Roosevelt's Foreign Policy Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Roosevelt's Foreign Policy - Case Study Example During the twenties the American people showed in elections that they were unwilling to join the League, and Roosevelt himself came to distrust it as a distortion of Wilson's project. Advocates of collective security held the United States partly responsible for this distortion because its absence encouraged use of the League for narrowly nationalist purposes by the other victorious Allies. In any case, isolationist sentiment in the Democratic Party became so strong that, in 1932, it was politically expedient for Roosevelt as a presidential candidate to reject United States entry into the League, and this he did before he was nominated. The most important step of the United States government towards collective security before 1933 was the Stimson Doctrine. By it the United States led the world in its first action against an aggression by a first-class power, Japan. It carried into practice the revolution in international law which had occurred since pre First World War days, when the rule had been general consent by the other powers to conquests by one nation and demands for shares in the spoils as compensation. Even the United States had on occasion played that game. When it took the Philippine Islands for itself, it threw a few other Spanish Pacific islands to Germany to quiet its complaints. Japan was always ready to "compensate" the powers, and particularly the United States, for its own gains in Manchuria and China, but the Stimson Doctrine marked a new era in which an aggressor became a criminal who could not bribe the jury. Its ultimate importance may be gauged by the fact that Beard points to Roosevelt's pr e-Inauguration agreement to maintain it as "a fateful step leading in the direction of Pearl Harbour." 1 A supporter of the policy would call it the first of the series of actions which led the United States into the United Nations. That a Republican administration should abandon imperialism in Latin America and move towards collective security in Asia has puzzled observers and historians. The development of public opinion was basic. The personal pacifism of President Hoover was doubtless influential. The Hoover administration was divided between internationalists led by Stimson, who advocated the new policies as steps towards full cooperation with the League of Nations, and imperialists who wished to checkmate Japan as a trade rival and to sacrifice the small gains of direct intervention in the Caribbean republics for the sake of large gains in Latin American good will and trade. Roosevelt and Hull, like Stimson, regarded the new policies as minimum steps. But these renovations of foreign policy passed almost unnoticed by the public at large as the depression caused painful absorption in domestic affairs. The Hoover administration, with its gift for boring the public, had failed to dramatize the issues. Roosevelt, after he was elected President and before he was inaugurated, found in the Stimson Doctrine the only area in which he could cooperate with the outgoing administration. He promised Stimson to maintain his policy and confirmed the promise in a public statement. 2 This connection was the only one Roosevelt was willing to establish with the Hoover administration after the bitter election campaign, and it is symbolic of continuity in favour of collective securi

Reaction paper on religious Tolerance Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Reaction paper on religious Tolerance - Article Example per will analyze the opinions expressed by two prominent authors on religious phenomenon and tolerance and explain their profound influence on my understanding of concepts like religion, morality and tolerance. In his article titled ‘This Is a Religious War: September 11 was Only the Beginning’, the author Andrew Sullivan expresses his opinions on various issues related to religion, inter-faith clashes and religious fundamentalism. Many of my opinions on religious phenomenon and tolerance have in fact been shaped on Sullivan’s views and arguments. Sullivan says that in principle, faith is a form of conflict with reason, which in effect implies that it is in conflict with science. He further says that the only ultimate truth is god and that science can never disprove this true faith as it rests on truth. Science or reasoning can thus never find reason for conflict with this truth. I also find his interpretation of religious evolution as an interesting observation on human civilization and development. The belief that god created the universe does imply that any explanation on its formulation cannot find reason to contradict its creator, in other words find fault with any faith as all of them reconcile to the truth that will always remain beyond our fullest perception and understanding. Sullivan undoubtedly encourages religious tolerance by taking a harsh stand on fundamentalism across all religions. He not only criticizes the justification of violence as a means of achieving religious ends, but also despises fundamentalism as an obstacle in introducing doubt into the faith and its reluctance to encourage human reason. In fact, the cornerstone of religious tolerance is to rid oneself of exclusion and pride and to treat mystery as the primary reality behind any religious pursuit. While this may uphold truth that cannot be proven empirically, it nevertheless does not provide room for any hatred against other faiths. In January 2008, the noted psychologist