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From Vietnam to Afghanistan, U.S. leaders have had great difficulty disentangling the United States from faraway military interventions. William McKinley's 1898 decision to annex the Philippines reveals why, through a phenomenon called the "meddler's trap." The meddler's trap denotes a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. The inflated valuation is driven by a cognitive bias called the endowment effect, according to which individuals tend to overvalue goods they feel they own. A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect. Following the U.S. victory in Manila during the War of 1898, McKinley doubted Filipino civilizational capacity to self-govern, believed that a U.S. departure from the Philippines would cause chaos and great power war, and believed that U.S. governance could forestall that outcome. Because he had already deployed troops to the Philippines, McKinley also felt ownership over them, and this endowment effect inflated his valuation of the archipelago. Together, these mutually reinforcing beliefs produced the meddler's trap and the United States' largest annexation outside its hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians now recognize the political significance the Protestant ecumenical movement of the early twentieth century. American ecumenists contributed to the architecture of international organization and were among the first to promote a global discourse of human rights, and ecumenical plans for world order were designed for the peaceful spread of national self-determination and to combat racial prejudice. Ecumenical missionaries were at the forefront in reconceiving race relations, globally as well as in the United States. But the overriding ecumenical concern was the creep of secularism, which, despite their modernism and liberalism, ecumenists saw as the root of all evil. In 1945, when forced to choose between their vision of world peace as secured through international organization and their desire for racial equality, ecumenists sacrificed the latter so as to protect religious liberty and advance the Protestant interest. Ironically, despite their longstanding criticisms, ecumenists had to accept the dictates of national sovereignty for the sake of religious universalism. The contours of the liberal international system that resulted from this compromise remain to this day. In addition to primary-source research, this article is based on a synthesis of a tsunami of recent secondary literature on liberal Protestant internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a reexamination of sport in relation to American Exceptionalism and the concept of the U.S. as a transoceanic empire as of 2015. American territories such as Puerto Rico are addressed, along with U.S. sports history and foreign relations. The views of British and American sports historians such as Ernest May, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Trevor B. McCrisken are examined, as well as U.S. history between the colonial era and the nineteenth century.

When the United States invaded Nicaragua in 1912 the popular reaction in El Salvador was so strong that it completely upended politics. The article argues that this anti-imperialist movement, completely ignored by the current historiography, forced Salvadorean governments to make decisions regarding foreign policy that would have been unthinkable had it not been for the pressure from below. Popular pressures contributed to limit the scope of the final version of the Chamorro–Bryan Treaty between the United States and Nicaragua. The treaty did not include Platt Amendment-like provisions. Moreover, the Wilson administration abandoned the idea of extending a protectorate to all the Central American countries and building a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress has abdicated its role at the center of U.S. political life. As a result, the constitutional powers that should be exercised by Congress in both domestic and foreign policy have been progressively appropriated by the executive branch. At times, presidents have seized those powers through exigent circumstances or congressional desuetude and ineffectiveness. Just as frequently, however, Congress has been willing--if not eager--to cede those prerogatives to the president whether for the sake of expediency, emergency, efficiency, electoral maneuvering, or in a deliberate effort to deflect political consequences. This has made the country less democratic, more authoritarian, and decreasingly likely to solve complex problems that require a broad range of perspectives and thoughtful deliberation. The article explores how this abdication has occurred throughout U.S. history in a variety of areas, including U.S. foreign relations, the constitutional war powers, national emergencies, and delegations of power. This article is a revised and expanded version of the author's presidential address at 2019 annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, delivered August 1, 2019, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the imperialist actions by the U.S. in North America and around the world. Also cited are how U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska in late 19th century as the first step towards U.S. imperialism, how Alaska's physical separation from the other U.S. states inspired U.S.' transition to an overseas empire from a continental empire, Daniel Immerwahr's analysis of the territoriality of U.S. empire, as well as the impact of the Spanish-American War on U.S. imperialism.

An essay is presented which discusses accomplishments and legacy of historian David F. Schmitz particularly his significant contributions to U.S. foreign relations historiography. Topics explored include his education at Rutgers University in New Jersey and teaching career at Whitman College in Washington, the awards he earned such as the Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award, and his influence on his students and colleagues in the historical profession.

