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484 books match the query 'Foreign relations' and 13 start with u

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U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East

The Role of Lobbies and Special Interest Groups

Janice J. Terry

Pluto Press, 2005

Millions of dollars are spent every year by companies and special interest groups attempting to influence government policy. They work behind the scenes, lobbying politicians to represent their interests. From tobacco companies, to energy companies, from anti-abortion campaigners to civil rights campaigners, the list is vast. And nowhere is their influence more keenly felt than on the issue of the Middle East.

Israel is America's key ally in the Middle East, and helps maintain U.S. dominance in the region. This book shows how pro-Israeli lobbyists and domestic interest groups have been hugely successful in creating government and financial support for Israel. By contrast, Arab-American groups and Arab governments have had less success putting forward their agencies.

Janice J. Terry shows how special interest groups work, and why certain lobbying techniques are more effective than others. She sets this within the wider cultural context, showing how the U.S. media -- and the general public -- view the Middle East.

To explain how lobbies work, Terry draws on case studies including the Sinai accords and Camp David under Presidents Ford and Carter, the Conflict between Green and Turkish lobbies over Cyprus, and the major campaign against the Arab boycott.

Making use of primary sources, and unpublished material from various presidential libraries, this is a fascinating exposé of the role that lobby groups really play in determining U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. It will be of interest to students of American politics and Middle East studies.

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UNITED STATES EUROPEAN RIGHT

1945-1955

DEBORAH KISATSKY

The Ohio State University Press, 2005

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US-Singapore Relations, 1965-1975

Strategic Non-alignment in the Cold War

Daniel Wei Boon Chua

National University of Singapore Press, 2017

During the Vietnam War, the newly-independent Singapore struck the position of being non-aligned. It maintained an anti-communist stance while, at least initially, criticizing the United States’ intervention into Vietnam. Yet Singapore might not have achieved its post-colonial success so rapidly without the support of the United States. As the war in Vietnam raged on, Singapore became a critical refueling point, also providing ship and aircraft repair for the US military. Commercial and strategic support from the United States lifted Singapore out of the economic doom predicted for the city-state after secession from Malaysia. Without this strategic and economic assistance, Singapore’s history might have been different. By considering the importance of the role of the United States in Singapore’s nation-building, this book provides an important supplement to the well-trodden narrative that attributes Singapore’s success solely to good governance.

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Uncertain Perceptions

U.S. Cold War Crisis Decision Making

Robert B. McCalla

University of Michigan Press, 1992

In Uncertain Perceptions, Robert McCalla examines the role of misperceptions in decision making by U.S. officials during five major Cold War crises.To suggest that misperceptions have played an important role in U.S.-Soviet relations will surprise no one. Most people, including scholars and decision makers, will agree that the potential for misperception and miscommunication is high, and the dangers of the nuclear age simply compound the risk. What has been missing is a consideration of the role of different types of misperception in crisis decision making and the impacts of those different types of misperceptions on the dynamics of crises. Different types of misperceptions can occur during a crisis; and the type will influence the nature and duration of the crisis.McCalla shows that the crisis dynamic is sensitive to the sources of misperception and that the most important influence on misperceptions is the flexibility of a decision maker’s worldview. In contrast with previous studies, McCalla’s work provides evidence that decision makers are not necessarily firmly wedded to their views. He refines the concept of misperception by identifying two types: “situational misperception,” which stems from the ambiguities and uncertainties that can surround another state’s actions, and “dispositional misconception," which has to do with the attitudes and images that a particular decision maker holds. Crises rooted in situational misperceptions will tend toward resolution when more information is provided to the decision maker, while crises that originate from dispositional misperceptions will be less affected by additional information. With the end of the Cold War, historians and political scientists are reexamining the history of U.S.-Soviet relations away from the glare of Cold War politics and rhetoric, and in doing so advancing new ways of understanding past conflicts.Uncertain Perceptions offers students of American policy, both generalists and specialists, a new lens for understanding American decision making during U.S.-Soviet crises and the role that perceptions and misperceptions played in those decisions.

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Understanding and Teaching the Cold War

Edited by Matthew Masur

University of Wisconsin Press, 2016

For nearly a half century, from 1945 to 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union maneuvered to achieve global hegemony. Each forged political alliances, doled out foreign aid, mounted cultural campaigns, and launched covert operations. The Cold War also deeply affected the domestic politics, cultures, and economic policies of the two superpowers, their client states, and other nations throughout the world.
Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important history meaningful to students.
The volume opens with Matthew Masur’s overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as longtime scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda, fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement the teaching ideas suggested in this book.

