Foreign Policy of

United States
1

BY GABRIELA GRABOWSKA
What is foreign policy?

Foreign policy, general objectives that guide the activities and

relationships of one state in its interactions with other states. The
development of foreign policy is influenced by domestic considerations,
the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific
geopolitical designs. Leopold von Ranke emphasized the primacy of
geography and external threats in shaping foreign policy, but later
writers emphasized domestic factors. Diplomacy is the tool of foreign
policy, and war, alliances, and international trade may all be
manifestations of it.
American attitude to world afffairs
 Which factors had an influence on US foreign
policy?

1) history of settlement and immigration was a major influence on

the character of US foreign policy

2) foreign relations of other nations and their basic concerns -

the US protection of: economic success at home and abroad, access
to important natural resources, support for its ideological views etc.

3) the nation's geographical position - broad oceans that seperate the

Americans from other continents
 1) History of settlement - first
factor

History of settlement and immigration is one of the major influence on the

character of US foreign policy. European colonists and later immigrants have
usually had mixed feelings toward their homelands. They emigrated to escape
aspects of their home societies but simultaneously harbored deep
attachments to the old country. Consequently, immigration has produced both
isolationism and internationalism in American foreign policy, as Americans
expressed their wish to avoid or cultivate contacts with former homelands.
Exceptionalism - it is the belief that America's foreign affairs,
unlike those of other nations, are not self-interested but based
on a mission to offer the world a better form of society
characterized by the ideals of 'the American creed'
Political scientists sometimes use the term American
exceptionalism in several different ways

1) Unique historical trajectory

2) American superiority
Unique historical trajectory - is sometimes used to express the unique
historical trajectory of the United States as a country. Unlike the
states of Europe or Asia, the United States is a relatively young nation
called the first new nation by Seymour Martin Lipset with its own
unique ideology.

The American exceptonalism is sometimes used to capture this

sense. The Scottish political scientist Richard Rose captured this use
of the term when he wrote that:
 “America marches to a different drummer. Its
uniqueness is explained by any or all of a variety of
reasons: history, size, geography, political institutions,
and culture. Explanations of the growth of
government in Europe are not expected to fit American
experience, and vice versa.”
Richard Rose by saying that wanted to us to focus on American
distinctiveness or even American uniqueness.
The second term 'American superiority' suggests that the
American historical pattern made the United States not only
just different from other countries of the world, but superior to
them. This sense of American exeptionalism is closely
connected to a nationalist vision of the United States that
places it in a unique position to expand and spread its system
around the world.

This was the vision of American exceptionalism that operating

under a vision of Manifest Destiny spread westward in the 19th
century, occupying and annexing island belonging to the Native
Americans, and later purchasing Alaska, annexing Hawaii and
taking control of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines.
American Progress 'Manifest Destiny' by John Gast
 2) Basic concerns - second factor

In reality, the basic concerns that greatly influence the foreign relations of
other nations have also played major roles in the formulation of American
policy. Of necessity, the USA too has protected what it saw as its vital
interests: economic success at home and abroad, access to important
natural resources, support for its ideological views, respect for its military
power and assistance in times of crisis. In practice, the USA has often
seemed as concerned with realpolitik as other nations, in spite of both
sincere and rhetorical devotion to ideals
 3) The nation's geographical position - third factor

A third factor, the nation's geographical position, has also made its foreign
relations unique. If one looks at the globe as Americans do, with the USA in
the center, two ‘facts’ that have colored much of US foreign-policy history
seem clear. First, broad oceans separate the Americas from the other
continents. Second, most of the world's population and farmland, and all of
the other great powers, are located in Europe and Asia.
For over 300 years the relative physical isolation created by the oceans
encouraged those migrating to North America to believe they were leaving
behind whatever they disliked in their home societies. Here was the basis for
US isolationism, the belief that Americans could withdraw from involvement
with the rest of the world and focus on domestic (internal) affairs.
America being separated from other continents by large oceans
Paradoxically, geographical separation has also contributed to a tradition of
national insecurity. Looking outward and seeing the great powers of Europe and
Asia on all sides, Americans have periodically felt surrounded. That anxiety
resulted in a determination to create national security in the North American
quarter of the globe. The USA has sought to be a quarter-sphere hegemon (the
only great power on the continent), worked to drive European powers out, and
striven to control the land, sea, air and, finally, the outer-space approaches to
North America.
From neutrality to isolationism
1776-1830
During the years from 1776 to 1830, USA policy resembled that of the newly established
Third World nations in the twentieth century - the USA tried to steer clear of alliances
with great powers and instead strove to keep its neutrality in foreign affairs and to act
unilaterally.

