Americas World View ethos

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Americas World View (ethos)

• Tyranny vs. Political Freedom

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Americas World View (ethos)

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• Americas Founders considered most wars as a
  scourge of Europe. European states-monarchies
  fighting over spoils European power politics.
  One apt aphorism Lie down with dogs, wake up
  with fleas.

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Americas World View (ethos)

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• Moreover, America was founded in order to make a
  more perfect union social contract between
  the government and the people whereby the
  government works for the people (precluding
  tyranny) The Founders sought to get away from
  Europe the only ties the Founders wished to have
  with Europe were commercial ties.

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Americas World View (ethos)

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• War of Independence
• Colonial War (1812) subsequent Monroe Doctrine
• World Wars

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Washington, Farewell Address, 1769

• As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable
  ways, such attachments are particularly alarming
  to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot.
  How many opportunities to they afford to tamper
  with domestic factions, to practice the arts of
  seduction, to mislead public opinion, . . . Such
  an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great
  and powerful nation, dooms the former to be a
  satellite of the latter.
• Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,
  I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the
  jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly
  awake . . .
• The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to
  foreign Nations, is in extending our commercial
  relations, to have with them as little Political
  connection as possible . . . .
• Europe has a set of primary interests, which to
  us have none, or very remote relation. Hence she
  must be engaged in frequent controversies, the
  causes of which are essentially foreign to our
  concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in
  us to implicate ourselves . . . in the ordinary
  vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary
  combinations and collisions of her friendships ,
  or enemies.
• Why, by intervening our destiny with any part of
  Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the
  toils of European ambition, rivalry, interest,
  humor, or caprice?

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Americas World View (ethos)

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• Geographic isolation allowed America to happily
  practice an isolationist foreign policy for a
  couple of hundred years. America to stay out of
  European politics rather, would serve as an
  example to Europeans and others, a shining city
  on the hill. That began to change by the turn of
  the 20th Century.

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Americas ethos Centrality of War

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• From Americas perspective, America was dragged
  into World War I. After intervention, America
  had no territorial ambitions. It sought only war
  reparations. After war the US took its military
  and went home returning, briefly, to
  isolationism.

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Americas ethos Centrality of War

• Roots of Americas World View
• Importance of war or threat thereof in America's
  ethos
• America was then again dragged into WWII.
  Following WWII, however, America was faced with a
  new problem what to do about the hundreds of
  thousands of dispossessed persons in devastated
  countries. America could no longer maintain an
  isolationist posture it had the material and
  moral wherewithal to help to rebuild Europe (self
  interest and altruism) therefore it had the
  obligation.

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Americas ethos Centrality of War

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Proposition Americas origins are those of
  fleeing European tyranny (King George III, et
  al.) Americas peculiar form of governmenta
  representative democracywith independent
  branches of government providing founding
  documents to protect civil liberties (political
  freedom) checks and balances one on another was
  to preclude a government becoming to overbearing
  (tyrannical).

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Americas ethos

• Proposition Thrust into this new position,
  America became and internationalist nation,
  maintaining a standing military, basing troops
  around the world, the Marshall Plan to rebuild
  Europe, etc. Said internationalism morphed into
  interventionism during Cold War.

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Americas ethos

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Note, at the three conferences on post-War
  Europe, America asked only that there be
  elections at the end of a necessary occupation
  whereby occupation would be supplanted by peoples
  deciding for themselves how to organize and
  govern themselves.
• Unfortunately, Americas former ally, the USSR,
  almost immediately began to undermine any
  possibility for elections with the allotted
  two-year timeframe.

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Americas ethos

• Introduction Roots of Americas World View
• Cold War Orthodoxy
• Consequently, America realized a new tyranny
  (arguably more dangerous than Fascism) was
  emerging Soviet Totalitarianism. Americas
  behavior as the Cold War began in earnest can be
  seen as its fundamental faith in political
  freedom uniquely defined and enshrined in our
  founding documents and Americas resultant
  penchant for thwarting tyrants (those who would
  deprive others of their political freedoms).

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Americas ethos Image of IR

• The American Image of Intl Relations
• It explains why every presidentirrespective of
  partycasts war in terms of thwarting tyrants.
  It explains why every president vilifies the
  object of Americas ire before going to war. It
  serves to frame the war in terms of values that
  resonate with the American public.

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Americas ethos Image of IR

• The American Image of Intl Relations
• Consider a few examples Saddam Hussein as an
  evil doer, the Taliban and al Qaeda similarly.
  Milosevic (former Yugoslavia) as a war criminal
  whose crimes equaled Hitlers, Stalins. General
  Noriega as a believer in the occult. Granadas
  leaders as Communist henchmen. Bush (41)
  characterizing Husseins invasion of Kuwait as
  the worse land grab since Hitler.

