UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY
The Cold War and Post-Cold War
Years: 1945 to today
First... Id like to Thank my menotor for
his help
Distinguished Prof. Dr Harry Targ
To Quote Dickens...
• It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the
epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct
to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period
was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities
insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative
degree of comparison only.
– The opening paragraph of the novel. The two cities referred to were London
and Paris during the turmoil of the French Revolution. For the oppressed
citizens of 18th-century France, the revolution’s proclamation of the rights of
man was indeed a “spring of hope.” But for those of the ancien régime, or the
outgoing political system, it was a “winter of despair,” leading to death and
destruction
Where We Are Today
Why the Worst of Times
• -Iraq War: predicted $ 1-$3Trillion price tag
• -Afghanistan War
• -Israeli violence against the Palestinian people
Where We Are Today 2
• -Hostility with Iran, North Korea, Russia
• -Rising mobilization economically and
politically of countries of the Global South
against the United States
• -Declining legitimacy of the United States as a
world power
• -Depression level domestic (and global
economic crisis)
Where We Are Today 3
• Why the Best of Times
• -New Administration representing a substantially (but not
radically) different foreign policy vision and promised practice
• -President Obama promises to use diplomacy as a tool to
achieve US goals (not just military)
• -President Obama has promised to meet with (through
diplomatic channels) Iran, Cuba, Israel and representatives of
the Palestinian peoples
• -Declared opposition to the use of torture
• -elected by a coalition of peace activists who have demanded
a much more multilateral, diplomatic approach to
international relations
The United States Role in the International
System
• The U.S. as a Rising Power: 1890s to 1945
• The U.S. as the Hegemonic Power: 1945 to 1968
• Challenges to U.S. Power and Decline in Relative Power: 1968-1979
• Drive to Recreate U.S. Global Hegemony, Cold War II 1979 to 1991
• The U.S. as “the Last Remaining Superpower” in the Post Cold War Era:
1991 to 2001
• The U.S. in a Post-9/11 International system: 2001 on
Hegemony?
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Hegemony was a term previously used by Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin to
denote the political leadership of the working-class in a democratic revolution.
Gramsci greatly expanded this concept, developing an acute analysis of how the
ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – establishes and maintains its control
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Gramsci stated that bourgeois cultural values were tied to folklore, popular culture
and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at
these. He was also impressed by the influence Roman Catholicism had and the
care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the
religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a
marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance
humanism and the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses.
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For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual
needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own
experience
While Europe was in debt and in
ruins...
• At the conclusion of World War II, America
was on a high. In all the world only the United
States had a healthy economy, an intact
physical plant capable of mass production of
goods, and excess capital.
Understanding the Cold War
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Who is Responsible for the Cold War?
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Why Did the Cold War Occur?
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Explanations:
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---Traditionalists: Soviet Union because of ideology; or Soviet Union because of
pursuit of raw power
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---Realists: Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. because of misperceptions; or
Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. because each sought more power
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---Revisionists: United States because of its pursuit of investments, trade, cheap
labor, resources; ie. the needs of capitalism
It Matters Because
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Whether the past helps us to understand the present is an important question
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Whether U.S. foreign policy is motivated by virtue, power, or material interest needs to be
determined
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Whether U.S. policy is determined by security needs or building an empire needs to be
determined
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Whether concern about “terrorism” is vital to U.S. policy or the new enemy replacing the
demonic force of “communism;” Does the U.S. need demonic enemies to build foreign
policy consensus
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Whether the American people have been lied to in the past and present by their leaders is
a critical question
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Whether U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was/is wise and justified needs to be
assessed
Realism… what is it in IR theory
• Power: the ability to influence others
• Irrelevance of morality and ethics and law
– Mearsheimer, Walt, Waltz, Morgantheau, Carr,
Kissenger
• Irrelevance of domestic political systems
• Why is power the only thing that matters?
