A historically-grounded examination of United States foreign policy that interrogates the ideological assumptions--whether explicit or tacit--that drive it.

The civil rights movement in the United States drew strength from supporters of human rights worldwide. Once U.S. policy makers--influenced by international pressure, the courage of ordinary American citizens, and a desire for global leadership--had signed such documents as the United Nations charter, domestic calls for change could be based squarely on the moral authority of doctrines the United States endorsed abroad. This is one of the many fascinating links between racial politics and international affairs explored in Window on Freedom. Broad in chronological scope and topical diversity, the ten original essays presented here demonstrate how the roots of U.S. foreign policy have been embedded in social, economic, and cultural factors of domestic as well as foreign origin. They argue persuasively that the campaign to realize full civil rights for racial and ethnic minorities in America is best understood in the context of competitive international relations. The contributors are Carol Anderson, Donald R. Culverson, Mary L. Dudziak, Cary Fraser, Gerald Horne, Michael Krenn, Paul Gordon Lauren, Thomas Noer, Lorena Oropeza, and Brenda Gayle Plummer.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century. Reagan used democracy promotion to refashion the bipartisan Cold War consensus that had collapsed in the late 1960s amid opposition to the Vietnam War. Over the course of the 1980s, the initiative led to a greater institutionalization of human rights—narrowly defined to include political rights and civil liberties and to exclude social and economic rights—as a US foreign policy priority. Democracy promotion thus served to legitimize a distinctive form of US interventionism and to underpin the Reagan administration's aggressive Cold War foreign policies. Drawing on newly available archival materials, and featuring a range of perspectives from top-level policymakers and politicians to grassroots activists and militants, this study makes a defining contribution to our understanding of human rights ideas and the projection of American power during the final decade of the Cold War. Using Reagan's undeclared war on Nicaragua as a case study in US interventionism, Freedom on the Offensive explores how democracy promotion emerged as the centerpiece of an increasingly robust US human rights agenda. Yet, this initiative also became intertwined with deeply undemocratic practices that misled the American people, violated US law, and contributed to immense human and material destruction. Pursued through civil society or low-cost military interventions and rooted in the neoliberal imperatives of US-led globalization, Reagan's democracy promotion initiative had major implications for post–Cold War US foreign policy.

This collection of essays by renowned scholar Amitai Etzioni aims to provoke reconsiderations of basic assumptions of foreign policy by students, academics and practitioners. With chapters focusing on the Middle East, China and the EU, as well as articles with a more global focus, the book offers thought-provoking and insightful perspectives on international foreign policy which challenge existing academic debate in the field. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of foreign policy and international relations.

The former Secretary of State under Richard Nixon argues that a coherent foreign policy is essential and lays out his own plan for getting the nation's international affairs in order.

Leading scholars in the study of congress and US foreign policy address congress’s vital role in determining how and why the US chooses it's international policy agendas. They address key aspects of congressional activism, assertiveness, and acquiescence in an era of divided government and polarized politics.