With that general definition of policy established, we shall now dig deeper into the specific domain of U. Domestic issues can sometimes become international ones when it comes to such topics as foreign trade. Here, President George W. What is foreign policy? Note too that we distinguish foreign policy, which is externally focused, from domestic policy, which sets strategies internal to the United States, though the two types of policies can become quite intertwined.
So, for example, one might talk about Latino politics as a domestic issue when considering educational policies designed to increase the number of Hispanic Americans who attend and graduate from a U. However, as demonstrated in the primary debates leading up to the election, Latino politics can quickly become a foreign policy matter when considering topics such as immigration from and foreign trade with countries in Central America and South America. The first goal is the protection of the United States and the lives of it citizens, both while they are in the United States and when they travel abroad.
In the international sphere, threats and dangers can take several forms, including military threats from other nations or terrorist groups and economic threats from boycotts and high tariffs on trade. In an economic boycott, the United States ceases trade with another country unless or until it changes a policy to which the United States objects.
Ceasing trade means U. For example, in recent years the United States and other countries implemented an economic boycott of Iran as it escalated the development of its nuclear energy program.
The recent Iran nuclear deal is a pact in which Iran agrees to halt nuclear development while the United States and six other countries lift economic sanctions to again allow trade with Iran. Barriers to trade also include tariffs, or fees charged for moving goods from one country to another. Protectionist trade policies raise tariffs so that it becomes difficult for imported goods, now more expensive, to compete on price with domestic goods.
Free trade agreements seek to reduce these trade barriers. The second main goal of U. Resources include natural resources, such as oil, and economic resources, including the infusion of foreign capital investment for U.
Of course, access to the international marketplace also means access to goods that American consumers might want, such as Swiss chocolate and Australian wine. A third main goal is the preservation of a balance of power in the world.
A balance of power means no one nation or region is much more powerful militarily than are the countries of the rest of the world. The achievement of a perfect balance of power is probably not possible, but general stability, or predictability in the operation of governments, strong institutions, and the absence of violence within and between nations may be.
For much of U. If the European continent was stable, so too was the world. During the Cold War era that followed World War II, stability was achieved by the existence of dual superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and by the real fear of the nuclear annihilation of which both were capable.
Until approximately —, advanced industrial democracies aligned themselves behind one of these two superpowers. Today, in the post—Cold War era, many parts of Europe are politically more free than they were during the years of the Soviet bloc, and there is less fear of nuclear war than when the United States and the Soviet Union had missiles pointed at each other for four straight decades.
However, despite the mostly stabilizing presence of the European Union EU , which now has twenty-eight member countries, several wars have been fought in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Moreover, the EU itself faces some challenges, including a vote in the United Kingdom to leave the EU, the ongoing controversy about how to resolve the national debt of Greece, and the crisis in Europe created by thousands of refugees from the Middle East.
Carefully planned acts of terrorism in the United States, Asia, and Europe have introduced a new type of enemy into the balance of power equation—nonstate or nongovernmental organizations, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS or ISIL , consisting of various terrorist cells located in many different countries and across all continents.
The fourth main goal of U. The payoff of stability that comes from other U. While certainly looking out for its own strategic interests in considering foreign policy strategy, the United States nonetheless attempts to support international peace through many aspects of its foreign policy, such as foreign aid, and through its support of and participation in international organizations such as the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO , and the Organization of American States.
The United Nations UN is perhaps the foremost international organization in the world today. The General Assembly includes all member nations and admits new members and approves the UN budget by a two-thirds majority. The Security Council includes fifteen countries, five of which are permanent members including the United States and ten that are nonpermanent and rotate on a five-year-term basis. The entire membership is bound by decisions of the Security Council, which makes all decisions related to international peace and security.
Now, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, it is common to think of the September 11 terrorist attacks in as the big game-changer. The December Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii was a comparable surprise-style attack that plunged the United States into war.
The war brought about a sea change in international relations and governance, from the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, to NATO that created a cross-national military shield for Western Europe, to the creation of the UN in , when the representatives of fifty countries met and signed the Charter of the United Nations in San Francisco, California.
Republicans are particularly likely to say policies should focus on keeping the U. Democrats are considerably more divided on this issue. While majorities of adults in all age groups say the best way to ensure peace is through good diplomacy, those younger than 50 are more likely to hold this view than older Americans. There are no substantial age differences in views of whether the U. On all three of these measures of foreign policy values, there are substantial age divides within the GOP, while Democratic views differ little by age for two of the three questions.