– Human nature
– Anarchic world: no rules
Realism II
• All nations are self-reliant
• To preserve peace use Balance of Power
– US vs. USSR in Cold War
– US—China—Japan in East Asia
• Unipolarity cannot last
– Nations will balance against US power
The Cold War Balance of Power
1945-1990
Israel
Ethiopia
Taiwan
S. Korea
S. Viet Nam
W. Berlin
W. Germany
Syria/Egypt
Somalia
China
N. Korea
N. Viet Nam
E. Berlin
E. Germany
Britain/France/Japan
US
Poland/Czech
USSR
Unipolar World
EU
Japan
Russia
China
India
US
Constructivism, as an approach to
International Relations
• Nation-states are not all alike
• Political culture shapes foreign policy
– Wendt, Ruggie, Ann Marie Clark, Finnemore,
Sikkink
• Form of government shapes foreign policy
• History shapes foreign policy
• Domestic political trends and debates shape
foreign policy
Constructivism II
• States have identity
• State identity influences the way states
interact with each other
• Examples:
– China sensitivity to any policies of other states
that threaten its unity and sovereignty
– US desire to transform the world
Competing Interpretations of the Cold War
• The Cold War- “A situation of intense hostilities between
two or more nations that would have led to violence except
for “extenuating” circumstances (i.e. the existence of nuclear
weapons)
• Cold War played out via
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Confrontational diplomacy
Threats and counter-threats
An arms race
Wars, usually on the periphery of territory of two super
powers; in the Global South
The Bipolar World 1945 to 1989
• Two Superpowers, the United States and the former
Soviet Union
• Each the head of an alliance system
• United States and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (including Great Britain, France, West
Germany, Italy, Canada and others)
• The Soviet Union in alliance with East Germany,
Poland, Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia,
Rumania, and Bulgaria
Competing Interpretations of the Cold War
• Foreign Policies can be characterized as consolidationist (or defensive),
expansionist (or opportunistic), or destructionist (out to destroy its
enemies)
• Soviet Union
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United States
Destructionist Consolidationist
Expansionist
Consolidationist
Consolidationist Consolidationist
Expansionist
Expansionist
Consolidationist Expansionist
Consolidationist Destructionist
• Collapsed categories: Traditionalists, Realists, Revisionists
Economic Foundations of the Cold War 1
*The global economy in 1945
-former Soviet Union devastated-27 million died in
World War II
-Western Europe destroyed-societies rent asunder
-US economy grows dramatically from the
Depression era to post-World War II period
~1945 US has ¾ of world’s invested capital
~1945 US has 2/3 of world’s industrial
capacity
~US trade by 1947 four times 1938
Economic Foundations of the Cold War 2
• *US most influential in establishing the post-war
economic order:
~ the Bretton Woods institutions: the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank
~the trading system: The General Agreements on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT)-became the World Trade Organization in
1995
~the US established the first large foreign assistance
program, the Marshall Plan to aid non-Communist Europe
for humanitarian AND political reasons (to solve the socalled “dollar gap”)
Economic Foundations of the Cold War 3
*Rise to prominence of Multinational
Corporations (MNCs) and International
Financial Institutions (banks and investment
houses)
~by 2000, among the hundred largest
economic institutions in the world, 50
are MNCs; 50 are countries
20th Century Background to the Cold War:1
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World War I
Great Britain declining power: US rising power
The Russian Revolution
Western Powers and Japan send troops to
Russia to overthrow new regime
• Rise of fascism in Europe, Japan
• Japan invades China: 1931, 1937
20th Century Background to the Cold War:
2
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Munich Agreement: “Peace in Our Time”
German/Soviet Pact 8/39
German invasion of Poland
Germany invades the Soviet Union
US launches oil embargo against Japan, summer 1941
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941-US
declares war
• US, Great Britain, Soviet Union form an “unnatural alliance” to
win World War 2
• Last collaborative conference of “big three” before the war
ends; Yalta Conference, February, 1945
• Cold War hostilities resume: Spring, 1945
Foundations of the Cold War 1945-1946;I
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Last Wartime Cooperation: Yalta Conference-February, 1945
Tensions over Poland April-June, 1945
Post-War Potsdam Conference: July, 1945
Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Harry Truman, January, 1946: “I’m tired of babying the Soviets
George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”
Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech
Post war strikes over wages, price controls, rights of workersspring, 1946
Foundations of the Cold War: 1946-1948, 2
• Two International Crises: Iran and Greek Civil War
• Truman Speech on International Economics: Baylor University, March 6,
1947 supports “free trade”; “foreign policy and economics “indivisible”
• Truman Doctrine Speech, March 13, 1947 on the “struggle against
international communism”
• George Kennan’s Mr. X article on “containment”
• Marshall Plan proposed
• Taft-Hartley anti-labor legislation passed congress
Memorandum by the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan)
to the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State (Lovett)
[PPS23]
TOP SECRET
[WASHINGTON,] February 24, 1948.
