In 1964, when two American ships were attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin "the American Senate gave Johnson the power to give armed support to assist any country requesting help in defense of its freedom," effectively beginning the Vietnam War without a formal declaration of war (BBC 2009). The wide-scale bombing of the North in 'Operation Rolling Thunder' began in February 1965. By March 1965, the first American ground troops had landed in South Vietnam and by December 1965, there were 150,000 servicemen stationed in the country (BBC 2009).
Richard Nixon was elected to the presidency in 1968, promising a policy of Vietnamization or the taking-over of the war against the North by native Vietnamese troops. However, it would be four more years before substantial withdrawals of American servicemen occurred. Nixon also supported dictators in Laos and Cambodia, and the bombing of Cambodia to terrorize North Vietnamese forces hiding in that nation. In reaction to the continued escalation, "the Senate voted on June 30, 1970 to pass the Church-Cooper amendment with 58 votes. The amendment stipulated that the administration could not spend funds for soldiers, combat assistance, advisors, or bombing operations in Cambodia" (BBC 2009). The war only ended when Congress passed a series of measures, bitterly fought by Nixon, which used the Congressional power of the purse to end funding of the conflict. Finally, American military involvement ended with the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, mainly because "the president knew that he only had a limited amount of time before Congress finally used the power of the purse to bring the war to an end… In 1975, Congress refused President Gerald Ford's last-minute request to increase aid to South Vietnam by $300 million, just weeks before it fell to communist control" (Zelizer 2007).
Q4-Power discusses several issues of human rights and genocide since the 1970s. Select one of these issues -- Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, or Kosovo, and explain what policies the United States pursued and the limitations of American and other outside actions.
The dissolution of communism in Eastern Europe was not a uniformly positive development for all residents of the region. The collapse of the multinational conglomerate nation Yugoslavia into many smaller nations pitted long-standing ethnic rivals against one another. Serbia was widely regarded as the worst aggressor of the many ethnic rivalries that arose because of its policy of ethnic cleansing. The first Bush Administration feared becoming embroiled in a Vietnam-like quagmire, however, and did not send American forces to support the victims of Serbian attacks.
According to Mark Danner, to avoid using U.S. troops to protect vulnerable peoples, such as the Bosnians, against Serb aggression, the U.S. used the specter of Vietnam as an excuse. The result was wide-scale genocide: "mass executions, beatings, mutilations, and rape" of Croats and particularly Bosnian women (Danner 1997). Many analysts claimed that this was mere ethnic strife, not unlike what had occurred when the Vietnamese resisted the French. However, the Serbs were not merely fighting over disputed borders, but openly declared their intention to clear the land of all traces of non-Serbs. The Bosnian Muslims were the most brutalized group, and deemed the most 'alien' to Serbian purity (Danner 1997).
In contrast to the North Vietnamese, who mainly wanted independence, Milosevic wished to expand the borders of Serbia and was emboldened by his view that the U.S. And the UN were unwilling to enforce their disapproval of his policy. He infiltrated the Bosnian army and mobilized the Serbian minority. On May 5, 1992, "all soldiers and officers of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) who came from Bosnia were taken out of the main force, complete with their equipment, and officially became a 'Bosnian Serb Army' of more than eighty thousand fully trained men. Over the objections of the Bosnian government in Sarajevo, the Serb forces took up strategic positions around the country, clearly preparing for war" (Danner 1997).
While the Bush Administration did little to prevent the genocide, other than voice its official dismay, the Clinton Administration's response was slightly more aggressive than the Bush Administration's, but only moderately so. Clinton sent troops into Bosnia to implement the Dayton Accords and rebuild a unified Bosnian state that had been torn asunder by the Serbs. However, Clinton tried to ensure that the troops did not become 'embroiled' in the conflict and severely limited American military actions, fearing "mission creep" or partisanship (Kagan 1997). As a result, "U.S. commanders refused to arrest war criminals -- even those traveling freely through areas which NATO forces nominally controlled. They refused to aid in the resettlement of refugees -- even though soldiers were confronted every month by the demoralizing spectacle of uprooted people being turned back from their old homes by stone-throwing mobs. And they refused to ensure Bosnian citizens safe passage across the bloody ethnic lines that the U.S.-sponsored Dayton peace accords aimed to erase (Kagan 1997). NATO had become actively involved and eventually engaged in air strikes that ultimately brought...
S. officials and other entities were very well informed), but rather on indecisiveness and incapacity to react with direct, concrete means in these situations. 5. The major issues of American foreign policy during the 1950s were generally circumscribed to the Cold War between the U.S. And the Soviet Union and the relations between these two countries, ranging form mutual containment to escalation (towards the end of the decade). The first issue emerging
S. government chose not only to ignore the great humanitarian tragedy but even refused to condemn the killing. The American inaction on the Rwandan genocide places a big question mark on any subsequent action of its government overseas for humanitarian reasons. Besides being accused of using "humanitarianism" as a smokescreen for pursuing its own narrow national interests, the United States is also accused of undermining the United Nations and International Law
Proctor does not merely repeat of make empty allegations that horrific violations are occurring in Cuba upon the natives at the hands of the Spaniards. He has witnessed these abuses with is own eyes on an observational visit, where he went as a skeptic, with, in his own words, "a strong conviction that the picture had been overdrawn," regarding the terrible conditions of the Cuban populace. (Proctor, 1898) Proctor came
A long passage is quoted here by way of showing what all these various writers are concerned about: (Kane, 2003)May 2002 brought the odd spectacle of ex-President Jimmy Carter standing shoulder to shoulder in Havana with one of the U.S. government's oldest enemies, Cuban president Fidel Castro. Carter, on a mission to convey a message of friendship to the Cuban people and to seek some common ground between Cuba
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The research, methods will seek to establish a common basement of the U.S. President Foreign Policy Decision Making Process. Equitable regard will be accorded to the state of affairs that exist between the U.S.A. And Iran Questionnaires Questionnaires are samples of structured questions that will seek directive responses from the respondents in the field of study. In order to arrive at making decisions, there are several considerations that the president of
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