Around 1800, the USA was a political and economic midget. It was hemmed in by British
colonies to the north, French Louisiana in the west and, in the south, by the rich and
powerful Spanish Empire. During the colonial period, every war between the European
powers had its American phase, and the new nation could not afford to have that pattern
continue if it was to stabilize its political institutions and economy. Thus the USA for many
years stayed aloof from the Napoleonic Wars and refused to become involved in the
French Revolution, even though the French had been an indispensable ally in the War of
Independence with Britain.
Farewell Address (1796) - a
statement that President George
Washington published in a
Philadelphia newspaper in 1796 to
announce that he would not run for
a third term and to give his views on
foreign policy and domestic policy.
 Key Points of the Address:

Importance of Unity
The 'Worst Enemy' of Government: Loyalty to Party Over Nation
Danger of Foreign Entanglements
1) After opening with an explanation of his choice not to seek a third
term, Washington’s farewell address urged Americans not to put their
regional and sectional interests above the interests of the nation as a
whole. “You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together,”
Washington declared. “The Independence and Liberty you possess are
the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers,
sufferings, and successes.”

Regions such as North, South, East and West should see their common
interests rather than their differences, he continued. “Your Union ought
to be considered as a main prop of your liberty and...the love of the
one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other.”
2) According to Washington, one of the chief dangers of letting regional
loyalties dominate loyalty to the nation as a whole was that it would lead
to factionalism, or the development of competing political parties. When
Americans voted according to party loyalty, rather than the common
interest of the nation, Washington feared it would foster a “spirit of
revenge,” and enable the rise of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled
men” who would “usurp for themselves the reins of government;
destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust
dominion.”
In fact, political parties had already begun to emerge by the time
Washington stepped aside. Federalists, who drew their support largely
from New England, advocated a strong national government and the fiscal
programs created by Hamilton, the nation’s first secretary of the treasury.
Republicans (later Democratic-Republicans) led by Southerners like Thomas
Jefferson and Madison, opposed Hamilton’s economic policies. They also
split with the Federalists in foreign policy, favoring a closer relationship with
France over Great Britain.
 3) Just as regionalism would lead to the formation of political parties,
Washington believed, partisanship would open the door to “foreign
influence and corruption.” A foreign policy based on neutrality was the
safest way to maintain national unity, and stability, in the United
States. Although Washington saw the need for the nation to involve
itself in foreign affairs in the case of war or other emergency, he
argued that it must “steer clear of permanent alliances with any
portion of the foreign world.”
When the USA strayed from these principles by entering the Napoleonic
Wars on the side of France in 1812, the results were disastrous. British
forces burned Washington DC, the USA won not a single important
victory, and the cost was enormous. After that object lesson, the core
ideas of the Address remained a pillar of American foreign policy until
after the Second World War.
From expansionism

to imperialism
from 1783 to 1914
Which issues America needed to handle?

the settlement of a frontier

struggle over the slavery: should it be extended into new
states or abolished?
Early in the nineteenth century, the USA roughly tripled its territory
through treaty and purchase. Agreements with Britain added the land
between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, the northern
section of Maine and parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas. America
bought Florida from Spain, and France offered the USA the land from the
Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains in the Louisiana Purchase. Most
Americans viewed these as legal and unaggressive ways to consolidate
US territory and minimize the dangers of European interference.
Florida from Spain
The land between the Appalachians and
Mississipi River
 Such enormous increases in the country's size inspired the growth of an
intense national pride. The farther west people and institutions were, the
more truly American they appeared in the popular mind. Some advocates
of expansion emphasized that only a nation spanning the continent could
effectively isolate itself from external threats.
By the 1840s, the idea of America's expansion to the Pacific was being popularized
as the nation's Manifest Destiny (its apparently inevitable, divinely determined fate).
Since it was obviously meant to be, that expansion was also right, argued the
expansionists.

