American Foreign Policy Library – serie

Robert V. Daniels’s book Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, first published in 1985, examines the historical contrasts between East and West and elucidates the Russian enigma. The book springs from the thesis that Russia’s national character and its international relations can be understood only in light of the traumas and triumphs, privation and privileges that the country weathered in its unique past under the tsars and the Soviets. The author lays to rest the mistaken American view that Soviet behavior was simply the application of Marxist revolutionary ideology. The character of the Soviet system as it evolved after the Revolution is shown to be a synthesis of revolutionary rhetoric, dictatorial pragmatism, and traditional Russian kinds of behavior. Daniels points out that no part of the world is more alien to Americans than Russia, and he evokes parallels and contrasts with the American experience to clarify the driving forces behind this ill-understood superpower.

North Sea oil, garden suburbs, socialized medicine, ombudsmen, economic diversification, party politics, relations with the US and the USSR—these are some of the exciting and controversial aspects of Scandinavian life in the 1970s that Franklin Scott explores in this revised edition of The United States and Scandinavia. An observer of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, Scott shows how the old tradition-oriented communities have transformed themselves into modern change-oriented societies keenly aware of their position in the world.

No detailed description available for "The United States and the Near East".

No detailed description available for "The United States and Turkey and Iran".

Beginning with Bismarck's forging of a nation with "iron and blood," Gatzke tells of Germany's relentless struggle for domination in Europe and in the West, its defeat in two world wars, its division, East Germany's travail, and West Germany's search for identity as a modern democratic state. A discerning statement about Germany and other nations, this book reevaluates for the general reader and the historian the impact of rapid industrialization, the origins of the world wars, the question of war guilt, the decade of Weimar democracy, and the rise and fall of Hitler. Gatzke looks anew at the economic miracle in West Germany and the consequences of making prosperity the cornerstone of a new republic. It is to the realities of these German characteristics as an evolving nation-state that Gatzke relates American foreign policy and perceptions. He recounts the American fluctuations, from favorable to hostile to friendly, as Germany's policies and fortunes changed, and he places the division of Germany in historical perspective.

Analyzing the political culture of the Andean republics of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador and of the United States, Fredrick Pike finds in their relationships deep divergencies in values and goals. Andeans, he shows, have traditionally viewed with suspicion the tenets associated with liberal democracy, secularism, and individualistic capitalism. In a detailed study of Andean politics, economics, social classes, and cultural patterns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pike determines that revolutionary ideology often merely masked the ambitions of aspiring elites anxious to retain the traditional order but wishing to wrest its advantages from incumbent elites. He shows the appeal of Marxism and of recent external-domination, internal-dependency theories, as well as the basic conservatism of land-reform programs and approaches to the "Indian problem." Pike also speculates on whether an "iron law of dependency" is involved in Andean relations with the United States. He discusses the role of multinational corporations and the increasing "privatization of dependency." In the emerging postmodern era, Pike suggests, the values of Western-style modernity are even less viable in Andean America and indeed may not be able to survive in the United States.

No detailed description available for "The United States and Israel".

No detailed description available for "The United States and the Caribbean".

No detailed description available for "The United States and Argentina".

No detailed description available for "The United States and the Southern Cone".

No detailed description available for "The Balkans in Our Time".

No detailed description available for "The United States and South America".