Henry Kissinger: Realism,Domestic Politics,and the Struggle Against Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy

Henry Kissinger was the single most controversial diplomat of the 20th century. This article explores Kissinger's approach to the philosophy of realism in international affairs, his role in Vietnam policy making, and his most recent engagement in the debate over the Iraq War. It argues that Kissinger's realism, although philosophically consistent and having roots within his own life's experience, was always tempered by his desire to exercise influence within the American political system. Once in office under Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford, Kissinger came to recognise how significantly domestic politics shaped American foreign policy. His involvement in the Vietnam War demonstrates this, and one lesson he took from that conflict was the hope that Americans could be persuaded to move away from their convictions about American exceptionalism and recognise the limits of American power.     

Master of the Game: The Relationship between the United States and Iran Revisited, 1969-1972

ABSTRACT

How and why did the Richard Nixon Administration end up with an Iran policy more in line with the preferences of the Shah of Iran than of the United States? At its onset, the Administration did not have a clearly defined or formalised Persian Gulf policy. Attempts to create over-arching guidelines regarding American conduct toward Iran were of little consequence, as the pro-Iranian inclinations of leading decision-makers led to day-to-day decisions that strongly favoured the Shah. This limited room for manoeuvre amounted to little more than acceptance of what was already established procedure. The Shah’s strenuous lobbying of American decision-makers, using their common Cold War considerations to his advantage and the effective sidelining of critical voices within the Nixon Administration, explain this outcome.     

Jimmy Carter and the Sale of the AWACS to Iran in 1977

It appeared that as 1977 dawned, the political climate in the United States might render multi-billion dollar arms sales into unstable regions a thing of the past. Jimmy Carter triumphed in the presidential election of November 1976 on a popular platform of arms control and the introduction of human rights considerations into American foreign policy. His transition from that idealistic candidate to the president who agreed to sell Iran a fleet of highly advanced AWACS aircraft, as part of a record breaking $5.7 billion arms package, is therefore outwardly confusing. Yet, when examining the entrenched policy path that Carter inherited regarding arming Iran, and the larger needs of Cold War containment, the logic of Carter’s decisions essentially to betray his own policies in this case becomes clear.     

The Radical Crescent: The United States,the Palestine Liberation Organisation,and the Lebanese Civil War, 1973–1978

This analysis examines the efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO] to formalise relations with the United States before and after the October 1973 Arab–Israeli War. It details the public and private attempts by PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat to present the organisation as a legitimate partner for negotiations with Israel. However, the American secretary of state and national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, hindered the PLO’s diplomatic initiatives during the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations. Kissinger viewed the PLO as an impediment to his efforts to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict through separate peace agreements, rather than a comprehensive solution. Despite Washington’s objections to the PLO, the organisation had regional and international legitimacy, its stature aided by its political and ideological allies. Yet these ties also contributed to the PLO’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war. Kissinger encouraged Syria’s June 1976 invasion of Lebanon to weaken, if not destroy, the PLO as an independent actor. Although the PLO survived Syria’s intervention, Kissinger’s actions and agreements limited the diplomatic initiatives of the Jimmy Carter Administration.     

卡特政府与伊朗巴列维国王的倒台

伊朗巴列维国王在第二次世界大战后美伊亲密关系建立和发展过程中起到举足轻重的作用.不过到20世纪70年代后期,巴列维的独裁统治陷入严重危机.1977年入主白宫的卡特起初并没有意识到伊朗局势的严重性,所以仍把巴列维国王视为唯一可以稳定伊朗的国家领导人.随着伊朗危机的日益加剧,伊朗国王的地位摇摇欲坠,对此,美国各部门围绕对伊朗政策产生激烈纷争,并最终坐视巴列维国王倒台.美伊长达近30年的友好关系也宣布终结.     

Technical discourse in defense of public virtue: Ronald Reagan's explanation of the Iran/contra affair

Contemporary political communication is marked by an evolving dialectical tension between public and technical forms of discourse. Using Ronald Reagan's explanation of the Iran/Contra arms‐for‐hostages initiative as a case study, this article explores the rhetorical uses of technical rationality and the dangers these appeals pose for public deliberation. A close reading of Reagan's March 4, 1987, Iran/Contra defense speech demonstrates that Reagan employed the Tower Commission Report's technical judgments to separate the ethical realm of the public from the nonethical realm of the technical. As a result, he was able to define the Iran/Contra affair as an instrumental problem of bureaucratic organization rather than a betrayal of the public trust. This strategy of demarcating the moral realms of agent from agency is conceptualized as both a moral dodge and an instance of what Kenneth Burke calls ironic discourse. The article concludes by contrasting Reagan's strategy with other recent political crises in which public servants did not separate their public virtue from their administrative responsibility.     