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Unholy Wars

Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism

John Cooley

Pluto Press, 2002

This book examines the events of September 11th 2001, Osama bin Laden's role and the complex working of the Al Qa'ida terror network. This is the classic book on the history of the USA's involvement with Afghanistan that explains the devastating consequences of the alliance between the US government and radical Islam. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the current international crisis.

Cooley marshals a wealth of evidence - from the assassination of Sadat, the destabilisation of Algeria and Chechnya and the emergence of the Taliban, to the bombings of the World Trade Center and the US embassies in Africa. He examines the crucial role of Pakistan’s military intelligence organisation; uncovers China’s involvement and its aftermath; the extent of Saudi financial support; the role of 'America's most wanted man' Osama bin Laden; the BCCI connection; the CIA's cynical promotion of drug traffic in the Golden Crescent; the events in Pakistan since the military coup of October 1999; and, finally, the events of September 11th 2001 and their continuing impact on world affairs.

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Union Jack

JFK's Special Relationship with Great Britain

Christopher Sandford

University Press of New England, 2017

John F. Kennedy carried on a lifelong love affair with England and the English. From his speaking style to his tastes in art, architecture, theater, music, and clothes, his personality reflected his deep affinity for a certain kind of idealized Englishness. In Union Jack, noted biographer Christopher Sandford tracks Kennedy’s exploits in Great Britain between 1935 and 1963, and looks in-depth at the unique way Britain shaped JFK throughout his adult life and how JFK charmed British society. This mutual affinity took place against a backdrop of some of the twentieth century’s most profound events: The Great Depression, Britain’s appeasement of Hitler, the Second World War, the reconstruction of Western Europe, the development and rapid proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the ideological schism between East and West. Based on extensive archival work as well as firsthand accounts from former British acquaintances, including old girlfriends, Union Jack charts two paths in the life of JFK. The first is his deliberate, long-term struggle to escape the shadow of his father, Joseph Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. The second is the emergence of a peculiarly American personality whose consistently pro-British, rallying rhetoric was rivaled only by Winston Churchill. By explaining JFK’s special relationship with Great Britain, Union Jack offers a unique and enduring portrait of another side of this historic figure in the centennial year of his birth.

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United States-Latin American Relations, 1800-1850

The Formative Generations

T. Ray Shurbutt

University of Alabama Press, 1991

Relations between the United States and the countries of Latin America have been characterized by misunderstandings based on language and culture, a lack of sustained commitment on the part of the United States, and, in some cases, incompetent diplomats. During the era when many of the Latin American countries discarded the yoke of colonial status, the young United States attempted to define itself culturally, economically, constitutionally, geographically, and diplomatically. As Latin American emerged from the crucible of revolution and international power politics, it was affected by—and in varying degrees affected—the United States and its desired position of leadership in the Western Hemisphere.

To make sense of these relationships, this volume concentrates on Central America, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Describing the particular paths taken by each of the formation of relations with the United States, Shurbutt and his colleagues focus on the American diplomatic community and its effectiveness in tense political situations.

Contributors in addition to the editor include Lawrence A. Clayton, Paul B. Goodwin, Eugene R. Huck, Phil Brian Johnson, Edward H. Moseley, Wesley P. Newton, Charles S. Stansifer, and Robert Kim Stevens.

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United States–Latin American Relations, 1850–1903

Establishing a Relationship

Edited by Thomas M. Leonard

University of Alabama Press, 1999

United States–Latin American Relations, 1850–1903 is a collection of essays that provide an in-depth analysis of the developing relationship between the Americas during the critical period from the Mexican War to the Panama Canal treaty of 1903.

During the second half of the 19th century several forces in the United States, Latin America, and Europe converged to set the stage for the establishment of a more permanent relationship between the United States and Latin America. The key factors--security, economics, and modernization--created both commonalities and conflicts between and among regions. In this volume, scholars examine not only the domestic but also the geopolitical forces that encouraged and guided development of diplomatic relations in this rapidly changing period.

As the contributors note, by the end of the century, economic interests dominated the relationship that eventually developed. This period saw the building of a string of U.S. naval bases in Latin America and the Caribbean, the rapid industrialization of the United States and the development of a substantial export market, the entrance of many U.S. entrepreneurs into Latin American countries, and the first two inter-American conferences. By the century's end, the United States appeared as the dominant partner in the relationship, a perception that earned it the "imperialist" label.

This volume untangles this complex relationship by examining U.S. relations with Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Central America, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay from the perspective of both the United States and the individual Latin American countries.

