This essential introduction to postwar US foreign policy combines chronologic and thematic chapters to provide an historical account of US policy and to explore key questions about its design, control and effects.

When George C. Marshall became Secretary of State in January of 1947, he faced not only a staggering array of serious foreign policy questions but also a State Department rendered ineffective by neglect, maladministration, and low morale. Soon after his arrival Marshall asked George F. Kennan to head a new component in the department's structure--the Policy Planning Staff. Here Wilson Miscamble scrutinizes Kennan's subsequent influence over foreign policymaking during the crucial years from 1947 to 1950.

This book studies a significant event in US relations with Latin America, shedding light on the role of dependent states and their foreign policy agency in the process by which local concerns become intertwined with the dominant state’s foreign policy. Plan Colombia was a large-scale foreign aid programme through which the US intervened in the internal affairs of Colombia, by invitation. It proved to be one of the major successes of US foreign policy, and has been credited with stemming a potentially catastrophic security failure of the Colombian state. This book discusses the strategies and practices deployed by the Colombian government to influence US foreign policy decision making at the bureaucratic, legislative and executive levels, and is a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of small power agency. Giving a clearer insight into the decision making processes in both the US and Colombia, this book founds its argument on solid empirical analysis assembled from interviews of the major players in the events including: Andres Pastrana, President of Colombia; Thomas Pickering, US State Department; Arturo Valenzuela, Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the NSA; General Barry McCaffrey, the US ‘Drug Czar’; and Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Approaching the events in question from a bottom-up theoretical perspective that puts the emphasis on the facts of the case, this book will be of great interest to academics, students and policy makers in the field of foreign policy analysis, US foreign policy studies, and Latin American studies.

In nine detailed case studies based on interviews with participants and on recently released documents in the Carter presidential library, Robert Strong carefully examines how the thirty-ninth president of the United States addressed and accomplished the work of foreign policy during his term. Working in the World effectively argues for substantial reevaluation of the conventional wisdom about Carter’s weak foreign policy performance and questions how we should formulate our earliest appraisals of presidential success in the conduct of foreign affairs.

A third edition of this book is now available. Now in a fully updated edition, this knowledgeable and reader-friendly text gives a conceptual and historical overview of American foreign relations from the founding to the present. Providing students with a solid and readily understandable framework for evaluating American foreign policy decisions, Joyce P. Kaufman clearly explains key decisions and why they were made. Compact yet thorough, the book offers instructors a concise introduction that can be easily supplemented with other sources.

This “eye-opening analysis” explains how and why America’s culture wars and partisan divide have led to dysfunctional US policy abroad (The Atlantic). In this provocative book, Peter Gries challenges the view that partisan elites on Capitol Hill are out of touch with a moderate American public. Dissecting a new national survey, Gries shows how ideology powerfully divides Main Street over both domestic and foreign policy and reveals how and why, with the exception of attitudes toward Israel, liberals consistently feel warmer toward foreign countries and international organizations—and desire friendlier policies toward them—than conservatives do. The Politics of American Foreign Policy weaves together in-depth examinations of the psychological roots and foreign policy consequences of the liberal-conservative divide; the cultural, socio-racial, economic, and political dimensions of American ideology; and the moral values and foreign policy orientations that divide Democrats and Republicans. Within this context, the book explores why Americans disagree over US policy relating to Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and international organizations such as the UN.

This book shows how dominant narratives have shaped the national security policies of the United States.

Who speaks for America in world affairs? In this insightful new book, Tony Smith finds that, often, the answer is interest groups, including ethnic ones. This seems natural in a country defined by ethnic and cultural diversity and a democratic political system. And yet, should not the nation's foreign policy be based on more general interests? On American national interests? In exploring this question, Smith ranges over the history of ethnic group involvement in foreign affairs; he notes the openness of our political system to interest groups; and he investigates the relationship between multiculturalism and U.S. foreign policy. The book has three major propositions. First, ethnic groups play a larger role in the formulation of American foreign policy than is widely recognized. Second, the negative consequences of ethnic group involvement today outweigh the benefits this activism at times confers on America in world affairs. And third, the tensions of a pluralist democracy are particularly apparent in the making of foreign policy, where the self-interested demands of a host of domestic actors raise an enduring problem of democratic citizenship--the need to reconcile general and particular interests.

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America."--Otto von Bismarck America's response to the September 11 attacks spotlighted many of the country's longstanding goals on the world stage: to protect liberty at home, to secure America's economic interests, to spread democracy in totalitarian regimes and to vanquish the enemy utterly. One of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, Walter Russell Mead, argues that these diverse, conflicting impulses have in fact been the key to the U.S.'s success in the world. In a sweeping new synthesis, Mead uncovers four distinct historical patterns in foreign policy, each exemplified by a towering figure from our past. Wilsonians are moral missionaries, making the world safe for democracy by creating international watchdogs like the U.N. Hamiltonians likewise support international engagement, but their goal is to open foreign markets and expand the economy. Populist Jacksonians support a strong military, one that should be used rarely, but then with overwhelming force to bring the enemy to its knees. Jeffersonians, concerned primarily with liberty at home, are suspicious of both big military and large-scale international projects. A striking new vision of America's place in the world, Special Providence transcends stale debates about realists vs. idealists and hawks vs. doves to provide a revolutionary, nuanced, historically-grounded view of American foreign policy.