Through the Looking Glass: The Helsinki Final Act and the 1976 Election for President

The controversy surrounding the 1975 Helsinki Final Act made it an enduring issue in the 1976 campaign, and the political backlash against President Gerald R. Ford damaged his electoral chances. Ford's signature of the agreement, his continuation of détente, and his foreign policy more broadly may not have been decisive issues in his contests with Ronald Reagan and then Jimmy Carter, but they certainly were prominent throughout the election. Examining the influence of the Final Act on Ford's election campaign illuminates the extent to which a number of candidates sought to use popular opposition to the agreement to their advantage. Furthermore, it reveals how the 1976 presidential candidates, and Ford in particular, struggled to address growing questions about détente, human rights, and morality in foreign policy. Ford's failure to defend his signature of the Final Act adequately raised concerns about his foreign policy and personal leadership with the electorate.     

Fifteen minutes of glory: A Burkean analysis of press coverage of Oliver north's testimony

Public esteem for Lt. Col. Oliver North prior to his testimony before the Iran‐contra Committee was low. As he testified, his popularity and support soared, and then tailed off after he left the witness stand. This analysis suggests that these dramatic shifts in audience response to the drama of Oliver North are attributable to the evocation of different audience values before, during, and after his testimony by press coverage of his story which placed differential emphasis on the elements of Kenneth Burke's dramatistical pentad. The differential impacts of print and electronic media to these audience effects are assessed through content analysis. Implications for political processes in general in our media society are discussed.     

Violence in Lenin's thought and practice: The spark and the conflagration

Drawing on Lenin's writings, the commentary of Soviet specialists, and the work of those who focus on the special character of violence, this article discusses Lenin's views on violence over his lifetime, his distinction among different types of violence, his policies and their results, and finally the doubts about his practices that he ultimately expressed near the end of his life. Beginning in the tsarist era with Lenin's campaign among his fellow revolutionaries to reject individual terror in favor of mass violence, it follows him into power as he put his tenets into practice and finally into his introspective retirement. It discusses how, oblivious to developing danger he unleashed mass violence and prodded it to action in the service of the revolutionary state; why he refused to incorporate safeguards against runaway violence; and how, as its deleterious effects became manifest, he continued to employ violence as both instrument of choice and substitute for legitimate authority. It shows that Lenin evinced an addiction to violence that caused him to overlook or foreclose other, less radical, political methods for accomplishing his goals. We see that Lenin's evident belief in the efficacy and controllability of violence blinded him to its potentially counterproductive and even disastrous effects. The state that resulted from Lenin's policies was not what he had envisaged, and not the result of a preconceived plan. But equally it did not emerge as the simple product of ineluctable circumstances defeating a hapless Lenin. Lenin made a series of policy choices ‐ none foreordained by circumstance ‐ which yielded an authoritarian state grounded in violence. These choices were explicitly contested by prominent contemporaries within and outside of the Bolshevik government, who correctly and vocally predicted the results which were becoming clearly visible during Lenin's tenure. Lenin chose to ignore the results, reject the alternatives and silence the critics, decisions he himself came to regret.     

Hatchet or Scalpel?Domestic Politics,International Threats,and US Military Spending Cuts, 1950–2014

Abstract

Budgetary cuts are characterized by distinct political, organizational, and psychological dynamics in contrast to increases. Ideally, policymakers rank, prioritize, and assess among likely strategic challenges to identify the appropriate offices, programs, line items, or service branches in which to curtail spending. Targeted cuts—preserving some line items or services while cutting others—occurred during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, and Clinton administrations. In contrast, the Nixon, H.W. Bush, and Obama administrations implemented across-the-board cuts, impacting all areas of the budget uniformly, regardless of strategic priorities. We argue that the ability of the executive to target and redirect spending commensurate with national security needs are constrained by domestic interests. However, the degree to which the threat environment is diverse conditions the number of available policy options and, in turn, executive capacity to implement targeted cuts vis-à-vis parochial interests.     

