Lecture 4 The Primacy of the Presidency
But first the news:
- Israel
plans to build up West Bank corridor on contentious
land, Haaretz, Jan. 31,
2009
- PLO
condemns the Israeli plan of building new 3500 settlement
units, Ramattan, Feb. 1,
2009
- Disparate
Iraqis Vote for Stability and Security, NYT Feb. 2, 2009
- AP:
U.S. Sold Phosphorus Shells Used in Gaza to Israel , AP Feb. 2, 2009
- Elections
2009 / Livni: These elections are about peace, Haaretz, Feb 2,
2009
- New
Gaza Exchanges Strain Truce,
NYT Feb
2, 2009
Two years ago:
- U.S. Ally and
Foe Are Trying to Avert War in Lebanon NYT Jan 30, 2007
- Europe Resists
U.S. Push to Curb Iran Ties, NYT Jan
30, 2007
- On Iran, Bush
Faces Haunting Echoes of Iraq, NYT
Jan 28, 2007
- Ex - Cheney
Aide Details Media Tactics, AP Jan
27, 2007
- Saudi
Officials Seek to Temper the Price of Oil, NYT Jan 28, 2007
- Israel
May Have Violated Arms Pact, U.S. Officials Say, NYT Jan 28, 2007
- For
the Republic The Nation, Feb 5, 2007
editorial
- Visa
Denials Cut US-Arab Trade by $101 Billion, The
Hill, Jan 28, 2007
- Draft
Law Keeps Central Control Over Oil in Iraq, NYT Jan 20, 2007
Earlier:
- And more thoughts about imperialism:
Kipling Knew What
the U.S. May Now Learn
From last time: The
politics of muddling through, most difficult in the Middle East
where:
- US goals in the
region:
- homeland defense - "global
war on terror"?
- Israel - which
borders?
- oil - for whom?
- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other
friendly governments?
- justice?
- human rights?
- democracy - the American
beacon?
- Pax Americana?
democracy within and among
nations? Where is your preferred vision of the world? - as a start
toward - let me repeat - doing
your own foreign policy making.
President =
- chief of state
- chief executive
- legislator - proposals and vetoes
- party leader
- chief diplomat
- commander in chief
- "educator in chief" (GWB to Bob Schieffer
CBS, Jan 29, 2006)
- chief pastor!
List of presidents and their Doctrines
(recall the Monroe
Doctrine of 1823):
- Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-45
Harry S. Truman 1945-52: Truman
Doctrine - March 12, 1947
(Greece
and Turkey)
Dwight D Eisenhower 1953-60: Eisenhower
Doctrine - Jan. 5, 1957 (Middle
East)
- John F Kennedy 1961-63
Lyndon B Johnson 1963-68
Richard M Nixon 1969-74: Nixon
Doctrine - Nov. 3, 1969 (Guam but
also Iran)
Jerry Ford 1974-76
Jimmy Carter 1977-80: Carter
Doctrine 1979 (Persian Gulf)
Ronald Reagan 1981-88: Reagan
Doctrine - 1981 (Afghanistan)
George H. W. Bush 1989-92
Bill Clinton 1993-2000
- George W. Bush (2001- ): Bush
Doctrine - 2002- (a work in
progress)
Your reading from last week - and this
week's
- Huntington vs. Joe Nye
- US foreign policy menu of traditions:
Hamilton (realism: money and power), Jackson (populism but Trail
of Tears for Cherokee Indians), Jefferson (democratic beacon),
Wilson (make the world safe for democracy).
- Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft -
with David Ignatius, America and the
World
- Brzezinski and Scowcroft vs Bush
Doctrine - post 911 "self-inflicted strategic wound for the
US"
- analyzing the threats and opportunities
- a post imperial age of "global political awakening"
- geopolitics: world strategic center is
Persian
Gulf region - cf.
Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan coined the term "Middle East" in
1902.
- multipolar world
reemerging with China et al? But new realities of
globalization mess up traditioal "realist" balance of power
calculations (Scowcroft p27)
- the new post Cold War complexity: "very
difficult for a mass democracy" like the USA to manage it! -
mixing hard power and soft power...
Security Doctrines
1. Background to Truman
Doctrine
USSR into Iran 1941, 1946 Autonomous Rep of Azerbaijan (Tabriz) and
Kurdish Republic (Mahabad)...finally Russians out in Dec 1946 due to
threat of US mobiliation...and Turkey (Bosphorus fort!) and Greece
threat, with US faced with Brit withdrawal of force by April 1,
1947...Senator Vandenberg, Tom Connolly...Acheson: Greece to Iran:
"rotten apples in a barrel?" (like Asian dominoes near Vietnam in
1960s)
March 12, 1947 Truman Doctrine message to congress...aid to Greece
and Turkey bypassing UN...George Kennan's famous anonymous article in
Foreign Affairs (July 1947) announced US containment policy of Soviet
Union.
2. ISRAEL issue
- Background: Balfour
Declaration of November 1917
committed Britain to developing a Jewish homeland in Palestine from a dismembered
Ottoman Empire.
- Jewish settlers 1882-1908 expanded the
Jewish population from about 25,000 (many/most of them
anti-Zionist) to 75,000 or so
- Mandate Palestine (British rule 1919-48):
demographics of Palestine and a quick pictorial history with
BBC
maps
- Biltmore Declaration 1942 of the World
Zionists called for Palestine (all of it) to be a Jewish
Commonwealth.
1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
- Anglo-American Commission: Morrison Grady
report
- April 1947 UN Special Committee on
Palestine (UNSCOP): self-determination and Truman "restablishment
of a homeland..."
UN
Gen Assembly Partition resolution
Nov 29, 1947 (Internet source: UN
resolutions on the Question of Palestine)
UN Trusteeship Council option...
- role of presidential advisors: Clark
Clifford; David Niles...haberdasher Eddie Jacobson March 1948
critical intervention on behalf of Zionist President Chaim
Weizmann...
- Truman vs Secretary of State George
Marshall - video from 50 Years of War
(PBS series on Arab-Israeli
conflict)
3. Discussion: Consistency of
Truman's foreign policy??
-
Main
page
Feb. 2, 2009
- Department
of Government,
College of
Liberal Arts, University of
Texas at Austin.
- Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to
chenry@mail.utexas.edu
