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Transcript
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.