American diplomatic realism: A tradition practised and preached by George F. Kennan

George F. Kennan's work remains pertinent to the contemporary debate over American foreign policy in which voices calling for a realistic conduct of American diplomacy have been faint. Kennan's thought contains a framework that can be used to examine critically the drift in American diplomacy from the realist assumptions held by the American Founding Fathers towards the liberal or Wilsonian school of international relations. Wilsonianism has seized the world view of contemporary American diplomats and statesmen, particularly during the Clinton administration. Kennan's analysis provides a salutary word in the debate over the course of post‐Cold War American foreign policy that takes Wilsonian assumptions for granted.     

The Invincible Wilsonian Matrix: Universal Human Rights Once Again

A conservative or realist approach has little appeal in the present debate over American foreign policy. In the twentieth century, according to George F. Kennan, the United States succumbed to “the evils of utopian enthusiasms.” In recent years, this worldview has been associated most closely with the neoconservatives, but even the Clinton administration leaned in the same direction. Crusading moralism has been the recurrent theme of America's self-image as a global power. Whether or not neoconservatives and liberals today are really dedicated to the same democratic political culture as the one that Wilson idealized, a recognizable Wilsonian manner of conceptualizing international relations has come to dominate American politics, reflected in a shared rejection of any foreign policy that is not based on the temporal salvation of humanity. Yet many Wilsonians seem unable to imagine that one can be “moral” without trying to make everyone resemble one's self.     

Will Sexual Minority Rights Be Trumped? Assessing the Policy Sustainability of LGBTI Rights Diplomacy in American Foreign Policy

A hallmark of the Barack Obama Administration’s foreign policy was the incorporation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender and Intersex [LGBTI] rights diplomacy. With the change to the Donald Trump Administration in January 2017, this new aspect of American foreign policy has yet to be tested. This analysis investigates the methods used by advocates and government allies to imbed this policy in foreign policy institutions to increase the difficulty of a full policy reversal. It argues that whilst new leadership does not always support LGBTI equality domestically, LGBTI diplomacy will not likely face eradication from foreign policy mandates largely due to the strategic framing of LGBTI rights diplomacy.     

Shielding the Republic: Barack Obama and the Jeffersonian Tradition of American Foreign Policy

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has confounded critics from both the left and right in American politics. This analysis argues that this is because Obama’s foreign policy exhibits affinities with the least prominent of the four traditions of American foreign policy identified by Walter Russell Mead: the Jeffersonian tradition. In contrast to the more prominent Wilsonian and Hamiltonian traditions, the Jeffersonian tradition exhibits more introverted tendencies that seek to perfect and protect rather than export the virtues of the Republic. The Jeffersonian understanding of foreign policy is, in Walter Lippman’s phrase, primarily the “shield of the republic.” This analysis tracks the influence and implications of this perspective through examination of the Obama Administration’s approach to two prominent foreign policy challenges after 2008: intervention in Libya and the ongoing Syrian crisis.     

国会与美国外交决策

作为代议制民主的突出体现,国会在美国政治生活中发挥着重大作用.时至今日,美国国会依旧是当今世界上各国议会中最具影响力的立法机构.其作用不仅显示在美国国内政策的制订上,而且还渗透于美国的对外政策中.     

Commercial Diplomacy and Statecraft in the Context of Economic Reform: The Indian Experience

It is almost a decade since India began its economic reforms. Apart from the purely domestic economic objectives that the reforms were expected to achieve, there was a recognition that reform was imperative if India wanted to become an economic power of consequence within and beyond its region. This had important foreign policy implications. Official pronouncements reflected the concern that the balance of fiscal power as opposed to military power was the key factor in determining a country's international standing. This called for an integrated strategy to bring economic and foreign policies closer. The implementation of a vigorous foreign economic policy could not be undertaken without sharpening the commercial diplomatic tool. Indian foreign policy over the last decade has been grappling with this challenge. This article analyses the reorientation in Indian foreign policy, assesses the efforts undertaken so far to make commercial diplomacy viable and highlights the challenges that multi-layered diplomacy poses for a country like India.     

Commercial Diplomacy and Statecraft in the Context of Economic Reform: The Indian Experience

It is almost a decade since India began its economic reforms. Apart from the purely domestic economic objectives that the reforms were expected to achieve, there was a recognition that reform was imperative if India wanted to become an economic power of consequence within and beyond its region. This had important foreign policy implications. Official pronouncements reflected the concern that the balance of fiscal power as opposed to military power was the key factor in determining a country's international standing. This called for an integrated strategy to bring economic and foreign policies closer. The implementation of a vigorous foreign economic policy could not be undertaken without sharpening the commercial diplomatic tool. Indian foreign policy over the last decade has been grappling with this challenge. This article analyses the reorientation in Indian foreign policy, assesses the efforts undertaken so far to make commercial diplomacy viable and highlights the challenges that multi-layered diplomacy poses for a country like India.     

