Results by title

484 books match the query 'Foreign relations' and 111 start with t

cover of To Reason Why

To Reason Why

Jeffrey Kimball

Temple University Press, 1990

This anthology provides a comprehensive overview of the major theories about the causes of American involvement in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1975. Presenting the often conflicting arguments advanced by national leaders, policy makers, strategists, historians, social scientists, journalists, and activists, this volume represents the major reasons why and how the U.S. became involved, diplomatically and militarily, in the quagmire of Vietnam. As the first book to focus on the debate about the reasoning and causes of U.S. involvement, it fills a major gap in the study of the Vietnam war.
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cover of To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How Publics Abroad View the United States after 9/11

To See Ourselves as Others See Us

How Publics Abroad View the United States after 9/11

Ole R. Holsti

University of Michigan Press, 2008

"Holsti, the authority on American foreign policy attitudes, investigates others' views of us. It's not pretty. It matters. Read this."
---Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations, Yale University, and editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution

"Clearly and engagingly written, Holsti's book ranks among the most important---and most objective---of the post-9/11 scholarly studies. It deserves a large readership, both within and beyond academe."
---Ralph Levering, Vail Professor of History, Davidson College

In terms of military and economic power, the United States remains one of the strongest nations in the world. Yet the United States seems to have lost the power of persuasion, the ability to make allies and win international support.

Why? Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, leaders and citizens of foreign nations generally expressed sympathy for the United States. Since then, attitudes have changed. Drawing upon public opinion surveys conducted in 30 nations, Ole R. Holsti documents an increasing anti-American sentiment. His analysis suggests that the war in Iraq, human rights violations, and unpopular international policies are largely responsible. Consequently, the United States can rebuild its repute by adopting an unselfish, farsighted approach to global issues.

Indeed, the United States must restore goodwill abroad, Holsti asserts, because public opinion indirectly influences the leaders who decide whether or not to side with the Americans.

Ole R. Holsti is George V. Allen Professor Emeritus of International Affairs in the Department of Political Science at Duke University and author of Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy.

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cover of Transplanting the Great Society: Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace

Transplanting the Great Society

Lyndon Johnson and Food for Peace

Kristin L. Ahlberg

University of Missouri Press, 2008

Enacted in 1954, the Food for Peace program allowed the United States to make agricultural surpluses available to needy nations but served varying political agendas. President Eisenhower saw it primarily as a temporary means for improving domestic agriculture prices, while his two Democratic successors turned it into the cornerstone of an expanded foreign assistance program.
Kristin Ahlberg traces the transformation of Public Law 480 from a means of liquidating domestic surplus into a vital component of U.S. foreign policy. She focuses on how Lyndon Johnson sought to re-create his Great Society reforms on a global scale by exporting programs designed to improve the lives of world citizens through combating food shortages—and how he also wielded Food for Peace as a diplomatic tool to gain support for U.S. policies and to reward or punish allies for their behavior.
LBJ sought to demonstrate America’s commitment to the less fortunate while providing a deterrent to those impoverished nations most vulnerable to communist influence, and the White House maintained control of the program’s objectives on a country-by-country basis while leaving its implementation to the bureaucracy. Ahlberg describes these foreign policy maneuvers as well as the domestic battles that found farm nationalists like Senator Allen Ellender opposing Johnson and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman—and also found the Department of Agriculture, Department of State, and Agency for International Development vying for control of the program.
Ahlberg draws on recently declassified sources to show how the Johnson administration used Food for Peace to win diplomatic support for American policy in Vietnam, prevent nuclear proliferation on the Indian subcontinent, and uphold Israeli security. When India diverted resources from agriculture to arms, Washington suspended wheat shipments until New Delhi reordered its priorities. But in the case of Israel and South Vietnam, LBJ used food aid to help client governments build up their militaries—as well as to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people.
Transplanting the Great Society is an insightful study that shows the successes and limitations of using food aid as a diplomatic tool during the middle period of the cold war. It paints a broader picture of Johnson’s foreign policies, opening a new window on both his administration and postwar diplomatic history.
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cover of Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers

Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements

International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers

Glen S. Krutz and Jeffrey S. Peake

University of Michigan Press, 2011

"Krutz and Peake's examination of the increase use of executive agreements offers a valuable lesson in how the president and Congress have responded and adjusted to the growth in the complexity of foreign relations to meet the demands of an ever-increasingly complex and interconnected international community."
---Victoria Farrar-Myers, University of Texas, Arlington

"From reading Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements, I learned a good deal about a topic that I thought I knew well. This book will be an excellent addition to the literature on the presidency. It will be read and cited by scholars working in this field."
---Benjamin Ginsberg, Johns Hopkins University

"Glen Krutz and Jeffrey Peake's Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements offers a provocative analysis of a neglected topic. Their theoretical and empirical challenge to the usual explanation for the growth of executive agreements, their careful analysis of the treaty process in the Senate and when that body can be decisive, and their assessment of the House of Representatives' role in the agreement process provide important new scholarship for students of the presidency, Congress, and foreign policy."
---James M. McCormick, Iowa State University

In foreign relations, U.S. presidents have exercised a growing independence through the use of executive agreements. The U.S. Constitution specifies that two-thirds of the Senate must ratify a proposed treaty but makes no provision for other forms of international agreements. In 1942 the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of executive agreements, and since World War II, they have outnumbered treaties by more than ten to one. Are presidents trampling the Constitution or seeking to streamline the diplomatic process?

