The Cold War was in many ways a religious war. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and other American leaders believed that human rights and freedom were endowed by God, that God had called the United ...States to defend liberty, and that Soviet communism was evil because of its atheism and enmity to religion. Along with security and economic concerns, these religious convictions helped determine both how the United States defined the enemy and how it fought the conflict. Meanwhile, American Protestant churches failed to seize the moment. Internal differences over theology and politics, and resistance to cooperation with Catholics and Jews, hindered Protestant leaders domestically and internationally. Frustrated by these internecine disputes, Truman and Eisenhower attempted to construct a new civil religion to mobilize domestic support for Cold War measures, determine the strategic boundaries of containment, unite all religious faiths against communism, and to undermine the authority of communist governments abroad.
The Prophetic Conflict INBODEN, WILLIAM C.
Diplomatic history,
01/2014, Letnik:
38, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article traces the development of Reinhold Niebuhr's growing alarm over the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan leading up to World War II, and his corresponding warnings to the United ...States and allied powers of the need to confront fascist aggression. The theme of the "prophetic" shaped Niebuhr's perception of the threat of fascism, both through his concern over the religious liberty of Christian and Jewish voices to bring prophetic judgments against totalitarian governments and through his predictions of the threat that fascist regimes posed to the international order. In the course of the 1930s Niebuhr also refined his doctrine of Christian realism, which both influenced yet differed from the evolution of realism as a theory of international relations. Niebuhr's development over this decade also marked his transition from the margins to the center of American intellectual and political life.
This article assesses the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan's presidency through the lens of conservative internationalism. It finds that the Reagan administration largely embodied the principles of ...conservative internationalism, particularly through its integration of force with statecraft, the priority it gave to cooperative relations with allies, and its support for the global expansion of political and economic liberty.
The world is mired in history again, as historical modes of competition return and historical grievances fuel the policies of multiple revisionist actors. If the end of history has ended, then it ...follows that the time is ripe for an engagement with history's wisdom. We argue that the making of American statecraft-the deliberate, coordinated use of national power to achieve important objectives-can be significantly enhanced by a better understanding of the past. This essay, which draws on the extensive literature on history and statecraft, U.S. foreign policy, and the author's own research and experiences, offers a defense of the use of history to improve statecraft, as well as a typology of ten distinct ways in which an understanding of history can improve government policy.
Reagan Moment Hunt, Jonathan R; Miles, Simon; Inboden, William
12/2021
eBook
In The Reagan Moment, the ideas, events, strategies, trends, and movements that shaped the 1980s are revealed to have had lasting effects on international relations: The United States went from a ...creditor to a debtor nation; democracy crested in East Asia and returned to Latin America; the People's Republic of China moved to privatize, decentralize, and open its economy; Osama bin Laden founded Al Qaeda; and relations between Washington and Moscow thawed en route to the Soviet Union's dissolution. The Reagan Moment places US foreign relations into global context by examining the economic, international, and ideational relationships that bound Washington to the wider world. Editors Jonathan R. Hunt and Simon Miles bring together a cohort of scholars with fresh insights from untapped and declassified global sources to recast Reagan's pivotal years in power. Contributors: Seth Anziska, James Cameron, Elizabeth Charles, Susan Colbourn, Michael De Groot, Stephanie Freeman, Christopher Fuller, Flavia Gasbarri, Mathias Haeussler, William Inboden, Mark Atwood Lawrence, Elisabeth Mariko Leake, Melvyn P. Leffler, Evan D. McCormick, Jennifer Miller, David Painter, Robert Rakove, William Michael Schmidli, Sarah Snyder, Lauren Frances Turek, James Wilson
This article constructs a taxonomy of the various ways that national security policy-makers attempt to use history. It identifies four types of history: experience, memory, tradition, and study. It ...then defines and describes three categories of how history is used in national security policy: predictive, prescriptive, and existential. Each category is distilled further into specific manifestations. The article agrees with existing scholarship that policy-makers often misuse history, but argues that nevertheless policy-makers engage with history in more diverse and complex ways than are commonly understood. Thus before scholars attempt to critique and improve the manner in which policy-makers use history, we should first employ a more sophisticated understanding of the multiple ways that policy-makers approach history in the first place.
Inboden provides his opinions on Anthony Gill's "Migratory Magnet and Merchant Model" (MMMM) in his splendid paper "Religious Liberty & Economic Development: Exploring the Causal Connections." For ...Gill's MMMM seems to describe exactly this phenomenon that he observed firsthand in Dubai: the government of Dubai's decision to gift lands to churches of other religions. With the six potential models, it describes how religious liberty might have a causal relationship with economic growth.
Religious freedom and national security Inboden, William
Policy review (Washington, D.C.),
10/2012, Letnik:
175, Številka:
175
Journal Article, Magazine Article
Recenzirano
In 2002 North Korea admitted to its advanced nuclear weapons program, and Iran's uranium enrichment efforts came to light as well, which only added to concerns about Iran's longstanding sponsorship ...of terrorism. ...tormenting the sacred often also amounts to profaning the international order - and suggests that the purportedly spiritual concerns of religious liberty activists and the secular concerns of security professionals might not be such separate realms.
Early in his presidency Ronald Reagan famously joked of his administration that “sometimes our right hand doesn’t know what our far-right hand is doing.”¹ As with much of President Reagan’s humor, ...this quip had a ring of truth. Especially in the realm of national security policy, in organizational terms the Reagan administration was consumed by division, acrimony, confusion, and even occasional outbreaks of criminal malfeasance, as exemplified by the Iran-Contra affair.
Even setting aside felonious misconduct by renegade staff, a cursory overview of the Reagan administration’s national security system reveals pervasive dysfunction. The National Security Council (NSC) suffered a revolving
In The Reagan Moment , the ideas, events, strategies,
trends, and movements that shaped the 1980s are revealed to have
had lasting effects on international relations: The United States
went from a ...creditor to a debtor nation; democracy crested in East
Asia and returned to Latin America; the People's Republic of China
moved to privatize, decentralize, and open its economy; Osama bin
Laden founded Al Qaeda; and relations between Washington and Moscow
thawed en route to the Soviet Union's dissolution.
The Reagan Moment places US foreign relations into
global context by examining the economic, international, and
ideational relationships that bound Washington to the wider world.
Editors Jonathan R. Hunt and Simon Miles bring together a cohort of
scholars with fresh insights from untapped and declassified global
sources to recast Reagan's pivotal years in power.
Contributors: Seth Anziska, James Cameron, Elizabeth Charles,
Susan Colbourn, Michael De Groot, Stephanie Freeman, Christopher
Fuller, Flavia Gasbarri, Mathias Haeussler, William Inboden, Mark
Atwood Lawrence, Elisabeth Mariko Leake, Melvyn P. Leffler, Evan D.
McCormick, Jennifer Miller, David Painter, Robert Rakove, William
Michael Schmidli, Sarah Snyder, Lauren Frances Turek, James
Wilson
