and more young Americans were
getting killed in a war that had never really been declared.
In the first months of 1968, the Viet Cong had started a big campaign (the Tet offensive) that
struck in every city in South Vietnam and showed clearly that the war was far from being won by
the Americans. The American peace movement had started to grow rapidly.
Meanwhile, more domestic unrest had started in the nation's universities, where students
protesting the draft found they were attacked by police with dogs and sprayed with riot gas just
like the black demonstrators in the South. Students started to organize and became more
political, starting with the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley campus in San Francisco. The
establishment unfailingly responded with violence and restrictions and allowed the student
movement to grow into what would be called a 'counter culture'.
Left-wing whites who were being thrown out of the civil rights organizations by militant blacks
found a new focus for their disaffection in the student movement and steered it on an antiestablishment course in which 'no-one over thirty could really be trusted'. The rebellion was aided
by anti-establishment music and the psychedelic scene that had grown out of the beat movement,
most notably in California.
th
On April 4 , 1968 Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, and the black community lost its
great, non-violent leader. Fights broke out in forty cities, there was widespread looting and
burning of buildings in Washington.
In July, the popular Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles during his campaign to become the
Democratic candidate. Kennedy had been sure he would find a way of ending the violence and
had promised to end the war if he was elected.
Domestic unrest and violence from three sides, the students, the peace movement and the Black
Power movement became the issue for the 1968 election along with the war in Vietnam. The
Republican contender, Richard Nixon was non-committal on Vietnam. Nixon promised to react to
Vietnam and domestic violence from a 'position of strength'.
Nixon won the elections and faced with growing opposition to the war, started negotiations with
the Vietnamese, but at the same time stressed that immediate withdrawal would bring disaster. In
early 1969, more than half the nation wanted the war to end, but Nixon and his Vice-president
Agnew denounced the peace demonstrators as 'snobs' who did not know what the 'silent majority'
really wanted. Nixon wanted to 'Vietnamize' the war, that is to leave the actual fighting more and
more to the South Vietnamese. But when communist pressure mounted he ordered bombing of
North Vietnam and even an invasion of neighboring Cambodia to attack Viet Cong bases there.
Protest erupted on the campuses, and Nixon's failure to 'bring the nation together' as he had
promised at his inauguration was underlined by the death of four students in 1970, shot during a
demonstration at Kent State university in Ohio by the National Guard, a reserve military
organization increasingly used to quell violent demonstrations and riots.
At the close of the sixties, the generation that had hoped for peace and stability at the
inauguration of Kennedy were engaged in fighting in the streets and on the campuses to such a
degree that many observers nowadays claim the country was 'on the brink of a new civil war'.
President Nixon may have been a very insecure man and will always be remembered for the
Watergate- scandal but he was also very good at public relations. His visits to Moscow and
Peking during the election campaign of 1972 gave him the image of peacemaker, an image he
also wanted with respect to the war in Vietnam. In his second election campaign he promised to
end this war, which he actually did although he took longer than necessary because he wanted to
avoid a humiliating defeat for the USA. It took until 23 January 1973 for the Vietnam War to be
officially over, and even then the bombing of Cambodia continued. For the first time in their
history the USA had lost a war, which was a traumatic experience for the strongest nation in the
world.
Foreign Policy in the 70s and 80s
President Carter’s biggest success in foreign policy was the series of peace talks between Israel
and Egypt, hosted in Camp David. Carter had to contend with the effects of worldwide recession,
the oil crisis (which had hysterical Americans in miles long queues) and an aggressive Soviet
policy. The détente (peaceful co- existence) which had been set up by Nixon and Kissinger in the
early seventies was ended when the Soviets intervened in Ethiopia, Angola and Afghanistan.
The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan led Carter to declare a trade embargo on the USSR and
boycott the Olympic Games. The small rise in popularity this gave him was destroyed by the
Iranian hostage crisis. In 1978 a revolution started in Iran, till then a stable ally of the US in the
instable Middle East. In 1979, the Shah had had to flee to the US, and the civilian government
was powerless against the influence of the religious leader Khomeini. Students stormed the US
embassy and held its personnel hostage. Carter was powerless, as anyone would have been. But
the media gave the affair, which lasted 444 days, much attention and Reagan suggested in the
1980 campaign he would have done much better. As it was, Carter ordered a mission to free the
hostages, but this failed in its early stages Carter would probably have lost in 1980 anyway, but
the hostage crisis broke his political back. In retrospect, we see that Carter was not an incapable
or incompetent president. 78% of his Acts were passed, a better score than Ford or Nixon made,
and that in a time of recession and in the face of an aggressive Congress, with laws that were
often controversial and complicated. In recent years, Carter has often negotiated on behalf of the
United Nations.
The eighties as ‘Reagan Years’
For the eighties it can be said that they form a rounded-off period, because the whole decade
was influenced by the ideas and policies of one president: Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s successor.
George Bush, was not such a ‘Great Communicator’ but his domestic failures and foreign
successes were made possible by what Reagan had done. Paradoxically, much of what Reagan
really accomplished was established in the first years (or maybe even the first year) of his eight
years as President of the United States. The remainder was a very successful show, in which
Reagan’s image kept him in power while both his policies and the influence of his Republican
party slowly eroded under the reality of economic and social failure.
