Foreign Diplomacy

In US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy, a team of international scholars examines how the relationship between foreign policy and electoral politics evolved through the latter half of the 20th century. Covering all presidential elections from 1940 to 1992 - from debates over American entry into World War II to the aftermath of the Cold War - the contributors correct the conventional wisdom that domestic issues and the economy are always definitive.

Americans frequently criticize US foreign policy for being overly costly and excessively militaristic. With its rising defense budgets and open-ended "forever wars," US foreign policy often appears disconnected from public opinion, reflecting the views of elites and special interests rather than the attitudes of ordinary citizens. The Commander-in-Chief Test argues that this conventional wisdom underestimates the role public opinion plays in shaping foreign policy.

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way."

Paving the Way for Reagan closely examines the ideas and opinions conveyed by the magazines in relationship to their critiques of the dominant liberal foreign policy events of the 1960s and 1970s. Revealed is how the journalists' key insights and assessments of the US strategies on Vietnam, China, the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT), the United Nations, the Panama Canal, Rhodesia, and the Middle East applied pressure to leaders on the Right within the GOP who they believed were not being faithful to conservative principles.