This chapter examines US foreign policy during the Cold War, beginning with an overview of the main historical developments in US policy. It first considers the origins of the Cold War and containment, focusing on the breakdown of the wartime alliance between the United States and the USSR, the emergence of US–Soviet diplomatic hostility and geopolitical confrontation, and how the Cold War spread beyond Europe. It then explains how the communist revolution in China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 propelled the US towards a much bolder and more ambitious containment policy. It also looks at US military interventions in the third world, the US role in the ending of the Cold War, and the geopolitical, ideational, and/or socio-economic factors that influenced American foreign policy during the Cold War. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the dual concerns of US foreign policy.
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6. American foreign policy during the Cold War
Richard Saull
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15. Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Operations
Sheena Chestnut Greitens
This chapter analyses the dynamics of humanitarian intervention and peace operations. It begins with a discussion of the changing nature of peacekeeping since the cold war and how peacekeeping expanded in the post-cold war period, creating demand, opportunities, and incentives for intervention that resulted in an unprecedented increase in the number and scale of military interventions by United Nations forces. Today, humanitarian interventions are larger, more complex affairs. The chapter goes on to examine how post-cold war operations shaped peacekeeping debates; peacekeeping since 2000; the benefits and challenges of the regionalization of peacekeeping; and evolving norms in contemporary peacekeeping. It also considers the politics of humanitarian intervention, especially at the UN Security Council, and how public opinion of humanitarian intervention is shaped by media coverage and casualties. Finally, it describes the military character of peace operations as well as problems and prospects surrounding humanitarian intervention and peace operations.
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13. Violent Conflict and Intervention
Astri Suhrke, Torunn Wimpelmann, and Ingrid Samset
This chapter analyses patterns of violent conflict in the developing world since the onset of decolonization. It examines shifts in how scholars and policymakers have understood such conflicts, and how these understandings have informed dynamics of foreign interventions and the international peace-building regime that developed in the 1990s. After providing an overview of decolonization and its aftermath, the chapter considers conflicts over social order during the Cold War as well as the nature of conflicts in the post-Cold-War period. It also discusses new forces that shaped conflict during the first decades of the twenty-first century, focusing on militant Islam and the ‘war on terror’, ‘people power’ and its aftermath, and the link between peace-building and military intervention in a multipolar world.
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4. American foreign policy during the Cold War
Richard Saull
This chapter offers a theoretically informed overview of American foreign policy during the Cold War. It covers the main historical developments in U.S. policy: from the breakdown of the wartime alliance with the USSR and the emergence of the US–Soviet diplomatic hostility and geopolitical confrontation,to U.S. military interventions in the third world and the U.S. role in the ending of the Cold War. The chapter begins with a discussion of three main theoretical approaches to American foreign policy during the Cold War: realism, ideational approaches, and socio-economic approaches. It then considers the origins of the Cold War and containment of the Soviet Union, focusing on the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. It also examines the militarization of U.S. foreign policy with reference to the Korean War, Cold War in the third world, and the role of American foreign policy in the ending of the Cold War.
