Foreign Policy and the American Character
About: This article is published in Foreign Affairs.The article was published on 1983-09-01. It has received 28 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Foreign relations & Foreign policy.
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01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: The authors examines South Africa's foreign relations, viewed from a South African perspective, with the black African countries beyond southern Africa from 1961 to 1994, and suggests that the unequal status between South Africa and the other African states constitutes an inherent factor in the relationship between them.
Abstract: This thesis examines South Africa' s foreign relations, viewed from a South African perspective, with the black African countries beyond southern Africa from 1961 to 1994. These relations were determined by the conflict between Pretoria's apartheid ideology on the one hand, and African continental rejection of South Africa's race discrimination policies and its exclusion from the community of African states on the other. The documentary material used primarily stems from the Department of Foreign Affairs archive in Pretoria, supplemented by research conducted in other archives. Furthermore, we conducted interviews and correspondence, and consulted the relevant primary and secondary literature. Given the main source of information, we chose to make this work a case study in Diplomatic History. In consequence, and constituting the core of the study, Chapters 3 to 6 explore the interaction between South Africa and the black African states in a chronological order. At the same time, we draw on the analytical concepts from the academic disciplines of Political Science and its derivative, International Relations, to comprehend developments more fully. We discuss the significance of the approaches from these two disciplines in both the Introduction and Chapter 2. In particular, we emphasise that this study is about Pretoria' s foreign policy, involving state and non-state actors, and we suggest that the unequal status between South Africa and the other African states constitutes an inherent factor in the relationship between them. The Conclusion examines the role of the state and non-state actors in determining Pretoria's foreign relations and the relevance of the structural imbalance between South Africa and the black African states in this context.
55 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the United States is primarily defined by a particular liberal philosophy and concept of modernity, and that the projection of "democracy" abroad is not necessarily a "natural" or universal evolution of human development.
Abstract: Without the overriding concern of Soviet domination, Americans are engaging in an introspective re-evaluation of their national interests, values, and priorities. Despite the heterogeneity of all the participants, including the key opinion-makers, a near-consensus has emerged that the United States should be pushing and supporting an external process that has come to be known as ‘democratisation’. This policy stems from widespread perceptions about the special nature of America's identity and role in the world. The thesis presented here is that the United States is primarily defined by a particular liberal philosophy and concept of modernity, and that the projection of ‘democracy’ abroad is not necessarily a ‘natural’ or universal evolution of human development. Africa's increasing marginalisation has allowed certain groups committed to spreading ‘American values’ an unprecedented ability to shape policy and turn the continent into a liberal socio-political experiment.
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define new measures of industry-average forward and backward integration, and incorporate them into an empirical stucture-conduct-performance model, which suggests that integration is encouraged where there are relatively few firms in an industry and if sales are increasing.
Abstract: This paper sets out to define new measures of industry-average forward and backward integration, and incorporate them into an empirical stucture–conduct–performance model. Results suggest that integration is encouraged where there are relatively few firms in an industry and if sales are increasing. Forward integration occurs in reaction to large outgoing distribution margins. Backward integration acts to increase concentration, at least in some parts of the manufacturing sector. Integratin has a complex and interactive effect on profitability, serving sometimes to raise profitability and sometimes to lower it.
33 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the political movements within Israel interpreted and reacted differently to the regional and global developments of the 1980s and early 1990s, and that the shifts in Israeli foreign policy in the nineteen nineties were the result of the confrontation between these contrasting worldviews.
Abstract: Why was Israeli policy toward the peace process in the 1990s conflicted, inconsistent and even erratic? This study suggests that in order to understand Israeli foreign policy, we must analyze the country’s domestic political movements. The dissertation takes a theoretically informed approach, which seeks to ‘bring back’ ideology to cultural frameworks of foreign policy analysis, to examine the Israeli case. The study argues that the political movements within Israel interpreted and reacted differently to the regional and global developments of the 1980s and early 1990s. These various perspectives were due to the fact that the ideologies of these movements were constructed in relation and opposition to each other, and as a result they differed on what it meant to be “Israeli,” as well as what they considered the “national interest.” Both the rise and the fall of the peace process should be seen as part of a larger ideological struggle between the Labor movement on the one hand and the religious and revisionist Zionist movements on the other, each of which sought to redefine Zionism and Israel in its own image and according to its own ideology. Israel’s drive to peace in the early nineteen nineties was the result of the interaction between a new liberal Zionist ideology of the Labor movement and regional and global developments. In contrast the religious Zionist movement saw the peace process as part of the “Hellenization” of Israeli state and society and the abortion of the “divine redemptive process.” The revisionists also opposed the peace process based on the movement’s ideology that portrayed Israel as an isolated and vulnerable nation, which could only rely on military power, rather than political agreements, against an “anti-Semitic” and hostile gentile world. The shifts in Israeli foreign policy in the nineteen nineties were thus the result of the confrontation between these contrasting worldviews.
32 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The authors argue that American foreign policy in its critical founding years involved an active participation in the European balance of power, and that concerns with neutrality and avoidance of alliances which are interchangeably quoted when discussing isolationism, are exposed as nuanced terms that had specific meanings.
Abstract: It is the central argument of this thesis that American foreign policy in its critical founding years involved an active participation in the European balance of power. A framework is presented of American foreign engagement in this period which rejects existing notions of the newly independent nation as diplomatically isolationist from the start. The thesis also rejects two generally accepted origins of isolation, an interpretation of President’s Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address as a warning against entangling alliances, and of an American neutrality as, what John Adams referred to as a perfect impartiality. Instead, concerns with neutrality and avoidance of alliances which are interchangeably quoted when discussing isolationism, are exposed as nuanced terms that had specific meanings. They are best understood as a framework that mandated a hybrid approach to the creation of policy, within which ideology and realism were given greater relative weight depending on international conditions. Hence, at the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the ideological basis of foreign affairs that rejected political alliances, enshrined in the 1776 Model Treaty, was compromised in favour of a French Treaty. After success in that War, foreign policy took on a subtle complexion. Once independence had been achieved, American statesmen felt compelled to articulate an approach to foreign affairs that, whilst claiming an equality of dealings with European powers, in practice circumvented that neutrality by taking advantage of their rivalries in a rapidly evolving view of American national interest. Analysis of early foreign affairs through this prism of balance of power, illustrates the effectiveness of the emerging, ideologically polarised American nation in confronting the established international structure that was the European equilibrium. An equilibrium designed to contain conflict and restrain power, provided fertile ground for statesmen to achieve the objectives of national interest without compromising the fundamental tenet of the American founding.
23 citations
Cites background from "Foreign Policy and the American Cha..."
...(The Arthur H Clark Company: Ohio, 1912) 191 Ibid, Dickerson (1912), p. 301....
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...170 Ibid, Olson (1961)....
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...12 Ibid Schlesinger (1983), the author argues that in fact maintenance of an American independence depended on the European state system remaining in balance, in the sense that it was not in American interests to weaken either Britain or France....
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...72 Ibid, Haakonssen (2008). p. 496....
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