U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, enemies and empire

What is the nature of United States foreign policy? This book refutes the claim that US foreign policy has varied considerably across time and space, and argues the long-term policy goals and underlying ideological and political factors have not significantly changed over the last hundred years. This book explains the features of US foreign policy, past and present, and draws on a wealth of historical and contemporary cases to demonstrate that the US has had a client state empire for a century. The authors illustrate how much of American policy revolves around acquiring clients, maintaining clients and engaging in hostile policies against countries deemed to threaten U. S. clients, representing a peculiarly American form of imperialism. They also explain how this empire informs apparently disparate activities in different geographical regions and operates via a broad range of policy instruments, showing predictable volatility in the use of these instruments. With a broad rangeof cases from US policy in the Caribbean and Central America after the Spanish-American War, to the origins of NATO, to military interventions in South Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq, this important book will be of interest to students and researchers of US foreign policy, security studies, history and international relations.

David Sylvan is Professor of International Relations and Head of the Political Science Unit at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. Stephen Majeski is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, United States.