Some Men Named William Hunter

The Hunter family of Rhode Island produced two important American diplomatists of the nineteenth century. The elder William Hunter served for nine years as the American envoy to Brazil, where he exerted positive influence over the young emperor, Dom Pedro II. The younger William Hunter entered the Department of State in 1829 and spent fifty-seven years there under twenty-one Secretaries of State. For decades the department’s third-ranking officer, he became its “mentor and authority.” The overlapping careers of Hunter and his two successors helped guide American diplomacy until 1937.     

The Geography of the International System: The CShapes Dataset

Sceptics of globalization attribute the proliferation of light weapons to economic openness. Increasing globalization apparently weakens public authority, leading to social disarray, anomic violence, and general conditions that make handgun ownership and use more likely. Pro-globalists might argue contrarily that trade openness can raise the premium on peace as violence is bad for business. Moreover, greater interdependence allows the diffusion of anti-proliferation norms and facilitates cooperative behavior among trading partners for stemming the demand for and proliferation of small arms. Using a unique dataset on small arms imports, we find that greater openness to trade and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) lowers small arms imports per capita. A policy measure of economic freedom is associated with higher small arms imports, but this association seems to be explained entirely by the association between economic freedom and strong bureaucracies. States that are de facto more open to the global trading system are less likely to be inundated with these weapons, but richer, better-governed countries import more small arms. Global policy should pay closer attention to the seepage of these weapons from the relatively wealthy, who manufacture and buy them in larger quantities, to the poor, among whom the ‘problems’ associated with small arms are often manifested. Curbing those factors that encourage globalization, however, would be counterproductive to reducing the trade in small arms and light weapons.     

Forever young: START and aftermath

Abstract

The New Strategic arms reduction treaty nuclear arms control agreement signed by US President, Barack Obama, and Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010 is likely to achieve ratification in both Washington and Moscow, but it is too early to break out the champagne or vodka. Even successful ratification of this agreement is, at best, an important but incremental part of the US–Russian policy ‘reset’ and the larger agenda for both states with respect to arms reduction and nonproliferation. Further reductions in both states’ inventories of strategic nuclear weapons are a necessary preface toward credible leadership in stopping the spread of nuclear arms – especially in the looming test cases of Iran and North Korea. In addition, both states have to decipher a policy-strategy nexus for emerging missile defense technologies: in particular, whether missile defenses should be seen as possible means of cooperative security, as between NATO and Russia, or whether they are firewalls in the way of further progress in offensive nuclear arms reductions.     

Some Men Named William Hunter

The Hunter family of Rhode Island produced two important American diplomatists of the nineteenth century. The elder William Hunter served for nine years as the American envoy to Brazil, where he exerted positive influence over the young emperor, Dom Pedro II. The younger William Hunter entered the Department of State in 1829 and spent fifty-seven years there under twenty-one Secretaries of State. For decades the department's third-ranking officer, he became its “mentor and authority.” The overlapping careers of Hunter and his two successors helped guide American diplomacy until 1937.     

To Prevent a Revolution: John F. Kennedy and the Promotion of Democracy in Iran

John F. Kennedy came to power in 1961 with Iran on the verge of revolution against the Shah's unpopular policies. To stabilise the situation, his Administration attempted to promote democracy through a development plan based on the precepts of modernisation theory. Backed by academic theorists who argued that promoting democracy was the best way to secure victory in the Cold War, Kennedy developed an ambitious plan to transform Iran. This policy was seen as essential to replace the inevitable uncontrollable revolution and subsequent loss of Iran, with one controlled and directed by Washington. This analysis provides the first comprehensive examination of this plan and its foundations that has heretofore been overlooked. Kennedy's policy towards Iran illuminates the role that external powers can have in manufacturing, supporting, and encouraging a country's transition to democracy. Its failure, and the absence of any replacement plan to ensure political reform, made inevitable the uncontrollable revolution which eventually came in 1978.     

Russia as a Gravity Pole of the GCC’s New Foreign Policy Pragmatism

Abstract

Despite the obvious differences over the Syrian crisis and Iran, the GCC countries do not seem to be distancing themselves from Russia politically. To a large extent that is due to Russia’s growing military role (in Syria) and military cooperation (with Iran), as well as the diminishing role of the United States under Obama. Having accepted the situation in Syria (after the fall of Aleppo) as a fait accompli, the GCC’s elites seem to be looking at Russia as a powerful player able to reduce the scope of Iran’s expansion in the region. Their approach involves a carefully established mechanism of economic interaction exploiting Russia’s need for GCC finances and arms acquisitions.     