美国文化价值观对美国外交的影响

自美国踏上国际舞台之日起,其外交就带有一个明显的特点,即价值观化。以天赋使命观、种族优越论、扩张意识、实用主义等为基本特征的美国文化隐形影响、指导、规范着美国对外政策的制定与实施,并在对外政策中得到充分的体现。同时,美国外交赤裸裸地强行输出美式民主、自由等价值观,这种观念和行为深刻影响着国际社会。     

Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality,the Freedom of the Seas,and the Myth of the “Civil War Precedents”

This analysis shows the importance of a problem of maritime law in an on-going debate between two interpretations of Wilsonian neutrality that have competed in various guises since the end of the First World War: can British blockade actions in that war be justified by American Civil War precedents? It proves that reliance on the “Civil War precedents” to justify Britain’s blockade measures was disingenuous from the beginning. British diplomats first used it in October 1914, and Woodrow Wilson embraced it to defend his mild response to British violations of neutral rights to incensed American citizens despite continuous protests from the State Department. Whilst all politicians involved knew the comparison was wrong, historians have embraced it as a justification of Britain’s illegal blockade ever since Arthur S. Link claimed it as the key to understanding Wilson’s neutrality policy.     

Reparations in the Long Run

This paper explores how policy-makers during the Second World War attempted to “learn the lessons” of history from the reparations settlement imposed after the First World War. It shows how these lessons were developed and articulated in the formulation of, in particular, American foreign policy, and also their consequences for foreign policy during and after the Second World War. The paper demonstrates the important role of European advisors in shaping American policy, thereby illustrating that not all American lessons of history were born in the USA. It also draws out how many of these lessons have found an echo in the historiography of German reparations that has emerged over the past fifty years. In both periods the issues of enforcement and compliance, the issues that concern us generally in this volume, dominated the debate between advisors and policy-makers.     

Diplomacy in the media age: Three models of uses and effects

This study offers three conceptual models to promote systematic research into uses of the media as a major instrument of foreign policy and international negotiations: public diplomacy, where state and nonstate actors use the media and other channels of communication to influence public opinion in foreign societies; media diplomacy, where officials use the media to communicate with actors and to promote conflict resolution; and media-broker diplomacy, where journalists temporarily assume the role of diplomats and serve as mediators in international negotiations. The first two models, while previously defined, undergo serious revision in this study. The third model is new. This article demonstrates the analytical usefulness of the models through applications to various examples and case studies of significant contemporary diplomatic processes.     

Engaging Adversaries: Myths and Realities in American Foreign Policy

American policy-makers and politicians present specious rationales for abjuring diplomatic engagement with adversarial regimes and actors. The conventional wisdom is that negotiating with adversaries is futile and a form of reward that the enemy will exploit. This tool of statecraft, therefore, should be avoided. However, many of the objections for avoiding diplomacy are suspect when examined closely. In addition, though prominent adversaries like Iran have generally shunned the United States, it has regularly engaged other hostile and adversarial regimes and non-state actors. The selective use of specious reasons contributes to an American foreign policy that often prefers the isolation and containment of ‘rogue states.’ Additionally, myths like the futility of appeasing adversaries have taken hold, and practitioners rarely question it. The post-Cold War American ‘diplomacy allergy’ is often counter-productive and stands in contrast to Cold War pragmatism.     

Labor Diplomacy: A Revitalized Aspect of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Era of Globalization

This article analyzes how and why labor diplomacy has become an important element of American foreign policy in recent years. "Labor diplomacy"—a term coined by practitioners in the Department of State—refers to the work performed principally by labor officers (also called labor attachés) at American embassies around the world and, more specifically, the advocacy and promotion of core labor standards within the context of U.S. human rights and international trade policy. The five internationally recognized core labor standards, as developed by the International Labor Organization (ILO), are: freedom of association; the right of collective bargaining; the elimination of forced labor; the effective abolition of child labor; and the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation. The article explores the economic, political, and bureaucratic factors that contributed to the revitalization of labor diplomacy during the 1990s. These include: a growing appreciation for the linkage between labor standards and trade in the globalized economy; the Clinton administration's decision to pursue a closer relationship with the AFL-CIO, particularly after the 1997 "fast-track" debacle; and the changing bureaucratic dynammics within the Department of State. The article also reviews U.S. initiatives, both through the ILO and unilaterally, to strengthen respect for core labor standards around the world, and how these efforts have helped shape American policy toward the World Trade Organization. The article concludes with an analysis of the outcome of the recent WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle and a prognosis on the future of labor diplomacy.     

