Interventionism in US foreign policy from Bush to Obama
This chapter considers the evolution of US policy and practice towards foreign military intervention under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and in terms of strategic intent finds no evidence of substantive change. Although the language of the ‘Global War on Terror’ has been replaced by one of a ‘transnational global conflict’ the underlying policy drivers remain the same: America’s security and related interests continue to shape its foreign policy and provide the justification for an exceptionalist interpretation of international law, to the disappointment of those who hoped Obama's election would usher in a new era of strengthened global norms. However, a change in US official thinking is evident in a greater appreciation of the limitations of certain forms of intervention, and in the emergence of alternative policy instruments to deliver US strategic objectives.
UNDERSTANDING AMERICAN STRATEGIC CULTURE AND FOREIGN POLICY THROUGH ROBERT KAGAN: A REVIEW
This paper aims to understand how the American strategic culture and perception of security have been shaped over time and what its main features are. American strategic culture has been nourished from the historical, geographical, and political realities of the country. Being a country founded by This study IR663 of Hence, immigrants, making a great America was also part of the nation-building process. Moreover, the continent's geographical conditions have led the United States of America to be a more powerful state to intervene in political and military issues worldwide. According to Robert Kagan, the interventionist character, the role of security provider, and disfavoring the international law and organizations are the American foreign policy's main features. In this respect, this paper focuses on these three aspects and evaluate them in its limitation. Although there are many studies upon American foreign policy, this study diverges itself from the existing literature by putting Robert Kagan’s interpretations to its center.
The Rise of the Shadow Warriors
THE RECENT WAR in Iraq was, among other things, a powerful advertisement for the effectiveness of the United States' storied special operations forces. Americans are just now learning what role these commandos played in the conflict, but already it has emerged that, during the early days of the fighting, they managed to secure crucial airfields in western Iraq, protect the country's oil fields from saboteurs (fewer than lo Iraqi oil fields were ignited, compared to the more than 700 Kuwaiti fields that were set ablaze in 1991), and, most famously, rescue Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital. Yet these achievements, although impressive, do not fully explain the unprecedented prominence currently enjoyed by special operations forces within the U.S. military. True, such troops may have been well suited to the kind of missions they were given in Iraq. But they also happen to fit precisely into the model of a leaner, more flexible military that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is fighting to create at the Pentagon. And Rumsfeld has made no secret of his plans to thrust special forces into the lead role in the war on terrorism, by using them for covert operations around the globe. The special forces' success in Iraq has also obscured a more ominous consequence of their newfound popularity: that expanding their role in the way Rumsfeld intends could be very dangerous for U.S. foreign policy. Thanks to the vagueness of U.S. law governing covert action,