Glen S. Krutz and Jeffrey S. Peake argue that the preference for executive agreements is the result of a symbiotic evolution of the executive and the legislative branches and that in order for the United States to survive in a complex, ever-changing global environment and maintain its world power status, it must fulfill international commitments swiftly and confidently. Members of Congress concur that executive agreements allow each branch to function more effectively. At the same time, the House continues to oversee particular policy areas, and presidents still submit the majority of the most significant international commitments to the Senate as treaties.

Krutz and Peake conclude that executive agreements represent a mutual adaptation of the executive and the legislature in a system of shared power.

Glen S. Krutz is Associate Director of the Carl Albert Center and Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma.

Jeffrey S. Peake is Professor and Department Chair, Department of Political Science at Clemson University.

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cover of Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa

Tropical Zion

General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa

Allen Wells

Duke University Press, 2009

Seven hundred and fifty Jewish refugees fled Nazi Germany and founded the agricultural settlement of Sosúa in the Dominican Republic, then ruled by one of Latin America’s most repressive dictators, General Rafael Trujillo. In Tropical Zion, Allen Wells, a distinguished historian and the son of a Sosúa settler, tells the compelling story of General Trujillo, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and those fortunate pioneers who founded a successful employee-owned dairy cooperative on the north shore of the island.

Why did a dictator admit these desperate refugees when so few nations would accept those fleeing fascism? Eager to mollify international critics after his army had massacred 15,000 unarmed Haitians, Trujillo sent representatives to Évian, France, in July, 1938 for a conference on refugees from Nazism. Proposed by FDR to deflect criticism from his administration’s restrictive immigration policies, the Évian Conference proved an abject failure. The Dominican Republic was the only nation that agreed to open its doors. Obsessed with stemming the tide of Haitian migration across his nation’s border, the opportunistic Trujillo sought to “whiten” the Dominican populace, welcoming Jewish refugees who were themselves subject to racist scorn in Europe.

The Roosevelt administration sanctioned the Sosúa colony. Since the United States did not accept Jewish refugees in significant numbers, it encouraged Latin America to do so. That prodding, paired with FDR’s overriding preoccupation with fighting fascism, strengthened U.S. relations with Latin American dictatorships for decades to come. Meanwhile, as Jewish organizations worked to get Jews out of Europe, discussions about the fate of worldwide Jewry exposed fault lines between Zionists and Non-Zionists. Throughout his discussion of these broad dynamics, Wells weaves vivid narratives about the founding of Sosúa, the original settlers and their families, and the life of the unconventional beach-front colony.

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cover of Truman and the Hiroshima Cult

Truman and the Hiroshima Cult

Robert P. Newman

Michigan State University Press, 1995

The United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 to end World War II as quickly and with as few casualties as possible. That is the compelling and elegantly simple argument Newman puts forward in his new study of World War II's end, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult. According to Newman: (1) The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conclusions that Japan was ready to surrender without "the Bomb" are fraudulent; (2) America’s "unconditional surrender" doctrine did not significantly prolong the war; and (3) President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons on Japanese cities was not a "racist act," nor was it a calculated political maneuver to threaten Joseph Stalin’s Eastern hegemony. Simply stated, Newman argues that Truman made a sensible military decision. As commander in chief, he was concerned with ending a devastating and costly war as quickly as possible and with saving millions of lives. 
     Yet, Newman goes further in his discussion, seeking the reasons why so much hostility has been generated by what happened in the skies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August, 1945. The source of discontent, he concludes, is a "cult" that has grown up in the United States since the 1960s. It was weaned on the disillusionment spawned by concerns about a military industrial complex, American duplicity and failure in the Vietnam War, and a mistrust of government following Watergate. The cult has a shrine, a holy day, a distinctive rhetoric of victimization, various items of scripture, and, in Japan, support from a powerful Marxist constituency. "As with other cults, it is ahistorical," Newman declares. "Its devotees elevate fugitive and unrepresentative events to cosmic status. And most of all, they believe." Newman’s analysis goes to the heart of the process by which scholars interpret historical events and raises disturbing issues about the way historians select and distort evidence about the past to suit special political agendas.

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cover of Truman, Franco's Spain, and the Cold War

Truman, Franco's Spain, and the Cold War

Wayne H Bowen

University of Missouri Press, 2017

Well-deployed primary sources and brisk writing by Wayne H. Bowen make this an excellent framework for understanding the evolution of U.S. policy toward Spain, and thus how a nation facing a global threat develops strategic relationships over time.