In general, age differences in these foreign policy views among Democrats are less pronounced. Roughly nine-in-ten Democrats in all age groups say that good diplomacy, rather than military strength, is the best way to ensure peace. Similarly, eight-in-ten or more Democrats in all age groups say the U.
Younger Democrats are, however, more likely than older Democrats to express a willingness to see a country other than the U. Republicans and Democrats offer similarly positive assessments of American involvement in the global economy.
Majorities of all partisan and ideological groups say U. As in the past, attitudes toward U. In recent years, Pew Research Center has transitioned from probability-based telephone surveys to the American Trends Panel , a probability-based online panel. Amy Zegart: The race for big ideas is on. This moment screams for leadership to help forge a sense of order—an organizer to help navigate this complicated mess of challenges, stabilize geopolitical competition, and ensure at least some modest protections of global public goods.
But now we are living through the worst intersection of man and moment in American history. The post-pandemic future of the United States is not preordained. We still get a vote, and we still get to make some fateful choices. They are more complicated than those we faced at the end of the Cold War, when our undisputed primacy cushioned us from our mistakes and sustained our illusions. The United States must choose from three broad strategic approaches: retrenchment, restoration, and reinvention.
Each aspires to deliver on our interests and protect our values; where they differ is in their assessment of American priorities and influence, and of the threats we face.
Each is easy to caricature—and each deserves an honest look. Proponents of retrenchment argue that for too long, friends and foes alike were glad to let the United States underwrite global security while they reaped the benefits.
Europe could spend less on defense and more on social safety nets. China could focus on economic modernization, while America kept the peace. The U. Retrenchment is easily distorted as a kind of nativist isolationism or pathological declinism.
Retrenchment means jettisoning our arrogant dismissiveness of nationalism and sovereignty, and understanding that other powers will continue to pursue spheres of influence and defend them. And it means acknowledging that the U. The main risk in retrenchment lies in taking it too far, or too fast. Any effort to disentangle the United States from the world comes with complicated downsides. There are bigger structural questions too. Even if the U. However sclerotic some of our alliances have become, how confident are American leaders that they can shape our fate better without them?
And would an America retrenching in hard power still be able to play the organizing role on issues like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and global trade, which no other country can play right now?
A case can be made that American diffidence, not hubris, is the original sin. Warts and all, U. It has not driven a wave of public and private investments to enhance U. And while it has brought down the prices of certain highly tradable goods, it has done little to alleviate the growing pressure on American middle-class families from the rising costs of healthcare, housing, education, and childcare.
Making globalization work for the American middle class requires substantial investment in communities across the United States and a comprehensive plan that helps industries and regions adjust to economic disruptions. For decades, U. National security strategists and foreign policy planners have articulated national interests and set the direction of U. That remains a critical perspective, especially at a time when geopolitical competition with China, Russia, and other regional powers is on the rise.
That is not an easy shift to make. It will take better interagency coordination, interdisciplinary expertise, and some policy imagination. It will also require the contributions of a new generation of foreign policy professionals who break free of the mold cast during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath.
Fourth, banish stale organizing principles for U. National security strategists and foreign policy planners in Washington, DC, crave neat organizing principles for U. In fact, these are all surefire recipes for further widening the disconnect between the foreign policy community and the vast majority of Americans beyond Washington, who are more concerned with proximate threats to their physical and economic security.
A foreign policy agenda that would resonate more with middle-class households and, in fact, advance their well-being, should. This may seem like a somewhat less ambitious foreign policy agenda than might be expected from a task force comprised of foreign policy professionals who served in Democratic and Republican administrations from George H. Bush to Barack Obama. And to a large extent it is. That is the point. Middle-class Americans have no illusion that their fate can be walled off from the fate of the world.
They embrace the sense of enlightened self-interest that has motivated U. They appreciate that U. All this requires a larger international affairs budget to retool American diplomacy and development for the twenty-first century.
Middle-class Americans interviewed also understand that the United States must sustain a strong national defense and that, moreover, it is in their economic interests.
Defense spending and the defense industrial base are—and will remain for some time—the lifeblood for many middle-class communities across the country.
0コメント