Star Wars
Reagan was unskilled in foreign policy, to say the least. Most foreign affairs were too complicated
for him to grasp. He was assured of two things. However: the Soviet Union must not be allowed
to expand any further and America should be protected against the nuclear threat of the other
superpower. Reacting from these points Reagan devised a strategy that was extremely risky and
actually worked, though not in ways the president would have predicted when he started. One
famous incident tells all about Reagan’s ideas: before a radio-interview, when he thought the
microphone was still shut off, he announced that the countdown had started and the bombing of
the Soviet Union was about to begin. Listeners reacted in panic.
More importantly, Reagan had picked up the idea that laser-weapons could intercept
intercontinental ballistic missiles. Though research was still in its infancy the president somehow
got the idea that a kind of Strategic Defense shield was feasible, and he had plans worked out
without consulting the highest military powers in the Pentagon. Thus, when he presented the plan
as the Strategic Defense Initiative to the concerned population of America, the experts saw it
could not work as quickly as planned, but could not stop the plans from being taken up. Much
money was spent on research and the Russians panicked because they saw a new arms race
looming, which they could not possibly afford. SDI, or as it soon came to be called, Star Wars,
became an important bargaining factor between the USA and the USSR, and the president
mistakenly but firmly believed the plan was feasible up to and after the day Bush succeeded him.
Reagan had opposed world communism for thirty years before he became president and in his
speeches he continued to do so after his inauguration. He spoke of an evil empire; the Soviet
Union was the root of all evil in the world. In policy, however, the US were much milder, and they
continued to sell grain to the USSR and to propose reduction of nuclear weapons. That process
was interrupted by the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe and the advent of SDI. While the
relationship with the USSR deteriorated between 1980 and 1984. the relationship with Europe
was cool to say the least. Reagan’s policy was seen as dangerous by the Europeans, whom he
seldom consulted. By 1984 it seemed the US were becoming stronger and the balance of power
that was maintained by the nuclear threat was slowly turning to an American advantage. The truth
was rather that weaknesses in the Soviet system were beginning to show, but the result was the
same. When Michael Gorbasjev rose to power in 1985 the time had come for real bargains, and
in no time the superpowers reached agreement on the limitation and even destruction of nuclear
weapons. Gorbasjev’s policy of Glasnost (openness and transparency) and Perestrojka (reform)
however really paved the way for better relations between East and West and this led to the Fall
of the Wall in 1989, ending the Cold War.
The Reagan doctrine
Reagan’s wish to come across as a firm and determined defender of the Free West was
expressed in interventions in Lebanon (marines stationed there were killed by a bomb in 1983
and the force was withdrawn in 1984), Grenada (a radical coup was answered by a quick military
operation) and military aid for anti-communist guerillas in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and
above all Nicaragua.
American aid to the contras, rebels against the leftist Sandinista government was blocked by
Congress in 1982. Reagan’s staff decided to continue aid via the National Security Council,
whose work had been screened off from Congress scrutiny successfully. The practical side of
operations was left to colonel Oliver North who worked out a plan to deliver weapons to Iran (a
declared enemy of the US) in order to free Americans who had been taken hostage in Lebanon
and to generate funds to pay the contras. In the end, as just as many new hostages were taken
as old ones set free, the money disappeared in a web of Swiss bank accounts and the plan
leaked out, implicating not only North and others on Reagan’s staff, but the president himself.
There were Congressional hearings, dubbed Irangate. Oliver North, who had acted unlawfully,
became a national hero overnight. Many Americans felt he had at least tried to ‘get something
done’ and an ‘Olimania’ spread through the country. It became quite clear the president must at
least have known what was going on (and thereby was acting against Congress) but somehow
Reagan used his charisma to ward off attacks and he was not impeached.
George Bush
In the 1988 elections Reagan ‘launched’ his Vice-President, George Bush. Bush had climbed
slowly in the Republican Party, had been mentioned as a possible Vice-President in 1976 but had
been made head of the CIA instead. He was a thorough, competent, hard-working politician but
extremely dull and uninspiring. His promise not to raise taxes (‘read my lips’) was soon broken. At
first, he was greatly helped by the collapse of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union. and by his firm and decisive handling of the Gulf War, the first major intervention of US
forces since Vietnam. But his defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992 (albeit by a very small margin) shows
that Americans were fed up with Reaganomics and unpaid bills, neglected inner cities and falling
trade figures. Clinton’s inauguration raised high hopes. However silly Clinton’s sexual escapades
were, as President he did well, considering for a long time a majority of Congress was
Republican.
The 1990s
Bill Clinton was President in an era of unsurpassed economic growth and at a time when the US
were not challenged seriously as the only remaining superpower. Clinton was an able
administrator and negotiator. Deployment of American forces in Iraq, Somalia and Yuogoslavia
was generally seen as logical. Clinton also played a prominent role in the peace negotiations
between Palestinians and Israel and a smaller role in the Good Friday agreements in
Northern- Ireland.
The noughties
Initially, President George W Bush’ take on Foreign Policy was that the USA should return to a
kind of Isolationism whilst expanding the military. The main goal of Foreign Affairs was trade,
preferably in the Latin- American region (comparable to the Monroe Doctrine). This scenario was
shattered to pieces when the USA was attacked on 9- 11 with the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center in NYC and on the Pentagon in Washington DC. Since then the USA have been
waging a so- called ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those invasions led to the toppling
of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
It would take until 2011 though for the American Special Forces to take out the mastermind of 911, Osama Bin Laden, an event of great symbolic importance. Unfortunately it also took a
decade for the Americans to ends the wars on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq but it is yet to be
decides whether or not these wars were lost wars of made the world a safer place.