President Harry S. Truman harbored an abiding disdain for Spain and its government. During his presidency (1945–1953), the State Department and the Department of Defense lobbied Truman to form an alliance with Spain to leverage that nation’s geostrategic position, despite Francisco Franco’s authoritarian dictatorship. The eventual alliance between the two countries came only after years of argument for such a shift by nearly the entire U.S. diplomatic and military establishment. This delay increased the financial cost of the 1953 defense agreements with Spain, undermined U.S. planning for the defense of Europe, and caused dysfunction over foreign policy at the height of the Cold War.
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cover of Trust and Hedging in International Relations

Trust and Hedging in International Relations

Kendall W. Stiles

University of Michigan Press, 2018

Do states trust each other? What are the political and ethical implications of trust? Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, Trust and Hedging in International Relations adds to the emerging literature on trust in international relations by offering a systematic measure of state-to-state trust. Looking at how relationships between European microstates and their partners have evolved over the past few centuries, Stiles finds that rather than trusting, most microstates are careful to hedge in their relations by agreeing only to arrangements that provide them with opt-out clauses, heavy involvement in joint decision-making, and sunset provisions. In the process, Stiles assesses the role of rationality, social relations, identity politics, and other theories of trust to demonstrate that trust is neither essential for cooperation nor a guarantee of protection and safety. Finally, he explores the ethical implications of a foreign policy founded on trust—in particular whether heads of state have the right to enter into open-ended agreements that put their citizens at risk.
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cover of Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953

Tumultuous Years

The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953

Robert J. Donovan

University of Missouri Press, 1996

“In January of 1949 the aftershocks of the Second World War were still jarring large parts of the globe, although they had greatly diminished in the United States. In Asia, however, turbulence continued to rise as a result of the collapse of Japan, the tottering of the European empires after the war, and the combustion produced by nationalism mixed with communism. Because a segment of American opinion, generally represented in the more conservative wing of the Republican party, was very sensitive to events in Asia, the tremors in the Far East came as harbingers of disturbing political conflict in the United States.”
Robert J. Donovan’s Tumultuous Years presents a detailed account of Harry S. Truman’s presidency from 1949-1953.
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cover of Turbulence Across the Sea: Transatlantic Relations and Strategic Competition

Turbulence Across the Sea

Transatlantic Relations and Strategic Competition

Edited by Elie Baranets and Andrew Novo

University of Michigan Press, 2024

Great Power competition is back. On the two sides of the Atlantic, however, this concept often means different things. While the United States is focused on China, Europe is preoccupied with Russia. Yet shifting American priorities toward Asia requires reconceptualizing the future role of NATO. In Europe, this shift has led to serious thought about how to achieve strategic autonomy that will allow Europe to guarantee its own security regardless of strategic choices made in Washington. As Chinese strategy focuses on dividing European actors and making them more economically dependent on Beijing, these developments may undermine Washington’s influence in Europe while limiting potential European action against Chinese interests.

With a mix of research methodologies applied by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, Turbulence Across the Sea offers a comprehensive analysis of relations among European and North American actors in the context of strategic competition among the United States, Europe, Russia, and China. In doing so, it demonstrates that a reaffirmation of transatlantic cooperation is necessary to maintain security in the face of aggressive moves by both Russia and China. By analyzing attitudes from the perspective of both the various actors (Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union) and various sectors (intelligence cooperation, foreign direct investments, technology, and the defense industry), this book provides readers with a comprehensive perspective on the challenges and opportunities in the shifting landscape of security in the twenty-first century.
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cover of Two NATO Allies at the Threshold of War

Two NATO Allies at the Threshold of War

Parker T. Hart

Duke University Press, 1990

As ambassador to Turkey during the Cyprus crisis (1965–1968), Parker T. Hart provides an insider’s view of the management of that crisis in NATO and Greek-Turkish relations. Greece and most Greek Cypriots favored enosis (union with Greece), but Turkey and the Turk Cypriots were prepared to go to war to prevent such an annexation. A massacre of Turk Cypriot villagers in November 1967 focused the anger of Turkey, which was prepared to send troops to Cyprus to equalize the preponderance of forces led by General George Grivas. The determined mediation of special presidential envoy Cyrus R. Vance prevented the initiation of all-out hostilities. Vance engineered a withdrawal of mainland Greek forces in excess of existing treaty levels in exchange for a standdown of Turkish forces. The Vance mission diffused the crisis and salvaged the integrity of NATO, and a Greek-Turkish agreement to sponsor and encourage intercommunal negotiations followed.
Hart has relied on his own papers from the period, as well as on United Nations sources from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and on the papers of the other key participants in the Crisis, Ambassador to Greece Phillips Talbot, Ambassador to Cyprus Taylor G. Belcher, and Cyrus Vance, to provide a rare play-by-play analysis of the crisis and its resolution.
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