Some of the actions that were undertaken by the America:

due to the threats of armed conflict with America, Britain gave up its claims to
the present Pacific north-west and parts of the mountain states in border
negotiations.
Mexico, despite refusing to sell the Texas Border to America, had to surrender it
in a war
 That is to say, America used hard power to impose its control on overseas
peoples, both formally (through colonization, annexation and military
occupation) and informally (through military threats, economic domination and
political subversion). In 1898 the USA declared war on Spain as an imperialist
power that was stifling Cuban freedom. Having won that ‘splendid little war’ (as
the American Secretary of State called it), the USA acquired economic control
over Cuba and the right to intervene in its affairs. It also acquired (as colonies)
Puerto Rico, Guam Island and the Philippine Islands, where Filipino nationalists
fought a bloody campaign for independence from the USA.
Isolationism and internationalism
From 1914 to 1945
For nearly three years the USA maintained the fiction that the First World War was a
European conflict that did not concern America. That was the neutral pose that
President Woodrow Wilson held because it reflected the traditional isolationist views
of the US electorate. But neutrality was impossible to preserve for three reasons.

1) Wilson, along with many other US politicians, felt strong sympathies for the Allies.

2) The majority of Americans shared his belief in loyalty to Anglo-American

traditions, despite vocal GermanAmerican and Irish-American minorities opposed
to an alliance with Britain.

3) Finally, the US economy depended on trade with the warring nations, who each
tried to prevent goods from reaching its enemy.
The Fourteen Points
Most Americans had taken sides but were still reluctant to commit their
fortunes and lives to intervention. Both Wilson and the public needed to
believe they were entering the war for high moral reasons rather than the
country's economic interests. Some two months before the USA declared
war, Wilson provided that rationale through a new vision of collective
security in his famous Fourteen Points, which appealed to the tradition of
the American mission to create a new world order.
 Fourteen Points, summarized:
1. Open diplomacy without secret treaties
2. Economic free trade on the seas during war and peace
3. Equal trade conditions
4. Decrease armaments among all nations
5. Adjust colonial claims
6. Evacuation of all Central Powers from Russia and allow it to define its own independence
7. Belgium to be evacuated and restored
8. Return of Alsace-Lorraine region and all French territories
9. Readjust Italian borders
10. Austria-Hungary to be provided an opportunity for self-determination
11. Redraw the borders of the Balkan region creating Roumania, Serbia and Montenegro
12. Creation of a Turkish state with guaranteed free trade in the Dardanelles
13. Creation of an independent Polish state
14. Creation of the League of Nations
The Fourteen Points constituted Wilson's public justification for participating
in the war, and were but one set of conditions meant to limit US
involvement. American troops remained separate from the Allied armies and
fought under American commanders. Wilson called the USA an ‘associate’
rather than an ally to emphasize that it was in an emergency coalition, not a
lasting alliance (and therefore remained true to the injunction against such
alliances in Washington's Farewell Address).

When it finally came, American participation in the war was decisive but very
limited.
Two American soldiers run towards a bunker
World World I Casualties
 The conditions on American aid to the Allied war effort, combined with
the Allies’ very different experience with a long and destructive conflict,
made the US position seem morally arrogant. Although America claimed
to be materially disinterested, its call for freedom of the seas and free
trade would benefit the USA most since its industrial plant was booming
and its fleet the least damaged. The Allies wanted revenge and to make
Germany pay for war damages. They rejected all the Fourteen Points but
the League.
The League of Nations (1920 – 1946) was the first intergovernmental organization
established “to promote international cooperation and to achieve international
peace and security”. It is often referred to as the “predecessor” of the United
Nations.

The US Senate failed to ratify the treaty Wilson brought home from the Paris peace
conference. Many senators rejected the idea of the League because they were
unwilling to bind the USA to membership in a permanent international alliance.

Although the League was formed but, without US participation, it never became an
effective international force.
During the rest of the 1920s US foreign policy centered on eliminating obstacles
to American trade. International peace and stability were essential largely so that,
once established, US trade would remain free of interference. Many Americans
also believed free trade fostered peace by making nations more open and
familiar with each other. However, the USA and European nations failed to agree
on a plan to revive European economies by cancelling or easing their war debts
to America, and in 1930 Congress passed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff,
which effectively closed the US market to most European goods.

In the same years, the country advocated peace through disarmament and
called for arms reductions and the destruction of some 2 million tons of navy
ships. It reaffirmed and extended the Open Door Policy. Finally, it initiated the
Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928.
Kellogg-Briand Pact, also called Pact of Paris, (August 27, 1928),
multilateral agreement attempting to eliminate war as an instrument of
national policy. It was the most grandiose of a series of peacekeeping
efforts after World War I.
In the 1930s, however, this limited internationalism was replaced by isolationism. As
the German war machine marched into land after land and the rest of Europe
rearmed, American voters made it clear that their last wish was to be dragged into
another Old-World war.

However, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941

accomplished overnight what Roosevelt could not in years of effort: it united the
American people in a fervent commitment to war. In a few days Congress had
declared war on all the axis powers and announced its support of the Allies. Almost
as quickly, Roosevelt constructed a vision of a new world order for the post-war
period. Determined to succeed where Wilson had failed, Roosevelt called the Allies
the ‘United Nations’ almost from the start. He also ensured that American troops
were integrated with those of Britain and France. Joint command and cooperation,
he had decided, would prevent complaints about American arrogance.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Roosevelt won Stalin's and Churchill's
support for the UN. On other important issues, the results of the conference
were much less clear. Roosevelt could not convince the other leaders to give up
the concept of spheres of influence in Europe. However, he thought they had
agreed to the establishment of democratic governments, under no other
nation's direct control, in eastern Europe. All three leaders agreed that post-war
Germany should not become a military power again quickly, but they could not
resolve their differences on how to prevent that from happening. They therefore
had to put off specific plans for dealing with post-war Germany.
The Cold War era
America vs Russia
The sole superpower in the post-cold
era
 The elimination of the Iron Curtain - effects

the elimination of the Iron Curtain and nuclear tension caused

jubilation and optimistic attempts to fashion a better future in
Europe and the USA
many former East Block nations exhibited strong support for US
foreign-policy views, partly perhaps in gratitude for America's long
record of opposing their Soviet oppressors; several of these
nations indicated a wish to become members of NATO and some
(most notably Poland)
 9/11 terrorists attacks

The September 11 attacks were a series of airline hijackings and

suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 terrorists associated with the
Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda. It was the deadliest terrorist attack
on U.S. soil; nearly 3,000 people were killed. The attacks involved the
hijacking of four planes, three of which were used to strike significant
U.S. sites. American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were
flown into the World Trade Center’s north and south towers,
respectively, and American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon. United
Airlines flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after
passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. The plane was
believed to be headed to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
 Iraq War

What was the cause of the Iraq War?

U.S. President George W. Bush argued that the vulnerability of the

United States following the September 11 attacks of 2001, combined
with Iraq’s alleged continued possession and manufacture of weapons
of mass destruction and its support for terrorist groups, including al-
Qaeda, justified the U.S.'s war with Iraq.
Which United States president started the Iraq
War?

U.S. President George W. Bush argued for launching a military attack on

Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Bush declared an end to diplomacy and issued
an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, giving the Iraqi president 48 hours to
leave Iraq. Saddam refused, and the U.S. attacked on March 20.
 When did the Iraq War ended?

The U.S. military formally declared the end of the Iraq War in a
ceremony in Baghdad on December 15, 2011, as U.S. troops prepared
to withdraw from the country.
 Trump Wall

The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "The Wall", is an expansion of the Mexico–United
States barrier that started during the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump and was a critical
part of Trump's campaign platform in the 2016 presidential election.[1] Throughout his
2016 presidential campaign, Trump called for the construction of a border wall. He said
that, if elected, he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". Then-Mexican
president Enrique Peña Nieto rejected Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall;
all construction in fact relied exclusively on U.S. funding.
 How much of Trump's Border Wall was built?

The Trump administration completed hundreds of miles of wall along the southern border
before President Joe Biden halted construction.

Just hours after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he signed a handful of
executive orders fulfilling campaign promises and signaling the priorities of his fledgling
administration.

Among them: an order to immediately halt construction on former President Donald Trump’s
signature border wall.
A pair of migrant families from Brazil seeking asylum walk through a gap
in the border wall to reach the United States after crossing from Mexico
to Yuma, Ariz., on June 10, 2021.
 Trump’s signature promise to build a barrier along the southwest border of the U.S.
propelled him to victory in 2016, and his administration during his term appropriated
some $15 billion for its construction – a big chunk of which was taken from the
Defense Department’s budget after Congress refused to meet the administration’s
funding demands, prompting a lengthy government shutdown.

The vast majority of the 458 miles were constructed in places where some kind of
barrier already existed, but most of the preexisting structures were far less imposing
than the new wall and included fencing and rudimentary technical barriers. The total
figure also includes what the agency calls “secondary border wall” or sections of wall
built behind preexisting barriers that ultimately remained in place.