A. Adamishin and R. Schifter,Human Rights,Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War

The international community's March 2011 military intervention in Libya contrasts sharply to its reluctance during the preceding forty years to halt the Qadhafi regime's sponsorship of transnational terrorism and pursuit of WMD. American diplomacy, eventually supported by international sanctions, was a four decade effort to end Qadhafi's violent foreign policy. This commentary discusses how diplomacy and the American judicial process combined to achieve this successful outcome. Diplomatic and legislative efforts to compel Libya's payment to terrorism victims helped create judicial remedies enforceable in US Courts and ultimately, a bilateral claims settlement agreement that, while disappointing to the terrorism litigants, normalized relations between the Libya and the United States.     

Reparations in the Long Run

This paper explores how policy-makers during the Second World War attempted to “learn the lessons” of history from the reparations settlement imposed after the First World War. It shows how these lessons were developed and articulated in the formulation of, in particular, American foreign policy, and also their consequences for foreign policy during and after the Second World War. The paper demonstrates the important role of European advisors in shaping American policy, thereby illustrating that not all American lessons of history were born in the USA. It also draws out how many of these lessons have found an echo in the historiography of German reparations that has emerged over the past fifty years. In both periods the issues of enforcement and compliance, the issues that concern us generally in this volume, dominated the debate between advisors and policy-makers.     

宗教在当前美国政治与外交中的影响

20世纪90年代尤其是"9·11"事件以来, 宗教在美国对外关系上已呈现立法化、机构化、国际化、草根化、联合化、媒体化、安全化等趋势,在海外倡导所谓宗教自由、或推行所谓以信仰为基础的外交,已成为自越南战争后民主、共和两党在对外政策上的"两党一致"破局以来新的外交政策"意见一致".     

Guiding Public Opinion on the Far Eastern Crisis, 1931–1941: The American State Department and Propaganda on the Sino–Japanese Conflict

From 1931 to 1941, when China and Japan were at undeclared war, China's propaganda was fairly well-circulated in America through her American friends who played a leading role in shaping American opinions on the Far Eastern crisis. But the United States State Department maintained a neutral stance toward the Sino–Japanese conflict until after 1939 and considered the pro-Chinese opinion not so much a national consensus for policy consideration as a partisan view propped up by propaganda groups. Thus, the State Department guarded its Asian policy from the pressure of propaganda activities and partisan opinions on the Asian conflict, whilst utilising them occasionally as tools of diplomacy toward China and Japan. This article examines the State Department's attitude toward public opinion and propaganda on the Far Eastern conflict from 1931 to 1941 to illustrate how American officials handled partisan opinions on a foreign crisis when most of the information on foreign policy was privately initiated and circulated.     

Considering Black,Latino, Asian,and Pacific Islander opinion on foreign policy

Most of the literature on racial or ethnic groups’ foreign policy preferences focuses on parochial or diasporic interests to demonstrate group-specific influence in this policy realm. This situation leaves room for addressing the impact of African American, Latino and Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) racial/ethnic identities on individual-level preferences for broader, non-parochial, foreign policy issues and the degree to which multiracial preference coalitions (or agreement) emerge in a fashion reflective of domestic policy attitudes. Utilizing data on a range of contemporary foreign policy issues from the 2018 and 2019 Congressional Cooperative Election Studies (CCES), the analyses reveal that minority preference coalitions emerge across a wide range of foreign policy issues, a pattern that is most dramatic among Latino and Black Democrats. Moreover, these coalitions suggest minority moderation relative to white co-partisans from both parties.     

Preemption, Unilateralism, and Hegemony: The American Tradition?

Historian John Lewis Gaddis has found precedent for the current war on terror in early American history, arguing that the British burning of the capitol in 1814 had an impact on defense policy similar to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, leading to an emphasis on preemption. In basic respects, Gaddis restates the consensus among diplomatic historians that the early republic's foreign policy focused on preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony. But these depictions of early American diplomacy conflate separate eras and ignore an opposing tradition that was more moderate and principled. They are not without some truth, but their imperious sway in histories of our country needs to be checked and balanced.