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Module 12

The Cold War (1970s to early 2000s)

  1. The Lingering Cold War
    1.  Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger played China and the Soviet Union against each other under the assumption that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” To defuse the tension between the Soviet Union and China, Nixon and Kissinger pursued a new approach to foreign policy, judging countries (including ones with Communist regimes) on the basis of their actions toward the world community and the United States rather than their political ideologies.
      1.  In an effort to reach détente with the other superpower, Nixon’s administration exploited three common areas of interest between the United States and the Soviet Union:
        1. arms control
        2. trade
        3. stability in Europe
      2. The tension between the United States and other Communist and Marxist governments, however, did not ease, and especially as Nixon continued to use a traditional style of American foreign policy with Chile, Vietnam, and the Middle East.
    2. Carter’s foreign policy, in light of deteriorating U.S.-Soviet relations by the late 1970s, was deemed weak at home and abroad.
      1. He abandoned his own human rights principles when dealing with South Korea, China, and the Philippines, which alienated his liberal supporters.
      2. He also signed the Panama Canal Treaty which would release American control by the century’s end. As a result, he received condemnation from those who believed the United States should retain rights to the vital waterway.
      3. He did score a coup in foreign policy when he presided over the peace accords between Israel and Egypt, but any gain was eclipsed by the Iranian hostage crisis. Carter’s inability to ensure a safe return for the American hostages doomed his bid for reelection. In a bitter twist of irony, Iran released the hostages the day Carter left office.
    3. Ronald Reagan capitalized on Carter’s seeming inability to handle the hostage crisis during the bid for election in 1980.
      1. Once in office, Reagan fulfilled his promise to enact a conservative agenda for US foreign policy, using (1) increases in military spending and (2) U.S.-sponsored incursions in Latin American countries in an effort to depose popularly elected leftists and install friendly right-wing dictators.
      2. Reagan’s ability to maintain popular support, despite his gaffes and his administration’s errors, and his landslide victory in the 1984 election contributed to the legendary affection which Americans on all sides attributed him.
      3. Reagan faced his greatest presidential challenge with the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan managed to survive the scandal, in part because of his affable personality but also because he presided over a relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union.
  2. End of the Cold War
    1. The “fall of communism” stemmed as much from pressures within the Soviet Union as it did from pressures exerted by the United States.
      1. Ronald Reagan’s amicable relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev (and vice versa) helped pave the way for further diplomatic relations.
      2. In the late 1980s, Eastern Europe witnessed popular uprisings whose participants demanded an end to state repression, official corruption, and economic bureaucracies that failed to deliver an acceptable standard of living.
      3. Americans cheered the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, a post–cold war world did not signal a post-nuclear world. Constructing foreign policy on nuclear weapons in the post–cold war era has proved to be one of the country’s greatest challenges in the past decade.
    2. Foreign policy under the administration of George Bush (Sr.).
      1. Completed the Cold War policies of Reagan, oversaw the dismantling of the Soviet bloc and the entry of capitalism and democracy into emerging Eastern European nations.
      2. Begin to move toward policing regional infractions to United Nation’s policies rather than global standoff with communism. In many ways, the new enemy became radical Islamic groups and insurgent communist and socialist remnants from the break up of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
      3. Operation Desert Storm is considered Bush’s greatest triumph. Not only did most Americans support the Bush administration’s efforts on behalf of Kuwait (against its aggressor, Iraq, under a totalitarian regime led by Saddam Hussein), but Bush interpreted U.S. support of the war effort and “quick military victory” to suggest that “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”
      4. Bush and his successors would slowly shift to dealing with tyrannical rulers/oppressive governments and America’s role as defender of freedom and democracy, albeit in conjunction with NATO and UN cooperation mostly.
    3. Clinton’s foreign-policy objectives focused on the imperatives of the post–cold war world
      1. What are the U.S. priorities in this environment and as effective “victor” of the Cold War? According to historian James K. Oliver, “The central strategic reality for the foreseeable future was understood to be the surfeit of what Joseph Nye has termed U.S. “hard” and “soft” power. No one could remotely challenge U.S. military and economic capacity and insofar as America’s “core concepts” were driving the technological, social, and cultural dimensions of globalization American values were deemed ascendant as well. Under these circumstances, U.S. foreign policy should not only be “engaged” but it should lead.” The “successor doctrine” to containment should be “a strategy of enlargement”–“enlargement of the world’s free community of market economies.”
      2. Clinton sought to act on those priorities but had to contend with limitations placed on him by Congress, American public opinion, and international realities.
        1. U.S. (or joint U.S.-NATO/U.S.-UN) initiatives in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, stretched American resources and public patience with warfare in the supposed aftermath of the Cold War.
        2. The US came under particular fire when American commitment to aiding refugees from Kosovo came to light. Many people protested America’s role, ironically recalling similar protests such as US opinion toward Jews escaping Nazi Europe (initially refused immigration admission and many ended up in concentration camps) or the public outcry against the influx of refugee Haitians into Florida in the mid-1990s (attempted to ban admittance on basis of illegal immigration and Haitians returned to totalitarian regime, mostly to be executed). Yet, in the end, the “right and moral” path was still determined to be protection of a foreign minority in the interests of peace and equality as well as maintaining American supremacy in democratic matters.
    4. George W. Bush’s first administration, faced with the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and an increasingly uncertain global environment, further defined America’s foreign policy in the new era.
      1. In the spring of 2002, Bush’s Director of Policy Planning Richard Haass observed that
        1. the United States “is–and will remain into the foreseeable future–the world’s preeminent power according to every metric–military, economic, political, or cultural. The United States will continue to affect the shape of international relations and their trajectory more than any other country.”
        2. Haass also said “this is an era defined by a number of realities, foremost among them American primacy, the low probability of great power conflict, and the spread of democracy and free market economics. But it is also a time of continuing regional threats, persisting widespread poverty and the exclusion of too many people from the benefits of globalization, and increasing transnational challenges.”
        3. It is also the current US contention that America has “unique responsibilities with respect to leadership in the new era” which cannot be abandoned or transferred without serious consequences for global stability.
    5. U.S efforts to shape globalization
      1. Although the debates surrounding globalization are not new, they have particular resonance with Americans in a post–cold war world. Most of the controversy has centered on
        relationships between the United States and developing nations on the periphery.
      2. Some of the concerns which have arisen in the face of globalization efforts
        1. Relative merits of attracting foreign investment at the expense of labor and environmental standards. For example, the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle focused on anti-global economic policies in which the scrutiny of American legal standards appeared to be withdrawn in the interests of commercialism.
        2. Globalization has transformed the American economy and society. The “internationalization” of American companies as well as the surge in immigration that globalization has engendered has opened the doors for a variety of abuses and the “outsourcing” of typically domestic jobs to overseas companies yet has also allowed the US to enter previously inaccessible markets and float the creation of new jobs, particularly high tech and service industry jobs, at home.
        3. Terrorism at home and abroad, the issue of how to deal with insurgency and radicalism and to what extent the US should play a part (as opposed to the global community).
        4. How to define American support for developing or struggling nations without tipping the scales in favor of tyrannical governments to whom US democratic principles are opposed.
        5. The struggle focuses mainly on how to balance commerce and economic opportunity, the bedrock of American capitalism, with the role of reformer and advocate to which the US also lays claim in domestic and foreign policy issues.

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