U.s. Foreign Policy Policies Essay

Foreign Policy is something the United States takes very seriously. It often carries a lot of controversy. Throughout United States history presidents have made decisions that have always risen much debate. In 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan. In 1954 the United States sent troops into Vietnam. Both major moves in foreign policy. Both heavily debated. Today foreign policy is more modest and put into higher regards when it comes to lives at stake. President George W. Bush (R) and President Barak Obama (D) have very different point of views when it comes to foreign policy. Foreign policy is a widely controversial topic throughout all of politics. In 2002 President Bush announced that the United States forces would be invading Iraq in retaliation to the terror attacks that took place in New York City on the morning of September 11, 2001. This move by Bush would be seen widely as a poor decision. He would be criticized for misleading United States forces into Iraq. Bush lead his argument claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were a true threat to American safety. Many men and Women would fall fighting in Iraq. Bush would approve the operative against Saddam Hussein

Throughout the course of history, the United States has remained consistent with its national interest by taking many different actions in foreign policy. There have been both immediate and long term results of these actions. Foreign policy is the United States policy that defines how we deal with other countries economically and politically. It is made by congress, the president, and the people. Some of the motivations for United States foreign policy are national security, economics, and idealism. The United States entry into World War I in 1917 and the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the both had great impact on the United States.

The U.S. foreign policy has always been linked to the domestic policy since the U.S. never feared of expanding its national interests over the national boarders. Isolation for the U.S. usually implied slow economic growth and the large number of destructive conflicts within, while impudent foreign policy always guaranteed an abrupt economic growth for the U.S. economy. After the U.S. intervened in the WWI and the WWII, the U.S. economy witnessed a tremendous economic growth, nearly elimination of the unemployment, rapid urbanization and overall growth of the standards of living across the country. Decisive foreign policy has always been providing the U.S. economy with the sustainable and rapid economic growth, unlike the policy aimed at isolation of the U.S.

As was laid out in the previous section, the United-States always had a ‘hegemonic presumption’, the conception that Latin America was inferior, a supposition that gave the right to Washington to intervene in the region’s political and economic affairs (LeoGrande, 2007:384). This second chapter will explore how the U.S. intervened in Latin America, more specifically after the World War II. Indeed, the U.S. benefitted greatly from the aftermath of the war. A subsection will be dedicated to the Pink Tide in Latin America, with a focus on the U.S. foreign policy under President GW Bush and President Obama. The overthrown Presidents of Honduras and Paraguay were part of this movement and their outset signals a reversal in the region.

The turn of the twentieth century brought about changes in all aspects of American domestic society and especially in the course of U.S. Foreign Policy. The factors leading up to American involvement in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and in World War II, respectively, mark drastic shifts in domestic attitudes towards America’s role in the world. Ostensibly, the decisions to intervene in Cuba in 1898 and in Europe in 1917 were both products of aggressions against Americans at sea, endangered economic interests, and the fear of European encroachment upon the Western Hemisphere. Domestically, however, the hyper masculinity and expansionist fervor precipitating the U.S. decision to intervene in Cuba contrasts sharply with the reform-driven decision-making process which preceded U.S. entry into WWI. Both cases of military intervention constitute acts of imperialism, albeit in different senses, as the underlying goal of the United States’ 1898 intervention in Cuba was physical expansion, while America’s longstanding quest for an Ideological Empire was born with entrance into WWI.

This essay will focus on the Reagan Administration which spanned from January 1981 to January 1989. When Reagan became President, he had only one clear, defined foreign policy goal – containment of the Soviet Union, or the “evil empire” as he referred to it. He primarily wanted to stop the USSR from growing larger and to keep other non-Communist countries from becoming Communist. In the past, American presidents had used a theory called the “Domino Theory” to justify the need for intervention around

The evolution of U.S. Foreign policy following the Civil War is continually evolving. During the Civil War years, America had an economy that was based on agriculture. Farmers were growing cotton, tobacco and sugarcane. Slaves from Africa worked on these enormous plantations. . At the time, America was in an election year with Lincoln as the candidate of the Republican Party claiming he was going to abolish slavery. When Lincoln won the election he did just that, immediately there after 7 states declared their independence from the US, they were then known as Confederate States. After a few years 4 more states