The Personalization(s) of Politics: Israel, 1949–2003

The relationship between the United States and Iran has had an important influence on world affairs during the past two decades. Accordingly, the U.S. news media have an instrumental role in portraying U.S.‐Iran relations to the public. The Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of 1979–1981, the TWA hijacking of 1985, the Irangate controversy of 1986–1987, and the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 are examples of important media events that have impacted public opinion regarding U.S. policy toward Iran. This research analyzes government and print media portrayals of the Reagan administration's U.S.‐Iran policy during Irangate. Results supported the prediction that the print media would fulfill their “watchdog” function by providing more critical portrayals of the United States' policy toward Iran than the Tower Commission Report, an investigative document published by President Reagan's Special Review Board. Among the three leading newspapers analyzed, there was significant diversity in the reporting of U.S.‐Iran relations. Results indicate the Reagan administration's attempt to “spin” its version of Irangate did not successfully pressure the media to neglect their watchdog role. Although the Tower Commission Report was less critical of U.S. policy toward Iran than the print media, all four print media sources portrayed the Reagan administration's policy as a flawed approach that degenerated into trading arms for hostages. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Eisenhower's disarmament dilemma: From chance for peace to open skies proposal

President Eisenhower's image as a promoter of 'peace and nuclear disarmament' was established through speeches he made such as 'Atoms for Peace' (December 1953) and 'Open Skies' proposal (July 1955). However, Eisenhower's approach to the subject cannot be grasped without an understanding of his attitude towards the relationship between arms, war and disarmament. As he saw it, not only would the mere existence of nuclear weapons not trigger a war, they were actually the best guarantee against the eruption of a global conflagration. The real threat to world security was the repressive, closed, totalitarian and expansionist Soviet regime. War could be prevented only by a dramatic change in the competing - and threatening - ideology and social structure embedded in the Soviet system. Until then, the existence of nuclear weapons would ensure the free world's safety.     

论列宁对社会主义“官”制的探索

列宁十月革命前夕曾设想新政权实行巴黎公社的民主原则,十月革命胜利后进行了大胆试验,结果很快失败。转改高度集中的政治体制,其中的“官”制特点是自上而下的委任制。高度集中的政治体制是列宁对巴黎公社原则的创新和发展,在当时及以后相当的一段时期内发挥了积极的作用。而高度集权下的委任制导致官僚主义的滋生和蔓延,出现权力的腐败。列宁为了完善和改革社会主义的“官”制进行了不懈探索,有些思想成为宝贵的遗产。但因种种原因,列宁终未能找到问题的症结。     

Arms transfer and recipient cooperation with supplier policy references: The case of the Middle East

The principal hypothesis of this paper is that the utility of arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence is highly dependent upon two sets of variables over which the supplier has little control. This is partly because the recipeints’ demand for arms rests largely on forces outside the major power suppliers’ control. The relative impact of arms transfers is evaluated in conjunction with 1) the arms transfers to the recipients's principal local adversary; 2) the intensity of the recipient's conflict involvement; 3) the amount of political support it receives from its major power supplier/patron; and 4) the identity of the supplier country itself. Recipient countries are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Supplier countries are France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States for the years 1947–1973.

Combat aircraft weighted by their performance characteristics and treated as the dominant weapon system are used as the “arms transfers” variable. Conflict, cooperation and political support variables include both verbal and non‐verbal actions weighted for their relative intensity by a 13 point interval scale.

Multiple regression using standardized (beta) coefficients is used in a time series analysis to determine the relative impact of arms transfers and other salient influences on the intensity of recipient cooperation to its principal major power supplier.

The findings in general support the main hypothesis. They suggest that arms transfers may be one useful instrument for extracting additional increments of cooperation from Egypt and Israel, (particularly in the context of Egyptian‐Israeli peace negotiations) but not for any of the other recipients in the study. However, this inference is valid only so long as those two countries continue to be engaged in an arms race with each other, heavily involved in conflict with their neighbors, and economically dependent upon outside powers. Cooperation of the Arab states with their respective major power suppliers is more strongly affected by the quantity of arms transferred to their respective regional adversaries and the intensity of political support from their suppliers than by their own arms transfers. Given the differential impact that the identity of the supplier had on cooperation intensity one conclusion is that the major power suppliers may not be equally successful in using arms as an instrument of political influence. Another is that the development of a “special relationship” between supplier and recipient in conjunction with supplier support for the recipient is probably a prerequisite for effectively using arms transfers as an instrument of supplier influence or coercion.