When Mr. Acheson first spoke to me about the Planning Staff, he said that he thought its most important
function would be to try to trace the lines of development of our foreign policy as they emerged from our
actions in the past, and to project them into the future, so that we could see where we were going.
During the first months of the operation of the Staff, I hesitated to undertake any such effort, because I did
not feel that any of us had a broad enough view of the problems involved to lend real value to our
estimate.
I have now made an effort toward a general view of the main problems of our foreign policy, and I enclose
it as a Staff paper. It is far from comprehensive and doubtless contains many defects; but it is a first step
toward the unified concept of foreign policy which I hope this Staff can someday help to evolve.
The paper is submitted merely for information, and does not call for approval. I made no effort to clear it
around the Department, since this would have changed its whole character. For this reason, I feel that if
any of the views expressed should be made the basis for action in the Department, the views of the offices
concerned should first be consulted.
This document should properly have included a chapter on Latin America. I have not included such a
chapter because I am not familiar with the problems of the area, and the Staff has not yet studied them.
Butler, who is taking over for me in my absence, has had long experience with these problems and I hope
that while I am away he and the Staff will be able to work up some recommendations for basic policy
objectives with regard to the Latin American countries.
GEORGE F. KENNAN
Noam Chomsky Response in 2013
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PPS 23 was one of a series of policy statements produced under Kennan's direction by his
Policy Planning Staff. The general idea was that the industrial societies should be
reconstructed, but within the framework of world order that the US would administer. Other
parts of the world were assigned particular "functions" within this system.
Thus Africa was to be "exploited" (Kennan's phrase, in PPS 23) for the reconstruction of
Europe,
Southeast Asia would "fulfill its major function as a source of raw materials for Japan and
Western Europe", etc.
Of course the industrial world had to be reconstructed. The primary reason was the "dollar
gap." The US had a huge manufacturing surplus, and the only countries that could serve as
markets and targets for investment were the industrial societies -- that's aside from the
obvious geostrategic concerns about world domination.
Triangular trade relations were therefore established linking the US, Europe, Japan, and their
former colonies -- for Japan, as Kennan put it, the US must provide it with "an empire toward
the South" -- in other words, its "New Order in Asia," but now under US control. That was
the motivating factor for the Indochina wars, from 1950, after the "loss of China".
The Marshall Plan and American
Capitalism
• In Europe, the Marshall plan was a bonanza
for American capitalists.
– According to Chomsky, “The Marshall Plan "set the stage for large
amounts of private U.S. direct investment in Europe," Reagan's
Commerce Department observed in 1984, laying the groundwork for
the Transnational Corporations (TNCs) that increasingly dominate the
world economy. TNCs were "the economic expression" of the
"political framework" established by postwar planners, Business Week
observed in 1975, lamenting the apparent decline of the golden age of
state intervention in which "American business prospered and
expanded on overseas orders,...fueled initially by the dollars of the
Marshall Plan" and protected from "negative developments" by "the
umbrella of American power.”
