Foreign policy of the United States
Under the Supreme Court decisions United States v. Pink (1942) and Reid v. Covert (1957), these have the force of law only to the degree they were made by exercising a power in the scope of the president's authority.
[26] In response to the Russian revolutions, President Wilson's Fourteen Points was developed from his idealistic Wilsonianism program of spreading democracy and fighting militarism to prevent future wars.
Roosevelt helped establish terms for a post-war world among potential allies at the Atlantic Conference; specific points were included to correct earlier failures, which became a step toward the United Nations.
The American economy roared forward, doubling industrial production, and building vast quantities of airplanes, ships, tanks, munitions, and, finally, the atomic bomb.
The United States extended its influence in the years after World War II, enacting the Marshall Plan to support the reconstruction process in European countries and seeking to combat Communism through containment.
Peter Baker of The New York Times reported on the eve of his first foreign trip as president that the global diplomatic community had devised a strategy of keeping interactions brief, complimenting him, and giving him something he can consider a victory.
While China's influence in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Africa is still hindered by commercial and currency-related U.S. trade policies, it is perceived more and more as a peace negotiator than a communist aggressor, particularly outside of Europe and North America.
[56] In some cases the arguments against participation include that the United States should maximize its sovereignty and freedom of action, or that ratification would create a basis for lawsuits that would treat American citizens unfairly.
[58] The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) manages the bulk of bilateral economic assistance, while the Treasury Department handles most multilateral aid.
In September 2005,[68] the following countries were identified: Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
Notably absent from the 2005 list were Afghanistan, the People's Republic of China and Vietnam; Canada was also omitted in spite of evidence that criminal groups there are increasingly involved in the production of MDMA destined for the United States and that large-scale cross-border trafficking of Canadian-grown cannabis continues.
[72] On May 30, 2009, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged the nations of Asia to build on this hub and spoke model as they established and grew multilateral institutions such as ASEAN, APEC and the ad hoc arrangements in the area.
[101] In February 2007, the U.S. started formal negotiations with Poland and Czech Republic concerning construction of missile shield installations in those countries for a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system[102] (in April 2007, 57% of Poles opposed the plan).
[102][112] Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, argue in Foreign Affairs that U.S. missile defenses are designed to secure Washington's nuclear primacy and are chiefly directed at potential rivals, such as Russia and China.
Terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda have been found to employ intelligence practices similar to those of foreign powers, and American counterintelligence operations play a significant role in counterterrorism.
Stuster states that this list excludes "U.S.-supported insurgencies and failed assassination attempts" such as those directed against Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as instances where U.S. involvement has been alleged but not proven (such as Syria in 1949).
The coup triggered a decades long civil war which claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people (42,275 individual cases have been documented), mostly through 626 massacres against the Maya population perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan military.
[131][132][133][134] An independent Historical Clarification Commission found that U.S. corporations and government officials "exercised pressure to maintain the country's archaic and unjust socio-economic structure",[132] and that U.S. military assistance had a "significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation".
[135] During the massacre of at least 500,000 alleged communists in 1960s Indonesia, U.S. government officials encouraged and applauded the mass killings while providing covert assistance to the Indonesian military which helped facilitate them.
[136][137][138][139][140] This included the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta supplying Indonesian forces with lists of up to 5,000 names of suspected members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), who were subsequently killed in the massacres.
[147] In 1970, the CIA worked with coup-plotters in Chile in the attempted kidnapping of General René Schneider, who was targeted for refusing to participate in a military coup upon the election of Salvador Allende.
A majority of Russian respondents named the United States as the greatest threat, as well as significant minorities in China, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Argentina, Greece, Turkey, and Pakistan.
[166][167][168] In early 2017, the U.S. faced criticism from some scholars, activists and media outlets for dropping 26,171 bombs on seven countries throughout 2016: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Accordingly, since the mid-1980s, under President Ronald Reagan, there has been an increase in levels of foreign direct investment going to emerging market democracies relative to countries that have not undertaken political reforms.
[187] The U.S. has faced criticism for backing right-wing dictators that systematically violated human rights, such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile,[188] Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay,[189] Efraín Ríos Montt of Guatemala,[190] Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina,[191] Hissène Habré of Chad[192][193] Yahya Khan of Pakistan[194] and Suharto of Indonesia.
Friendly tyrants resisted necessary reforms and destroyed the political center (though not in South Korea), while the 'realist' policy of coddling dictators brought a backlash among foreign populations with long memories.
[198][199] Some critical scholars and journalists, including Jason Hickel and Vincent Bevins, argue that the U.S. backed such dictators in order to reinforce Western business interests and to expand capitalism into countries of the Global South who were attempting to pursue alternative paths.
[199] The U.S. Intelligence Oversight Board writes that military aid was cut for long periods because of such violations, that the U.S. helped stop a coup in 1993, and that efforts were made to improve the conduct of the security services.
[208] Nevertheless, according to historian Daniel Goldhagen, during the last two decades of the Cold War, the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of the Soviet Union.
[211] W. John Green contends that the United States was an "essential enabler" of "Latin America's political murder habit, bringing out and allowing to flourish some of the region's worst tendencies".
