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GOVT. CHAPTER 16 Foreign Policy. Learning Objectives. Who Makes U.S. Foreign Policy?. The President’s Role. As commander in chief, the president oversees the military and guides defense policies. The Constitution authorizes the president to make treaties, and to form executive agreements.
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GOVT CHAPTER 16 Foreign Policy
The President’s Role • As commander in chief, the president oversees the military and guides defense policies. • The Constitution authorizes the president to make treaties, and to form executive agreements. • The president has ultimate control over the use of nuclear weapons. • As head of state, the president represents the U.S. to the world.
The Cabinet • As U.S. power in the world has grown and as economic factors have become increasingly important, the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Treasury, and Energy have become more involved in foreign policy decisions. • The Department of State is responsible for diplomatic relations with nearly 200 independent nations, as well as with the United Nations. • The Secretary of State has traditionally played a key role, and many presidents have relied on his or her defense.
The Cabinet • The Department of Defense establishes and carries out defense policy and protects our national security. • The secretary of defense advises the president on U.S. military and defense policy and supervises military activities. • The Joint Chiefs of Staff include the chief of staff of the Army, Air Force, and naval operations, as well as the commandant of the Marine Corps. • The joint chiefs serve as the key military advisors to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council.
Other Agencies • Two key agencies are the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. • The formal members of the NSC include the president, vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of defense. • The CIA provides the president and his or her advisors with up-to-date information about the political, military, and economic activities of foreign governments.
Congress’s Powers • Congress alone has the power to declare war and appropriate funds to build weapons systems, equip the armed forces and provide for foreign aid. • The Senate has the power to approve or reject treaties and to appoint ambassadors. • The Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House and the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate.
Isolationism • The founders believed that avoiding political involvement was the best way to protect American interest. • George Washington urged Americans to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” • The Monroe Doctrine stated that the U.S. would not tolerate foreign intervention and promised to stay out of European affairs.
The Beginning of Interventionism • Interventionism, direct involvement in foreign affairs, began with the Spanish-American War of 1898. • The growth of the U.S. as an industrial economy confirmed the nation’s position as a world power. • In the early 1900’s, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed that the United States could invade Latin American countries when it was necessary to guarantee political or economic stability.
The World Wars • When WWI broke out in 1914, President Wilson initially proclaimed a policy of neutrality. The U.S. entered the war in 1917 after U.S. ships in international waters were attacked by German submarines. • The U.S. returned to a policy of isolationism until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. • One of the most significant foreign policy actions during WWII was the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
The Cold War • After WWII ended, the alliance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate. • The Soviet Union opposed America’s political and economic systems. • Many Americans considered Soviet attempts to spread Communist systems to other countries a major threat to democracy. • The iron curtain symbolized the political boundaries between the democratic countries in Western Europe and the Soviet-controlled Communist countries in Eastern Europe.
The Cold War: The Marshall Plan • In 1947, the Truman administration instituted a policy of economic assistance to war-torn Europe called the Marshall Plan. • This and other actions marked the beginning of a policy of containment – a policy designed to contain the spread of communism by offering U.S. economic and military aid to threatened nations. • In 1949, the U.S., Canada, and 10 European nations formed a military alliance – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). • Though the Cold War was mainly a war of words and belief systems, the wars in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1964-1975) grew out of the efforts to contain Communism.
The Cold War: The Arms Race & Deterrence • The Soviet Union and the United States began competing for more and better weapons with greater destruction power – a struggle known as the arms race. • Supported by a policy of deterrence – rendering ourselves and our allies so strong militarily that our strength would deter any attack. • Out of deterrence came the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD) – if the forces of both nations were equally capable of destroying each other, neither would take a chance on war.
The Cold War: The Cuban Missile Crisis • The Cuban missile crisis –In 1962, the United States learned that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear weapons on the island of Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. • The crisis was diffused diplomatically; the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles, and the United States agreed to remove some of its missiles from near the Soviet border in Turkey.
The Cold War – Détente and Arms Control • In 1972, both sides signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) which marked the beginning of a period of détente – a “relaxation of tensions.” • In the late 1980’s, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated reforms to democratize the Soviet political system and decentralize the economy. • In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and by the end of 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) no longer existed.
Post-Cold War Foreign Policy • When the Cold War ended, U.S. foreign policymakers were forced to rethink the nation’s foreign policy goals. • Policymakers have struggled to determine the degree of intervention that is appropriate and prudent for the U.S. military. • Since September 11, 2001, our goal has been to capture and punish the terrorists who planned and perpetuated the events of that day and to prevent future attacks against America.
Varieties of Terrorism • Terrorist acts generally fall into one of three broad categories: • Local or regional terrorism – extremists motivated by the desire to obtain freedom from a nation or government. • State-sponsored terrorism – terrorist attacks planned and sponsored by governments. • Foreign terrorist networks – nonstate terrorist networks, such as al Qaeda. It operates in “cells” so that often one cell of the organization does not know what the others are planning.
The U.S. Response to 9/11 – The War in Afghanistan • In late 2001, the U.S. military launched an attack against al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and the ruling Taliban regime. • Once the Taliban had been ousted, the United States helped to establish a government in Afghanistan that did not support terrorism. • Instead of continuing the hunt for al Qaeda members, the Bush administration increasingly looked to Iraq as a threat to U.S. security.
The Focus on Iraq • In January 2002, President Bush described Iraq as a regime that sponsored terrorism and sought to develop weapons of mass destruction. • A preemptive war occurs when a nation goes to war against another because it believes that an attack from that nation is imminent. • When President Bush did go to war against Iraq, it was a preventive war – to prevent the possibility that Iraq could attack the U.S. in the future.
The Second Gulf War • March 20, 2003 – U.S. and British forces entered Iraq. • Most of the world opposed the attack. • Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed in 2006. • Many Iraqis opposed the occupation. Opposition was strongest among members of the Sunni branch of Islam.
Focus on Iraq: The Insurgency • Between May 2003 and March 2004, casualty rates for American soldiers averaged more than 50 per month. • In January 2005, Iraqis went to the polls to vote in the first free elections in half a century. A coalition of Shiite Muslims won the most seats. • The Bush administration increased troop levels in 2007 with the hope that, given more time, Iraqis could work out their differences and establish a united government. • In February 2009, President Obama announced that U.S. combat forces would leave Iraq by the end of August 2010.
Again, Afghanistan • In 2003, NATO took responsibility for coalition military operations in the central and northern parts of Afghanistan. • In 2009, Taliban forces began to take complete control of districts in the Tribal Areas on the far side of the Afghan-Pakistani border. The Pakistani military began to engage the Taliban forces. • In February 2009, President Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops into the country. U.S. secretary of defense warned that the war could be lost if more troops were not sent.
The Arab-Israeli Wars • Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, a large number of Palestinians – Arab residents of the Holy Land, known as Palestine until 1948, were forced into exile. • The failure of the Arab states in the 1967 war led to additional refugees and the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – a nonstate body committed to armed struggle against Israel. • Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979 that marked the end to an era of wars between Israel and other states.
The Israeli-Palestinian Dispute • Many Palestinian families lost their homes after the 1948 war, and after the 1967 war, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip fell under Israeli control. • Vicious attacks by Palestinians which frequently resulted in the deaths of civilians made negotiations difficult. • An international consensus on terms for settling the conflict included granting the lands seized by Israel in the 1967 war to Palestinians who could organize their own independent nation-state there. • Also, Palestinians would have to recognize Israel’s right to exist and take steps to guarantee Israel’s safety.
Negotiations Begin • Talks between Israel, Arab nations, and non-PLO Palestinians commenced at Madrid in 1991. • In 1993, Israel and the PLO met officially for the first time in Oslo, Norway – resulting in the Oslo Accords, which were signed in Washington. • A major result was the establishment of a Palestinian Authority, under Israeli control, on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Negotiations Collapse • Further talks in 2000 at Camp David in Maryland collapsed. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out a plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and also build an enormous security fence between Israel and the West Bank. • In 2007, Gaza was taken over by Hamas, a radical Islamist party that refuses to recognize Israel. • In December 2008, Hamas launched missile attacks on Israel after the imposition of an Israeli blockade.
North Korea’s Nuclear Program • North Korea signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1985 and submitted to weapons inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1992. • In 2002, U.S. intelligence discovered that North Korea had been receiving equipment from Pakistan for a highly enriched uranium production facility. • Later that year, North Korea openly lifted a freeze on its nuclear weapons program and expelled the IAEA inspectors.
North Korea’s Nuclear Program • In 2003, North Korea agreed to talks with the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. • In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. • In 2007, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities and allow UN inspectors to the country. In return, the other nations agreed to provide $400 billion in various aid, and the U.S. would begin to discuss normalization of relations with North Korea.
Iran: An Emerging Nuclear Threat? • Iran has made considerable progress in many aspects of its nuclear program, although Iranian leaders have publicly claimed that they are seeking only to develop nuclear energy plants. • Iran has implemented an extensive terrorism campaign in hopes of undermining U.S. influence in the middle east. • The UN has imposed sanctions, and the United States has threatened to impose its own to isolate Iran from the community of nations. • Talks with Iran concerning its nuclear program resumed at Geneva on October 1, 2009. Iran agreed to allow international inspectors access to its facilities.
China • During the Clinton administration, rapid growth of the Chinese economy and increasingly close trade ties between the United States and China helped bring about a policy of diplomatic outreach. • Many Americans protested when the U.S. government extended normal trade relations (NTR) status to China on a year-to-year basis.
China • China’s gross domestic product (GDP) could surpass that of the United States by 2039. • The U.S. already runs a multi-billion dollar trade deficit with China and could be vulnerable if Chinese economic growth continues at its present pace. • The Chinese did not support the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. • China has expressed desire to take control of Taiwan, historically supported by the U.S. as free and separate.
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