Reversing Course: Carter's Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and the Failure of Reform - Hardcover

Skidmore, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826512739 ISBN 13: 9780826512734

Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P, 1996

Inhaltsangabe

An examination of the several reasons for the failure of foreign policy reform during the controversial administration of President Jimmy Carter.

In Reversing Course, David Skidmore argues that President Carter's initial foreign policy agenda required a scaling back of U.S. commitments abroad, reflecting a decline in resources, as well as influence, in a world developing in ways necessarily reducing U.S. hegemony. By probing beneath the obvious and carefully sifting the abundant but poorly understood evidence, Skidmore finds at the root of Carter's failed effort an irresistible pressure to reverse a liberal foreign-policy agenda in order to address the effect at home of well-organized conservative criticism. For Skidmore, Carter's course "reversed" toward a traditional containment strategy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union not because of Soviet intransigence or faulty idealism but because Cold War politics sold better in the polls.

While offering significant theoretical arguments, Skidmore carefully anchors his thesis in the day-to-day political give and take among those personalities and events that provoked headlines and commentaries long before they were the stuff of history. Among the telling factors and events analyzed in this book are the Vance/Brzezinski conflict, the support and opposition of Howard Baker, the SALT II Treaty, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to mention only a few.

Although Skidmore draws conclusions that apply to the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations as well, his focus is not on personality but on theory and underlying structures. He provides a demonstration that this structural approach can "be helpful not only in unraveling the mysteries of policy change under Carter but also in specifying the underlying sources of policy vacillation over much of the past two decades." .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Skidmore, Associate Professor of Political Science at Drake University, holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. He has written widely in the fields of American foreign policy, international relations theory, and international political economy.

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In Reversing Course, David Skidmore argues that President Carter's initial foreign policy agenda sought to scale back U.S. commitment's abroad, reflecting a decline in resources, as well as influence, and a world developing in ways necessarily reducing U.S. hegemony. By probing beneath the obvious and carefully sifting the abundant but poorly understood evidence, Skidmore finds at the root of Carter's failed effort an irresistible pressure to reverse a liberal foreign-policy agenda in order to address the effect at home of well-organized conservative criticism. For Skidmore, Carter's course "reversed" tow and a traditional containment strategy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union not because of Soviet intransigence or faulty idealism but because Cold War politics sold better in the polls. While offering significant theoretical arguments, Skidmore carefully anchors his thesis in the day-to-day political give and take among those personalities and events that provoked headlines and commentaries long before they were the stuff of history. Although Skidmore draws conclusions that apply to the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations as well, his focus is not on personality but on theory and underlying structures. Here is persuasive demonstration that this structural approach can "be helpful not only in unraveling the mysteries of policy change under Carter but also in specifying the underlying sources of policy vacillation over much of the past two decades".

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago Press behalf of Vanderbilt Univ. P
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1996
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826512739
• ISBN 13: 9780826512734
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 258
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland