Challenging US Foreign Policy America and the World in the Long Twentieth Century

by Sewell, Bevan; Lucas, Scott

• ISBN13: 9780230249899
• ISBN10: 0230249892
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Some categorizations of US power have long governed analyses of American foreign policy -- concepts such as "empire, "decline," "superpower," "the Cold War" and "the War on Terror' -- and have led to a distortion that sees US policy measured by broad labels, rather than on its own terms. This fresh new approach seeks to challenge these terms.

Author Biography

Bevan Sewell is Lecturer in American History at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has published articles in Diplomatic History, The English Historical Review, and Intelligence and National security, and is currently working on a book on US development policy in Latin America. Scott Lucas is Professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, and has held posts at University College Dublin, Ireland, American University Beirut, Lebanon, and Tehrar University, Iran. He is the author of nine books and more than 40 major articles on US and British foreign policy since 1945, intelligence series, public diplomacy, and media. He is also the founder of EA World View, a leading web-based provider of news and analysis on international affairs.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors
Introduction; B.Sewell&S.Lucas
PART I: AMERICA POWER AND THE WORLD
Reflex Actions: Colonialism, Corruption and the Politics of Technocracy in the Early 20th Century United States; P.Kramer 
Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and the Shift in U.S. Policy toward Moscow after Roosevelt's Death; F.Costigliola
The Kennan Diaries; D.Milne
Ideology, Race, and Nonalignment in U.S. Cold War Foreign Relations: Or, How the Cold War Racialized Neutralism without Neutralizing Race; J.Parker
America's Great Game: The CIA and the Middle East, 1947-67; H.Wilford
The Perfect and Sustainable Road to Economic Development?: The Eisenhower Administration and Latin America; B.Sewell
The Defeat of Ernest Lefever's Nomination: Keeping Human Rights on the United States Foreign Policy Agenda; S.Snyder
PART II: CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES: POWER AND INTERVENTION
Areas of Concern: Area Studies and the New American Studies; J.C. Rowe
Libertas or Fri? On US Liberty, Decline, Freedom and Pluralism; D.Ryan
The United States and the United Nations: Hegemony, Unilateralism and the Limits of Internationalism; A.Johnstone
The US War in Iraq: Confronting the Vietnam Analogy; A.Priest
Domesticating Katrina: Eliding the International Coordinates of a 'Natural' Disaster; A.Hartnell
From Ends to Means: American Foreign Policy and Women's Rights; H.Laville
Conclusion; S.Lucas
Index