What strategies does the United States pursue when it no longer perceives overt military intervention as politically viable or desirable but the problems or issues for which it was formerly undertaken remain? This analysis identifies three such periods in American foreign policy since the United States became a World Power and draws from the work of Peter Hall to develop a typology of strategies according to the magnitude of policy change. These range from adjustment in the settings of interventionism – persistence; the substitution of alternative instruments of foreign policy – ameliorism; and the principled rejection of interventionism in conjunction with a more systematic critique of prevailing foreign policy assumptions – transformationalism. Yet each approach is beset by certain structural limits and contradictions arising from the domestic politics and constitutional-institutional system of the United States that are important in understandiing and appreciating more fully the challenges – and opportunities – of the period 'after interventionism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States–China relationship is more likely than not to slide into economic and military competition, despite the perhaps best intentions of both states. This new bipolar competition is not inevitable. The key question is whether both governments have the self-restraint to limit domestic rent-seeking interests who will undoubtedly demand protection at home and exclusivity in their spheres of influence abroad. If not, the new superpowers will, like great powers in the past, ‘race’ for economic privileges that can quickly divide the world up into exclusive blocs. Like the security dilemma, great powers need not actually exclude one another from their economic zones; the fear of exclusion alone is enough to ignite the process of division. There was always some likelihood of a competitive economic spiral given China’s close business–government relations in a ‘state-capitalist’ economy. Now, for the first time in seven decades, there is a chance that the United States, in the grips of economic nationalism, might abandon its historic policy of free trade and ignite a new race for economic privilege as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through its ambivalence towards its global security alliances, abrogation of free trade treaties and questioning of globalization, the Trump administration has argued that the United States-led liberal international order is too burdensome. How accurate is this portrayal? Drawing on theories of hegemonic leadership, the paper argues that the US national interest became globalized in the postwar international system and the US-led liberal order has given it enormous positional advantages. These include the capacity to shape the international preferences of other states, externalize domestic economic crises and construct the kind of international economy it wanted. Despite growing international competition, the US still has essentially the same global interests. However, neo-liberal globalization has weakened the domestic consent for American leadership among large sections of the American working class, who have rationally rejected continued US commitment to a system that has deepened economic inequality in the US. Trump has ridden the wave of this discontent, and although US elites may wish to return to the status quo after President Trump, these structural issues will remain. Trump may well do irreparable damage to the liberal order and thus, more broadly, to the West. While imperfect, the liberal order is still the 'best of a bad bunch' in terms of forms of systemic order on offer, and if the luxury of choice remains after Trump, a new domestic and international social contract is needed to revive US global leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Early American Republic continues to be largely neglected by diplomatic historians, it has been attracting vibrant new historiography taking the "global turn." This forum showcases studies by Nancy Shoemaker, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Rachel Tamar Van, and Courtney Fullilove. Each examines Americans venturing overseas at a time when their secondhand knowledge and firsthand experience of the world was woefully limited. The Early American Republic indicates that we must interrogate a fraught process of globalizing before we can presume any existence of global interconnection. By the 1830s the outcome of American ventures was a world with increasingly more Americans in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the intent of the U.S. to deter adventurism of China in South China Sea and the revisionism of Russia in Eastern Europe.

The images of the Iron Curtain and their resonances accompanied by the standard Cold War narrative persist in contemporary Western culture and collective memory. The cast of mind created in the 1946 Fulton speech centred on the Iron Curtain, has endured beyond the changed geopolitical landscape. Though Churchill’s was a message strewn amongst a series of other similar sentiments, its narrative authority, the clarity of the image, the resonance of the metaphor, wove through the Cold War years; it was referenced frequently as shorthand for a bipolar configuration of power. Eventually, the Berlin Wall became a manifestation of the Curtain and the image, constructed of words, of metaphor, eventually of concrete and wire, it became ametaimage, an allegory ‘of power and value’ that was presented as a neutral reading of the geopolitical landscape, the image of Europe and Cold War confrontation [W. J. T. Mitchell,Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 157]. Churchill was not alone in the creation of the message, certainly he explored options for diplomacy in the 1950s, but his was the captivating image, and image that made accommodation along lines of the ‘one world’ agenda advanced by Franklin Roosevelt, by pragmatists and realists, later, Nixon and Bush Sr., more difficult. Gorbachev identified the conventional Cold War thinking as the ‘Fulton model’. In his vision for the post-Cold War era he sought to avoid this Cold Warmentaliteand through his 1988 UN speech and other initiatives to produce a ‘Fulton in reverse’. Yet the wall endures in our culturalmentalite, and in our cultural and institutional conception of the era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between Native Americans and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Emphasis is given to topics such as diplomatic relations with Native Americans within the context of U.S. imperialism, continental expansion, and the efforts of the federal government to eradicate native polities, cultures, and identities. Other topics include the cultural assimilation of Native Americans, the impact of the federal reservation system, and the legal status of indigenous people.

Incorporating previously-untapped Dominican, Costa Rican, and Cuban sources, this article reveals how the international Cold War and US policy towards Guatemala overlapped with long-standing regional conflicts in the greater Caribbean basin. During the post-war democratic openings, exiles with patron presidents or dictators composed two loosely-formed networks seeking to destabilise opposing governments. The resulting inter-American conflicts contributed to critical events in the region, most notably US officials’ Cold War-influenced policy to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in the early 1950s. These conflicts persisted and continued overlapping with the international Cold War while often challenging US officials’ Cold War goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Debunking the common laissez-faire myth surrounding turn-of-the-century American foreign relations allows for a reconceptualization of American imperialism from 1890 to 1913. The Republican Party, the party of protectionism, found itself riven by internal disagreements over the future of the protectionist system and U.S. imperial expansion. From within Republican protectionist ranks arose a progressive wing that increasingly looked beyond the home market for the country’s growing American agricultural and manufacturing surpluses. They did so against staunch anti-imperial opposition not only from American free-trade independents, but also from the Republican Party’s isolationist home-market protectionists, who yet feared or disdained foreign markets and colonial acquisitions. These progressive Republican proponents of empire combined coercive trade reciprocity with protectionism—an expansive closed door—and worked hard to extend American imperial power through informal means of high tariff walls, closed U.S.-controlled markets, and retaliatory reciprocity if possible, by formal annexation and military interventionism when necessary. The American Empire thus arose owing to the imperialism of economic nationalism, not the imperialism of free trade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]