Foundations of the Cold War: 1948-1950, 3
• Czechoslovakian Communists take power:
Congress passes Marshall Plan legislation
• Berlin Blockade and Airlift: June, 1948-49
• Harry Truman wins reelection: anti-Cold War
3rd party candidate soundly defeated
• NATO formed 1949
• Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb,
August, 1949
Foundations of the Cold War:
1949-50, 4
• Chinese Communists victorious in long civil warOctober, 1949
• Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson draft and distribute
National Security Council # 68 (NSC 68) calling for
dramatic increase in military spending-military
spending, they say should be number one priority
• Senator Joseph McCarthy in Lincoln Day speech,
February, 1950 claims 205 “Communists” in the State
Department
• Korean War starts-June 25, 1950
The Cold War in Asia;1
• The Cold War started in Europe
• Democrats more “Europe-oriented”;
Republicans more “Asia-Firsters”
• Three States critical to the rise in the Cold War
in Asia
– China
– Japan
– Korea
The Cold War in Asia: 2
• China
– Controlled by European powers 1890s-1920s
– Rise of Chinese nationalism (KMT); Chiang KaiShek (Jiang Jieshe) its leader
– Emergence of Chinese Communist Party led by
Mao Zedong in the 1920s
– After brief merger of KMT, CP a split in 1927; KMT
try to physically exterminate the Communists
The Cold War in Asia:3
– Chinese civil war begins
– Temporary truces between KMT and Communists in late
1930s after Japanese attack and during World War ll
– KMT represents the wealthy; CP the peasants
– During World War ll US envoys first condemn Chiang than
praise him; “China hands” critical
– After World War ll, civil war resumes
– China “falls” to Communism in October, 1949
– KMT flees to Formosan Islands, create Taiwan regime
– Senator Joseph McCarthy( 1950) accuses Truman of letting
China “fall” to Communism
The Cold War in Asia:4
• Japan
– General Douglas MacArthur occupying dictator of
post-war Japan
– Japanese economy, polity, culture remade
– After Chinese revolution, Japan seen by U.S. as
capitalist bastion in Asia
– Soviet Union and China fear any rebuilding and
remilitarization of Japan
– Kennan warns of threats in Asia if U.S. continues
to support Japanese reconstruction
The Cold War in Asia: 5
• Korea-Colony of Japan 1910-1945
– Split at 38th parallel “temporarily
– U.S. resists autonomous movements in South;
selects anti-Communist wealthy politician to rule
South Korea (Sygman Rhee)
– Soviets establish Communist government in the
North led by Kim-Il-Sung
– Soviets, then U.S. withdraw troops, 1948,1949
The Cold War in Asia:6
– Sygman Rhee threatens to “go North” to “liberate” the
Communist north: Kim-Il-Sung makes similar threats to go
South
– Secretary of State Dean Acheson (January 1950) says
Korean Peninsula not part of U.S. security zone
– Sygman Rhee looses a parliamentary election in May after
visit from Republican leader John Foster Dulles. They meet
with General MacArthur in Toyko
– Shooting across the 38th parallel both ways continue
The Cold War in Asia:7
• The Korean War:
– North Korean troops invade South, June 25, 1950
– UN Security Council condemns breach of peace;
General Assembly creates a UN force to defeat
invaders below 38th parallel
– General MacArthur, head of UN force, attacks
North Korean troops in the South and by
September, 1950 North Koreans defeated in the
South
The Cold War in Asia 8
– Truman decides to invade North Korea
– Chinese enter the war as UN troops approach Yalu River
bordering China
– U.S./South Korean/ UN forces battle Chinese and North
Korean forces to stalemate from the winter 1951 to
armistice in June, 1953
– McArthur fired by Truman in spring, 1951 after he called
for attacking China and using atomic weapons
– Truman chooses “limited war” strategy to avoid direct
U.S./Soviet confrontation
The Cold War in Asia: 9
• Republicans criticize “limited war” strategy;
Eisenhower elected president saying “I will go to
Korea.”
• Criticisms from revisionists
• Impacts of war on long-term U.S foreign policy
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U.S. economy
U.S. defense spending and NSC 68
making U.S. Cold War policy permanent
Korean War institutionalizes, militarizes, globalizes Cold
War
– The Korean people