U.S. foreign policy

U.S. foreign policy covers the foreign relations and diplomacy of the United States since 1775.

1945-1969: Cold War

• see Cold War
• Korean War
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Vietnam War

Truman: 1945-53

Harry S. Truman had no knowledge or interest in foreign policy before becoming president in April 1945, and depended on the State Department for foreign policy advice. Truman shifted from FDR's détente to containment as soon as Dean Acheson convinced him the Soviet Union was a long-term threat to American interests. They viewed communism as a secular, millennial religion that informed the Kremlin's worldview and actions and made it the chief threat to American security, liberty, and world peace. They rejected the moral equivalence of democratic and Communist governments and concluded that until the regime in Moscow changed only American and Allied strength could curb the Soviets. Following Acheson's advice, Truman in 1947 announced the Truman Doctrine of containing Communist expansion by furnishing military and economic American aid to Europe and Asia, and particularly to Greece and Turkey. He followed up with the Marshall Plan, which was enacted into law as the European Recovery Program (ERP) and pumped $12.4 into the European economy, forcing the breakdown of old barriers and encouraging modernization along American lines. On May 14, 1948, Truman announced recognition of the new state of Israel, making the United States the first major power to do so.

After his surprise reelection in 1948, Truman brought in Dean Acheson as Secretary of State, and promoted the Point Four program of aid to underdeveloped countries. The policy of containing Communism was operationalized by the creation, in 1949, of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to oversee the integration of the military forces of its member nations in Western Europe and North America. A further step was taken in 1951 with the establishment of the Mutual Security Agency to coordinate U.S. economic, technical and military aid abroad.

The Korean War began at the end of June 1950 when North Korea, a Communist country, invaded South Korea, which was under U.S. protection. Without consulting Congress Truman ordered General Douglas MacArthur to use all American forces to resist the invasion. Truman then received approval from the United Nations, which the Soviets were boycotting. UN forces managed to cling to a toehold in Korea, as the North Koreans outran their supply system. A counterattack at Inchon destroyed the invasion army, and the UN forces captured most of North Korea on their way to the Yalu River, Korea's northern border with China. Truman defined the war goal as rollback of Communism and reunification of the country under UN auspices. China intervened unexpectedly, drove the UN forces all the way back to South Korea. The fighting stabilized close to the original 38th parallel that had divided North and South. MacArthur wanted to continue the rollback strategy but Truman arrived at a new policy of containment, allowing North Korea to persist. Truman's dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951 sparked a violent debate on U.S. Far Eastern policy, as Truman took the blame for a high-cost stalemate with 37,000 Americans killed and over 100,000 wounded.

The top-secret NSC-68 of 1950 policy paper was the grounds for escalating the Cold War, especially in terms of tripling spending on rearmament and building the hydrogen bomb. The integration of European defense was given new impetus by continued U.S. support of NATO, under the command of General Eisenhower.

1969 to 1989

Nixon and Kissinger

Kissinger's first priority in office was the achievement of détente with the Soviet Union and China, and playing them off against each other. Recognizing and accepting the Soviet Union as a superpower, Nixon and Kissinger sought both to maintain U.S. military strength and to inaugurate peaceful economic, cultural, and scientific exchanges to engage the Soviet Union in the international system. This policy flourished under Kissinger's direction and led in 1972 to the signing of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). At the same time they successfully engineered a rapprochement with Communist China, leading to the astonishing news in 1971 that Nixon would visit China, which he and Kissinger did in 1972.

Aware that China and the Soviet Union were at sword's point, with rival claims to be the true Communists, Nixon and Kissinger used the "Soviet card" to win over Chinba by playing up the Soviet threat to the Chinese as a way of promoting closer relations with China. He even hinted at a US-China alliance to oppose the Soviets, and, with Nixon's trips to Moscow, hinted that China had better come to terms lest the US form an alliance with Moscow. The tactics worked, resulting in a friendly relationship with both Beijing and Moscow. As part of the détente, both powers reduced or ended their aid to North Vietnam, thus allowing a settlement of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam

Nixon and Kissinger worked to achieve a disengagement of U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam. Balancing a policy of "Vietnamization," aimed at returning the burden of actual combat to the South Vietnamese, with repeated shows of U.S. air strength, notably in the bombings of Cambodia and Hanoi, Kissinger met secretly with North Vietnamese leaders in Paris from 1969 on, finally concluding a cease-fire in January 1973, for which he and chief North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.

Middle East

One challenge to détente came with the outbreak of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Faced with a threat of Soviet intervention, Nixon put U.S. military forces be placed on worldwide alert. He then employed shuttle diplomacy to secure cease-fires between Israel and the Arab states and to restore U.S. Egyptian diplomatic ties, broken since 1967.

Latin American policies

The Nixon administration sought to protect the economic and commercial interests of the United States during a period of heightened Latin American nationalism and expropriations, 1969-74. Though the administration initially adopted a flexible policy toward Latin American governments that nationalized American corporations' assets, the influence of Nixon's economic ideology, domestic political pressures, and the advice of his close adviser, Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, led to a more confrontational stance toward Latin American countries. As the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and Henry Kissinger had warned, however, Latin American countries took an even more anti-US stance and expropriated even more assets. Nixon's "get tough" stance, therefore, had a negative effect on US credibility and influence in the hemisphere.

Kissinger and Nixon permitted covert CIA operations designed to destabilize the anti-American Allende regime in Chile

South Asia

During the South Asian crisis in 1971, the White House, stood firmly behind Pakistani president Yahya Khan and demonstrated a disdain for India and particularly its leader, Indira Gandhi because of India's tilt toward the Soviet Union. Many analysts believed that Pakistan's role as a conduit of rapprochement with China and Kissinger's focus on geopolitical concerns greatly influenced the American policy decision in 1971. These claims have now been confirmed by recently declassified documents. The US undertook at least three initiatives to dissipate the Bangladesh movement but which backfired and contributed to the bloodshed instead of bringing it to an end.

