U S Foreign Policy And The Politics Of Apology

Acts of contrition and transitional justice—admission of wrong, apology, and reparations—have become fashionable in the discourse of international affairs. Using a case-study approach that inspires student discussion of concrete examples, this text addresses important questions about the politics of apology in relation to some of the most controversial cases of US foreign policy over the past fifty years: Vietnam, Nicaragua, and the most recent war in Iraq. Loramy Gerstbauer offers an original, transdisciplinary, and accessible argument for the practical value of contrition, forgiveness, and reconciliation in international relations while examining why the United States has been a less than contrite nation and offering a prescription for how to change this state of affairs.

Governments increasingly offer or demand apologies for past human rights abuses, and it is widely believed that such expressions of contrition are necessary to promote reconciliation between former adversaries. The post-World War II experiences of Japan and Germany suggest that international apologies have powerful healing effects when they are offered, and poisonous effects when withheld. West Germany made extensive efforts to atone for wartime crimes-formal apologies, monuments to victims of the Nazis, and candid history textbooks; Bonn successfully reconciled with its wartime enemies. By contrast, Tokyo has made few and unsatisfying apologies and approves school textbooks that whitewash wartime atrocities. Japanese leaders worship at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war criminals among Japan's war dead. Relations between Japan and its neighbors remain tense. Examining the cases of South Korean relations with Japan and of French relations with Germany, Jennifer Lind demonstrates that denials of past atrocities fuel distrust and inhibit international reconciliation. In Sorry States, she argues that a country's acknowledgment of past misdeeds is essential for promoting trust and reconciliation after war. However, Lind challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that many countries have been able to reconcile without much in the way of apologies or reparations. Contrition can be highly controversial and is likely to cause a domestic backlash that alarms—rather than assuages—outside observers. Apologies and other such polarizing gestures are thus unlikely to soothe relations after conflict, Lind finds, and remembrance that is less accusatory-conducted bilaterally or in multilateral settings-holds the most promise for international reconciliation.

This book looks into the role and effects of public apologies in international relations. It focuses on two major questions - why and when do states issue apologies for historic crimes and how and under what conditions are these apologies successful in remedying conflictive relationships? In recent years, we have witnessed an unseen popularity of apologies, with numerous politicians, managers and clergymen being eager to apologise and atone for the wrong-doings of their countries or institutions. Public apologies, thus, are a new and highly interesting, while nevertheless still puzzling phenomenon, the precise role and meaning of which in international politics remains to be explored. This book sets out to do exactly this. Focusing in particular on state apologies, it assembles twelve detailed empirical case studies which deal with the two questions raised above. In the first part, the case studies reconstruct the processes in which state representatives react to calls for public atonement, and in the second part the case studies explore the reactions to the apology and evaluate signs for its success or failure. All case studies are based on a theoretical framework which is outlined in the introduction to the book and helps develop tentative assumptions about the emergence and the effects of state apologies, drawing on different strands of literature, such as political science, philosophy, sociology or psychology. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of conflict reconciliation, international relations and transitional justice.

​​​​​​ The Politics of Reparations and Apologies examines the evolution and dynamics of reparation politics and justice. The volume introduces the key concepts, theories, and terms associated with social movements and in particular, the redress and reparation movement (RRM). Drawing from RRMs that have their foundation in World War II--the German genocides, the United States internments, and the Japanese “comfort women” system-- the volume explores each case study’s relative success or failure in achieving its goals and argues that there are overarching trends that can explain success and failure more generally in the RRM movement. Using the backdrop of international criminal law and normative concepts of reparations, the volume establishes and analyzes the roles of reparations and apologies in obtaining transitional justice. In each case study, there is a detailed rundown of the political actions that were attempted to obtain redress and reparation for the victims, of how successful the attempts were, and of the crucial factors which influenced the relative success or failure. Crucially, the volume offers a comparative framework of the actions that contribute to a successful outcome for transitional justice. With the increasing normative expectation of justice in post-conflict situations, this volume is a valuable resource for researchers in international affairs, human rights, political science, and conflict studies.

The new edition of this leading reader for courses in American foreign policy offers students an up-to-date, highly accessible introduction to the broad array of domestic factors influencing U.S. policymakers. Editor James M. McCormick has carefully selected two dozen current insightful and sometimes controversial essays by a distinguished group of leading experts-- scholars, journalists and public officials--including 11 new and 7 updated contributions. In his introduction, McCormick evaluates the challenges facing U.S. foreign policy makers in recent years and assesses the Obama Administration's successes and failures in its efforts to pursue a new direction in American foreign policy. The volume is then divided into three major parts with an opening essay by the editor to place each part in context and then a selection of essays that analyzes the topic in that part in more detail. Part I, "The Societal Environment," contains a series of articles on the position of interest groups, the impact of military experience, the effect of public opinion, and the role of elections and political parties on foreign policy. Part II, "The Institutional Setting," examines how various political institutions, such as Congress, the presidency, and various bureaucracies (e.g., the National Security Council, the intelligence community) shape American foreign policy. Part III, "Decision makers and Their Policymaking Positions," provides various case analyses over several administrations to illustrate how individuals and bureaucracies affect the foreign policy decision making at the highest levels of government.

This edited volume addresses the issue of threat inflation in American foreign policy and domestic politics. The Bush administration's aggressive campaign to build public support for an invasion of Iraq reheated fears about the president's ability to manipulate the public, and many charged the administration with 'threat inflation', duping the news media and misleading the public into supporting the war under false pretences. Presenting the latest research, these essays seek to answer the question of why threat inflation occurs and when it will be successful. Simply defined, it is the effort by elites to create concern for a threat that goes beyond the scope and urgency that disinterested analysis would justify. More broadly, the process concerns how elites view threats, the political uses of threat inflation, the politics of threat framing among competing elites, and how the public interprets and perceives threats via the news media. The war with Iraq gets special attention in this volume, along with the 'War on Terror'. Although many believe that the Bush administration successfully inflated the Iraq threat, there is not a neat consensus about why this was successful. Through both theoretical contributions and case studies, this book showcases the four major explanations of threat inflation -- realism, domestic politics, psychology, and constructivism -- and makes them confront one another directly. The result is a richer appreciation of this important dynamic in US politics and foreign policy, present and future. This book will be of much interests to students of US foreign and national security policy, international security, strategic studies and IR in general. Trevor Thrall is Assistant Professor of Political Science and directs the Master of Public Policy program at the University of Michigan - Dearborn. Jane Kellett Cramer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon.

In A Place for Apology, author Shu Kishida examines America's foreign policy strategies with Japan. The author contemplates whether or not Japan is America's satellite nation, a question on the mind of many Japanese. Professor Kishida contends that the problematic pattern of American denial and repression of guilt led to an unsuccessful American occupation of Japan after World War II and the disastrous effect of the Tokyo War Tribunal on the Japanese psyche.

Have we entered an era of the "Imperial Congress"? How and why do members of Congress wield power over foreign policy? DOes Congress undermine the national interest when it asserts itself in foreign affairs? Congress is more active in foreign policy than at any time since the 1930s, notes James lindsay, but the important questions raised by this activism have not been fully addressed by contemporary scholars and commentors. In Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy Lindsay offers a timely and comprehensive examination of the role the modern Congress plays in foreign policy. He shows how the resurgence of congressional activism marks a return to the pattern that was once the norm in American politics. He analyzes the distribution of decision-making authority in Congress, reviews the constraints and incentives for members of Congress to become involved in foreign policy,describes committe work, the legislative process, and other institutional structures.