Third World Nationalism and the United States After the Cold War

Conventional wisdom from the dominant realist model of international relations suggests that the end of the cold war should lead to strong spillover effects on U.S. relations with Third World states. Specifically, with the dissolution of the superpower struggle, countries on the periphery can no longer be viewed with disapproval by the United States as dominos or Soviet clients or associates, thus paving the way for good relations between them and the remaining superpower. This article argues, however, that Third World nationalism can be expected to continue to exert an important influence on the nature of U.S.-Third world relations. The optimistic prognosis tends to rest on the supposition that U.S.-Third World relations were largely derivative of the central conflict between the two superpowers. Such a view is found most among policy makers who are forced to make sense of a complex environment, but in important ways, it finds a resonance in realist analysis. This article argues that the approach was significantly misguided during the cold war, and it remains so now. A major problem is that the realist framework does not easily accommodate nonsecurity factors or the internal workings and motivations of countries that condition their foreign policies; at best, it offers only a partial explanation. I suggest that tensions in U.S.-Third World relations, ostensibly a result of U.S.-Soviet competition, cannot be understood in full without taking into account a deeper conflict emanating from the domestic politics and ideology of the Third World. This tension may be captured by an expanded and enriched version of the concept of nationalism, which allows phenomena ranging from the drive for postcolonial autonomy

Cold war · Development economics · Economics · Foreign policy · Foreign relations · Ideology · International relations · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Superpower · Third world · World War II · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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