Why did US Foreign Policy Change

How did Economic Superiority influence foreign affairs over the period 1890-1990

1898-1918

• 1890-1904

  • Didn’t influence foreign policy all that much

  • not quite under industrial revolution increases

• 1904

  • Massive economic increase starts influencing foreign policy

  • Teddy Roosevelt - more expansionistic

  • flexing American muscle - great white fleet, Panama Canal, Roosevelt Corollary

• 1909

  • Taft Dollar Diplomacy

  • in an effort to remain isolationist they would try and enforce self sufficiency of other countries

• Wilsonism Ideal

  • Using economic build up and power to influence the direction of the first world war

  • Economic ties to allies enforced it

  • trade and shipping getting disturbed before they entered

1918-1941/45

• 1918-1929

  • The ‘world’s banker’

  • 2 main areas of involvement - international peace and diplomacy and in economically helping other countries

  • furthering the attempt to stay isolationist by using economic superiority to avoid war

  • Young and Dawes Plan

• 1929

  • Wall Street Crash effected whole world because world economy tied so integrally to the dollar

  • lack of economic superiority bred the conditions for Nazism which then forced them into another war - economic superiority had successfully kept it at bay until 1929

  • shows how closely they had been integrated into the world economy even during isolationism

• 1941

  • Pearl Harbour - direct attack on military capabilities

  • economic worry - about Japan taking the Pacific Front - can no longer trade freely in these areas

  • Grew into a superpower through Lend-Lease, lack of damage to factories, successful mobilisation of the civilian population for production

1945

• shift in economic stance

• superpower

• that heavily influenced the direction of foreign policy

  • Marshall Aid

  • Policy of containment relied on economic levity and the ability to pay for military build up as a deterrence

• nuclear superiority as a result of economic strength and economic gap with the USSR

• supplying huge amounts of funds to their interests in Latin America

• could pay their way into anything they wished

• after WW2 → arsenal of democracy

1970s

• stagflation

• economic decline

• unemployment rates high

• cost of Vietnam, Korea and involvement in other countries needed to be limited

• pushed stronger towards detente and disarmament resulting in SALT treaties

  • Could have been achieved before if the economy had crashed earlier

1980s-1990s

• focus on oil as an economic interest heavily pushed USA into involvement in the middle East

• growing cost of the Cold War under Reagan becoming unsustainable → leading him to seek other solutions

• many countries becoming more economically stable and nuclear powers

  • America no longer the largest creditor nation

  • largest debtor nation in history

• had to take a step back in Foreign policy