After World War 2, faith in the United States government was at an all time high. A brief, superficial, and weak understanding of the history on the aftermath of World War 2 leads the reader to understand that not only did the United States help defeat the evil Nazis, the fascist Italians, and the imperial Japanese. In the wake of World War 2, the United States of America ended up cementing itself as a world power – if not the world power, usurping the empty throne previously held by Great Britain and subsequently sharing it with the Soviet Union. Yet as is typical, there can never be two champions. There can never be two reigning super victors – one of the two powers had to lose. So began the conflict that never was, the cold war – a global chess match of attrition. Neither the USSR nor the USA would outright engage in conflicts with one another, but in the thirst and pursuit for more influence and power, they continually opposed each other through pawn states on a global scale for approximately 44 years. This type of warfare was known as ‘proxy’ warfare, and though the dates specifically for the Cold War are not known, the common dates for the war range from 1947 to 1991. With this understanding, it can also be inferred that it was not just a war for power, it was a war of ideologies.

As the American Revolution ended, the United States emerged as an independent and fragile nation. It had to co-exist in a world dominated by large and powerful empires.It became the job of the first few presidents to guide the young nation through this difficult time.They are recognized for their foreign and domestic policies that helped this country become a strong nation.Throught their actions,they influenced the future of American policy.The events that strengthened the country the most were the XYZ Affair,The War of 1812,and The Monroe Doctrine.

During the1890s, the United States showed little interest in foreign affairs. The U.S. relied on previous foreign policies which resulted in inconsistent international trade in the years leading up to the twentieth century. However, following the rise of the industrial revolution in the United States American business began to recognize the vast potential of the international market place. The U.S. sought out to expand its territory globally to increase trade and protect its assets more effectively. The United States, at this point in the late 1890s, also began to listen to Alfred Thayer Mahan, an admiral and naval strategist. Mahan had previously called for a strengthening of the U.S. navy and an expansion of U.S. markets globally. Mahan also had great influence over his friend and current assistant secretary of the navy Teddy Roosevelt. In 1898 the U.S. was able to exploit a huge mistake made by the Spanish empire in Havana Harbor. The American ship U.S.S. Maine mysteriously exploded on February 15, 1898, killing 266 American sailors. The American public was outraged and they called for war to overthrow the “Spanish Murders” in Cuba. At this time, Spain was an imperial power with land possessions in the Caribbean as well as the pacific. They controlled Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines and Guam in the pacific. American politicians, including Secretary of State John Hay and President William McKinley, now began discussing the idea on going to war

Since the United States’ conception, controlling interests in other countries has been of utmost importance. For decades, the United States’ foreign policy has been centered around protecting its assets abroad, regardless of the manner in which it is done, and in many cases, a blind eye has been turned toward the consequences of involvement in foreign countries. Over the course of the 1900s, the United States has committed numerous human rights violations in Latin American countries in order to advance their political, economic, and cultural agenda.

The Failure of One, the Fall of Many: Featuring the US and the Soviet Union

During the course of this paper we will examine whether or not U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century has either, fundamentally changed, or if the U.S. is using the same policies it has been using for centuries. First we will discover that much is new in the realm of U.S. foreign policy and lastly we will explore the aspect of globalization. Next we will examine the new approaches the U.S. has used in the 21st century to address the new issues on foreign policy and how they have greatly changed, from President Bush’s focuses on the use of unilateralism and primacy to President Obama’s separation from Bush’s policies and embracing the use of multilateralism and ‘smart’ power. Finally, while we examine a few resolute aspects of the current global stage we can then come to the conclusion that while much is new on the world stage in the 21st century, some aspects of the current foreign policies have remained the same, and will probably stay that way in the future.

Before World War one, America’s foreign policy was an economic one, based on trade with other countries especially from Asia and South America. American foreign policy changed dramatically after the great depression and the end of World War II. It’s in this era when the President began the exploitation of foreign economic relations to achieve American national security. The American foreign policy decisions became centered on the idea of the free market (Rosati 2010, 239). Recently, after the spread of Globalization, the US economy has become linked to the world economy more than ever. The economic meltdown of 2008 showed that clearly. The US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the US budget under more pressure especially

After December 26 1991, when the Soviet Union fell, the bipolarity of the international system was effaced. In the post- Cold War era, the United States faced the problem, without a defined enemy, to adopt a new foreign policy. To begin to analyze the political foreign policy of the United States, one must first understand the international system. According to Political Realism, a theory of international thought, the state is the key unit within the acts within the system. These states act according to their key norms, which are allowed by the system. However, these sates are also affected the domestic and external factors which control how they act. The domestic factors include political culture, their economic system, the leadership