Nixon and Kissinger were "realists" who deemphasized idealistic goals like anti-communism or promotion of democracy worldwide, because those goals were too expensive in terms of America's economic capabilities. Instead of a Cold War they wanted peace, trade and cultural exchanges. They realized that Americans were no longer willing to tax themselves for idealistic foreign policy goals, especially for containment policies that never seemed to produce positive results. Instead Nixon and Kissinger sought to downsize America's global commitments in proportion to its reduced economic, moral and political power. They rejected "idealism" as impractical and too expensive; neither man showed much sensitivity to the plight of people living under Communism. Kissinger's realism fell out of fashion as idealism returned to American foreign policy with Carter's moralism emphasizing human rights, and Reagan's rollback strategy aimed at destroying Communism.

Ford years

Nixon resigned in 1974 under the threat of impeachment and was succeeded by Gerald R. Ford, who kept Nixon's policies. The US was not involved in 1975 when North Vietnam invaded and defeated South Vietnam, except to rescue Americans and some Vietnamese supporters. Over a million Vietnamese refugees, and many Hmong from Cambodia, eventually came to the U.S.

In 1976 Ford was challenged by Ronald Reagan for the GOP nomination. Ford won, but the détente policy was the focus of Reagan's attacks, as the GOP moved to the right. Jimmy Carter continued the détente policy until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 destroyed that policy and reopened the Cold War at a more intense level.

See also

• Diplomacy, U.S., Timeline

• 9-11 Attack
• Afghanistan War (1978-92)
• American Revolution, 1775-1783
• Berlin Wall, 1961-89
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Cold War, 1947-89
• Confederate States of America
• Containment
• Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
• Detente
• Diplomacy, U.S., Timeline
• Eisenhower Doctrine, 1957
• Embargo of 1807
• Fourteen Points, 1918
• Gulf War, 1990-91
• Iraq War, 2003+
• Isolationism
• Jay Treaty, 1794
• Korean War, 1950-53
• Lend Lease, 1941-45
• List of scholarly journals in international relations
• Louisiana Purchase, 1803
• Manifest Destiny
• Marshall Plan, 1848-51
• McNary-Haugen Bill, 1920s; (never passed)
• Mexican-American War, 1846-48
• Monroe Doctrine, 1823+
• NATO, 1949+
• NSC-68, 1950
• Quasi-War, 1798-1800
• Reagan Doctrine
• Rollback
• Roosevelt Corollary, 1904
• Spanish American War, 1898
• Tariff, U.S. history
• U.S. Civil War
• United States State Department
• Versailles Treaty, 1919
• Vietnam War, 1965-73
• War of 1812, 1812-15
  • War of 1812, Causes
• Wilsonianism, 1914+
• World War I, 1917-18
• World War II, 1941-45
• Zimmerman Telegram, 1917

See also leaders

• Dean Acheson
• Jane Addams
• John Adams
• John Quincy Adams
• Charles A. Beard
• James G. Blaine
• John C. Calhoun
• Jimmy Carter
• Henry Clay
• Jesse Helms
• Herbert Hoover
• Harry Hopkins
• Edward M. House
• Thomas Jefferson
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• John F. Kennedy
• George Kennan
• Henry Kissinger
• James Monroe
• Richard Nixon
• James K. Polk
• Ronald Reagan
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Josiah Strong
• Harry S. Truman
• Daniel Webster
• Wendell Willkie
• Woodrow Wilson

Bibliography

• Ambrose, Stephen E. Rise to Globalism, (1988), since 1945
• Bailey, Thomas A. Diplomatic History of the American People (1940), standard older textbook
• Beisner, Robert L. ed, American Foreign Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature (2003), 2 vol. 16,300 annotated entries evaluate every major book and scholarly article.
• Bemis, Samuel Flagg. A Diplomatic History of the United States (1952) old standard textbook
• Bemis, Samuel Flagg, and Grace Gardner Griffin. Guide to the Diplomatic History of the United States 1775-1921 (1935) bibliographies
• Brune, Lester H. Chronological History of U.S. Foreign Relations (2003), 1400 pages
• Burns, Richard Dean, ed. Guide to American Foreign Relations since 1700 (1983) highly detailed annotated bibliography
• DeConde, Alexander, Richard Dean Burns, Fredrik Logevall, and Louise B. Ketz, eds. Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy 3 vol (2001), 2200 pages; 120 long articles by specialists.
• DeConde, Alexander. A History of American Foreign Policy (1963) online edition
• Dobson, Alan P., and Steve Marsh. U.S. Foreign Policy since 1945. 160pp (2001) online edition
• Findling, John E. ed. Dictionary of American Diplomatic History 2nd ed. 1989. 700pp; 1200 short articles.
• Flanders, Stephen A, and Carl N. Flanders. Dictionary of American Foreign Affairs (1993) 835 pp, short articles
• Hogan, Michael J. ed. Paths to Power: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations to 1941 (2000) essays on main topics
• Hogan, Michael J. and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (1991) essays on historiography
• Jentleson, B.W. and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Encyclopaedia of U.S. Foreign Relations, (4 vols., 1997)
• Lafeber, Walter. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to Present (2nd ed 1994) textbook; 884pp online edition
• Paterson, Thomas G. et al. American Foreign Relations (4th ed. 1995), recent textbook
• Scott, James A. After the End: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World. (1998) 434pp online edition

Online resources

• Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1861-1960, 372 volumes complete text. This series is the official documentary historical record of U.S. foreign policy decisions