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Fall 1983
Vol 62, Number 1 << Previous: Summer 1983 | Next: Winter 1983/84 >> FIND FOREIGN AFFAIRS ON A NEWSSTAND NEAR YOU  |  |
Foreign Policy and the American Character
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Foreign policy is the face a nation wears to the world. The minimal motive is the same for all states_the protection of national integrity and interest. But the manner in which a state practices foreign policy is greatly affected by national peculiarities.
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Latin American Debt: Act Two
Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski
There is a distinct rumble. Is it the noise of an impending second crisis of Latin American and other developing country debtors, or is it the start-up of world economic recovery, which will gradually pull lenders and borrowers alike away from the edge of a financial abyss?
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At War with Nicaragua
Richard H. Ullman
The Reagan Administration is at war with Nicaragua. Like other wars the United States has fought since 1945 it is an undeclared war. It is also a small war. No U.S. serviceman has yet fired a shot, but American-made bullets from American-made guns are killing Nicaraguans, and the President of the United States has made the demise of the present Nicaraguan government an all-but-explicit aim of his foreign policy.
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The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions
Robert S. McNamara
The public, on both sides of the Atlantic, is engaged in debate on controversial questions relating to nuclear weapons: the desirability of a nuclear freeze; the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles to Western Europe; the production of the MX missile and the B-1 bomber; the development of the neutron bomb; and proposals to reduce the risk of nuclear war by such measures as the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from forward areas and the declaration of a strategy of “no launch on warning.”
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The United States in the World Economy: A Fifty Year Perspective
William Diebold, Jr.
The 1930s deserve their bad reputation. Unemployment, misery, for many people hunger and, for more, the lack of hope, went with all the other ills of the Great Depression. Then Hitler came to power and fascism around the world grew stronger. The invasions of China by Japan and Ethiopia by Italy, and the Franco rebellion in Spain that soon came to be seen as a kind of global civil war—all showed the way the world was going. Driven by economic pressures, the policies of democratic countries became more narrowly nationalistic; bilateral and preferential trade agreements increased and France, Britain and Holland did what they could to assert privileged positions in their colonies. Although the Soviet Union was hardly a worker’s paradise, the very fact that it offered an alternative to collapsed capitalism stirred people’s interest and the Kremlin had new cards to play with. The worried democracies, meanwhile, did little to check the rising strength of fascism and were led to make one concession after another. If the times had any redeeming feature, it was that they made people think.
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The Ploughshares War between Europe and America
Nicholas Butler
Not for the first time, agricultural trade has become a live and contentious issue in Atlantic relations. Questions of access and protection have been subjects of constant concern to American farmers and traders since the establishment of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy 25 years ago. Now, though, under the pressures of surplus stocks of grain and falling farm incomes, there is a new area of contention—competitive subsidies designed to win or ensure shares in an erratic world market. Months of negotiation have failed to resolve the issue and neither the European Community nor the United States has shown any sign of being ready to sacrifice what both define as legitimate economic interests.
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Japan: Stimulus or Scapegoat?
Edson W. Spencer
Japan is today our largest overseas trade partner and the primary source of competition for American industry. This article, therefore, focuses on Japan and to some extent on the electronics industries—including computers, semiconductors and other industrial and consumer electronics equipment—as typical of the high technology areas where competition with Japanese firms is most intense. Most of the measures which will help to make the American electronics industries more competitive apply equally to all American industry.
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The Future of the PLO
Eric Rouleau
The beginning of the end of Yassir Arafat? The Palestine Liberation Front on the point of irrevocable disintegration? The twilight of the Palestinian movement? No sooner had a mutiny been declared in a Fatah barracks in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley last May than the international press was full of such questions -- legitimate, to be sure, but premature to say the least. And the political analysts who hastened to reply in the affirmative often did so without sufficiently taking into account the complexity of the crisis or the roles of the various protagonists -- behind the scenes as well as center stage -- their stated objectives, ulterior motives and miscalculations.
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Turkey's Security and the Middle East
Ali L. Karaosmanoglu
Turkey defines its security options within three interacting strategic environments: the global system, implying mainly Turkey’s position as regards the Soviet Union and the United States; its bilateral relations with Greece, involving mainly Cyprus and the Aegean; and its position within the Middle East subsystem.
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New Opportunities and New Challenges
Valery Giscard d'Estaing
The past—including my past—is over. The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it?” At every moment of life, at every moment of activity, one should mostly envisage the future, and that is the reason for the title of these lectures.
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