POLITICAL SCIENCE

Exterior Politics of USA



Exterior Politics of USA

Administration of Jimmy Carter

It was after G. Ford ended the Nixon administration, the new administration of Jimmy Carter, was initially proposed as the theme of its foreign policy which entailed leadership without hegemony as well as the development of global interdependence, to link the North to the South and East. The strategic doctrine, however, remained aggressive but less directly realistic. It replaced the policy of balance of power politics of the world order and announced internationalist neoliberalism that dominated during the Clinton administration at the end of the twentieth century, noting that in the near future, the issues of war and peace will be more a function of economic and social problems, rather than military security issues that have dominated international relations since World War II (www.thepresidency.org).

Minister C. Vance's Stand

Between 1976 and 1978, U.S. policy of the South and East was influenced by the positions of the Foreign Minister C. Vance. In this period, U.S. negotiated with the government of Omar Torrijos the return of the Panama Canal, and allowed Israel and Egypt to make peace. Subsequently, the aggressive national security adviser, Z. Brzezinski, got their opinions which were more decisive, and Vance was removed from the government. As one historian states that in 1979, President returned to aggressive themes of the early Cold War. The storming of the American embassy by Iranian revolutionaries in November and a Soviet invasion on Afghanistan in December 1979 Carter completed the conversion of a Cold Warrior.

Carter withdrew from negotiations with the USSR on the SALT II treaty in January 1980, and announced that his country would boycott the Olympic Games to be held in Moscow. It also organized an embargo of technologically advanced equipment on the USSR, and increased the military budget.

Need of a Military Strategy

In March 1977, Carter noted the need for moral equivalent of war strategy to reduce dependence on imported oil, and proclaimed the Carter Doctrine whereby the U.S. intervening to defend its national interests in case the USSR (or other adversary or competitor), threatening the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the U.S. or its allies.

Carter Doctrine is the basis of subsequent military interventions alogn with many aspects and specifically entails that U.S. has undertaken in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. During the Cold War, however, the U.S. acted carefully, respecting not only the integrity of the USSR (Soviet Asian republics) but also the "zone of influence", demarcated by the availability of reciprocal strategic systems capable of entering a general thermonuclear confrontation, and the availability of bases and lines supply. So, in the late 1970s, militaristic and warlike tendencies within society and the U.S. government arose whereby along with US, England and other metropolitan countries, was preparing to launch a strategic offensive attack against their enemies, to get back to USSR, and secondly the "dissent" and "wars of liberation" in the Third World. The second half of the Carter administration and was oriented towards ...