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Americas ethos Image of IR

• The American Image of Intl Relations
• Thus, Americas world view (ethos) can very
  simply be seen as American values (political
  freedom, preventing tyranny) transposed on the
  global stage following American supplanting
  isolationism with internationalism. If a people
  are being subjugated by a tyrannical government,
  America feels a moral obligation to help the
  subjugated people. During the Cold War and ever
  since, Americas has been in search of an
  appropriate role in international politics.
  Aggressors must be stopped for they threaten
  political freedoms.

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Americas ethos Cold War

• The American Image of Intl Relations
• America had seen both WWI and WWII as resulting
  of various tyrannies. Prior to the 20th Century,
  US foreign policy consisted of three
  cornerstones
• isolationism
• the Monroe Doctrine and
• free trade-commercial expansionism.

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Americas ethos Cold War

• Americas View of the Origins of the Cold War
• Following Yalta, Potsdam, Tehran, Truman thought
  ill of all the allies and their willingness to
  carve up the world according to their former
  buffer states or colonial possessions. All
  Truman wished was to conclude an arrangement
  whereby the various areas would quickly be able
  to form their own types of governments. Thats
  why he insisted on elections in two years time.
• Soviet tyranny attempted to thwart the wills of
  peoples who yearned to be free.

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Americas ethos Cold War

• Americas View of the Origins of the Cold War
• Thus, why Truman witnessed the Soviets behind an
  insurgency in Greece, stirring up a minority
  (Communists) against non Communists in Germany,
  Poland, Hungary, . . . He promulgated the Truman
  Doctrine.

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Americas ethos Truman Doctrine

• Americas View of the Origins of the Cold War
• At the present moment in world history nearly
  every nation must choose between alternative ways
  of life. And the choice is too often not a free
  one. One way of life is based upon the will of
  the majority, free institutions, representative
  government, free elections, guarantees of
  individual liberty, freedom of speech and
  religion, and freedom from political oppression.
  The second way of life is based upon the
  imposition of the will of a minority upon a
  majority, upon control of the press and other
  means of communication by a minority, and upon
  terror and oppression.
• I believe that it must be the policy of the
  United States to give support to free peoples who
  are attempting to resist subjugation by armed
  minorities or outside forces. It must be our
  policy to assist free peoples to work out their
  own destinies in their own way.
• It is imperative to our security thay we help the
  Greek nation to preserve its free institutions.
  Our help must be primarily in the form of the
  economic and financial aid which is necessary for
  the creation of a stable economic structure in
  Greece.

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Americas ethos Image of IR

• Americas View of the Origins of the Cold War
  Discuss George Kennans Containment, which
  became the framework of US foreign policy for the
  next fifty years (1947-2001). Even after the
  USSR imploded, US foreign policy continued to be
  Containment. Even from 199, arguably through
  2001 US foreign policy remained containment. The
  only variable was whom?

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American ethos continuity

• Continuity of US Foreign Policy Korea and Viet
  Nam
• Examples.
• World problems were a result of Communist
  aggression
• Communist expansions cannot be appeased (lessons
  of Munich)
• Due to USs unique position (moral and economic
  wherewithal) the US must bear most of the burden
  of Containment
• Fighting a small was now is better than a bigger
  war later (Roosevelt lesson from WWII).

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Americas ethos end of CW

• The End of the Cold War why did it end? Many
  proximate causes but on balance because nine
  presidents (4 Democrats, 5 Republicans)
  implemented Containment with persistence and
  patience.
• America and the New World (dis)Order
• Again America searched for an appropriate role
  following the end of the Cold War. Recall, it
  searched for a new tyranny to contain and cast
  about for some time with international
  drug-lordism (Panama) Islamic fundamentalism
  (1993 attempt on the Trade Centers) nationalism
  (various iterations in Yugoslavia) and back now
  to Jihadism. Each seen as a tyrant needing
  Americas attention.

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Americas ethos

• U.S. View of the Developing World The US views
  the developing world essentially as a matter of
  stability. There must be stability in the GS so
  that industrialization may take place, for new
  trade partners, global commons, etc. US is
  somewhat sympathetic to the plight but tends to
  think free trade fixes all and therefore has not
  pushed the New International Economic Order as it
  once said it would.
• U.S. View of the Asia US-Japan, US-China, Pac
  Rim, . . .
• U.S. View of the EU/Europe NATO yet differences
  w/ EU
• U.S. and Global Security status quo

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Americas ethos Conclusion

• Conclusion
• The US has gone through two traumatic changes in
  the 20th and now 21st Centuries. It went from
  and isolationist (city on the hill) to one of the
  worlds two superpowers, to the only superpower,
  and now to a global war on terrorism (the
  identifiable tyranny). Its mythology included
  the idea that it has been a reluctant participant
  in war but having been dragged into them with
  some frequency, will never go back to its
  isolationist past.