AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

select either OPTION A or OPTION B. Your response to the following question is due at the time of the FINAL EXAM: 6:00pm on Thursday, May 4th. Your responses must be typed, and footnoted where appropriate. If you select OPTION A, in addition to material previously assigned, consult the following two documents: + The Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy + The Plot Against American Foreign Policy Both can be found in the D2L folder Exam & Paper/Essay Instructions, subfolder Final Essays. OPTION A The following preamble is derived from an article entitled The Brilliant Incoherence of Trump’s Foreign Policy, by STEPHEN SESTANOVICH, which appeared in the May 2017 issue of The Atlantic Monthly “Every 20 years or so—the regularity is a little astonishing—Americans hold a serious debate about their place in the world. What, they ask, is going wrong? And how can it be fixed? … A once- every-two-decades debate is an opportunity to measure American policy against all the ways in which the world is changing—and the ways in which U.S. responses have fallen short. It’s a chance to come to grips with the vulnerabilities of the liberal order. To do so means thinking about narrow practical questions and broad conceptual ones. Can America’s leaders manage, explain, and defend this order better in the next decade than they did in the last? At a time when the power of the U.S. is, in relative terms at least, slowly declining, will rules that have long depended on that power continue to matter? Americans have never much liked applying the rules to themselves. What will happen when others feel strong enough to evade them too?” QUESTION: Assuming the current administration has come into office with a blank slate with respect to its foreign policy posture, what advice would you offer on how the administration ought to position itself with respect to the main challenge you anticipate it will face during the coming four years. Given the nature of the challenge you identify, would you advise that it break with prior practices, or should it embark on new approaches? OPTION B 1. The two prerequisites Stanley Hoffman outlines as needed for a decent and effective U.S. foreign policy are: 1) To improve America's own economic and moral condition, and 2) To break dramatically with the foreign policies of both Republicans and Democrats Identify what exactly Hoffman means by the above, and assess how Hoffman, based upon his criteria, would assess the foreign policy of the current Administration. 2. What does Brzezinski see as America’s dual global role in the coming decades? What three conditions does Brzezinski identify as defining the new geostrategic landscape that US foreign policy will find itself having to respond to? Which is most likely, in your opinion, to occupy US attention, and what role should the US adopt to address the condition you singled-out? Stephen Walt writes that: Offshore balancing is the ideal grand strategy for an era of U.S primacy. It husbands the power on which U.S. primacy depends and minimizes the fear that U.S. power provokes. By setting clear priorities and emphasizing reliance on regional allies, it reduces the danger of being drawn into unnecessary conflicts and encourages other states to do more to help us. Equally important, it takes advantage of America's favorable geopolitical position and exploits the tendency for regional powers to worry more about each other than about the United States. But it is not a passive strategy, and does not preclude using the full range of U.S. power to advance core American interests. [2005:223] Discuss the practicality of this viewpoint, given the current state of both domestic and international politics. Would this strategy, in your opinion, offer the prospect of better foreign policy results than any of the alternatives identified by Walt in his Taming American Power? Cite specific contemporary foreign policy issues in your analysis, and be sure to incorporate Walt’s analysis of the role of US foreign policy in the global environment and reactions to it.