A companion volume to United States-Latin American Relations, 1800-1850: The Formative Generations, edited by T. Ray Shurbutt, this book establishes a historical perspective crucial to understanding contemporary diplomatic relations.

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Unmaking Botany

Science and Vernacular Knowledge in the Colonial Philippines

Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez

Duke University Press, 2025

In Anglo-European botany, it is customary to think of the vernacular as that which is not a Latin or Latinized scientific plant name. In Unmaking Botany, Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez traces a history of botany in the Philippines during the last decades of Spanish rule and the first decades of US colonization. Through this history, she redefines the vernacular, expanding it to include embodied, cosmological, artistic, and varied taxonomic practices. From the culinary textures of rice and the lyrics crooned to honor a flower to the touch of a skirt woven from banana fiber, she illuminates how vernaculars of plant knowing in the Philippines exposed the philosophical and practical limits of botany. Such vernaculars remained as sovereign forms of knowledge production. Yet, at the same time, they fueled botany’s dominance over other ways of knowing plants. Revealing this tension allows Gutierrez to theorize “sovereign vernaculars,” or insight into plants that made and unmade the science, which serves as a methodological provocation to examine the interplay of different knowledge systems and to study the history of science from multiple vantage points.

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Unsafe Haven

The United States, the IRA and Political Prisoners

Karen McElrath

Pluto Press, 2000

For almost two hundred years the United States has been a safe haven for Irish political prisoners seeking refuge. More recently however the US government has sought deportation, extradition and prosecution to exclude Irish republicans from the country. In the first book to focus on the relationship between these tools of exclusion and US foreign policy, Karen McElrath examines why this change has come about and the extent to which the granting of political asylum in the US is influenced by relations with Britain and other countries.

Karen McElrath questions US government attempts to portray an impartial role in the Irish conflict, arguing that historical and contemporary evidence reveals otherwise. She shows that, far from being a neutral process, the success of bids for political asylum often depends on the relationship between the US and the government of the applicant’s country of origin. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Irish Republicans who have faced deportation or extradition from the United States, or who have been prosecuted in the US for politically-motivated offences, McElrath explores the links between deportation and extradition outcomes and foreign policy issues. The tools of exclusion are defined in their historical context, and the history of US extradition law is described, with particular focus on the treaties with Britain. McElrath also examines the offences for which Irish and Irish-American Republicans have been charged, discusses the various levels of support for Irish political prisoners in the US, and summarises the findings by international human rights organisations.

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Untying the Afghan Knot

Negotiating Soviet Withdrawal

Riaz M. Khan

Duke University Press, 1991

Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Afghanistan crisis began almost immediately after the Soviet Union’s military intervention in that country in December 1979. Untying the Afghan Knot offers the first detailed account of the diplomatic process set in motion by that intervention and culminating in the April 1988 Geneva Accords—a milestone in multilateralism and United Nations (UN) peacemaking.
Riaz M. Khan, a senior Pakistani diplomat, participated actively in all meetings on Afghanistan in the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and in all of the Geneva negotiating rounds (1882–1988). Drawing upon his personal experience, official documents, scholarly literature, and press accounts, he provides a unique insider’s view of these precedent-setting negotiations, which were often shrouded in secrecy and misperceptions.
Khan examines the interests, positions, and behind-the-scenes maneuverings of the major players—Afghan governments and resistance groups, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, the United States, and UN mediators—and assesses the impact of military and political developments inside Afghanistan and elsewhere, including the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev. Khan’s authoritative account of these critical diplomatic initiatives sheds important light on the internal dynamics of the multilateral Afghanistan negotiations.

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Uprising in East Germany, 1953

The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval behind the Iron Curtain

The National Security Archive Ostermann

Central European University Press, 2001

This volume is the second in the series Cold War Documentary Readers, a project of the US National Security Archive and the Cold War International History Project.

The volume is the first documented account of this early Cold War crisis from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Based on the recent unprecedented access to the once-closed archives of several member states of the Warsaw Pact, this collection of primary-source documents presents one of the most notorious events of post-war European history in a highly readable format.

Previously unreleased Kremlin records, once highly classified American documents, materials from the Soviet Foreign Ministry, and transcripts of internal East German Communist Party Politburo meetings in the days leading to the uprising in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are among the highlights of this sensational documentary.

In this volume, as in the previous one in the series, each part is preceded by a detailed introductory essay to provide the necessary historical and political context. The individual documents are introduced by short headnotes summarizing the contents and orienting the reader. A chronology, glossary and bibliography offer further background information.

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