Unfulfilled promises: American foreign policy and the New World Order

Employing New World Diplomacy as the approach to guide this study, the author proposes to test the following three hypotheses: (1) during and immediately after a major world conflict, foreign policymakers of the United States, with presidential prodding, have attempted to “create a world order” that would be reflective of American values; but these attempts were hastily developed and they routinely ignored the interests of other major powers, thus, assuring the failure of the whole enterprise; (2) the proponents of “a new order” were not successful in relating ideals to practice and therefore have been subjected to criticisms of inconsistency, a fact that, in the end, produced new types of global turmoil; (3) the U.S. squandered critical aspects of influence at the zenith of its power, and it negated its own efforts towards a world order of its preference, leading to a revival of neo-isolationism and new global competitors.; Having examined in-depth three case studies—the Conference at Versailles, the wartime conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, and the post-Cold War vision of President Bush—the author found that the evidence supports and the basic conclusions illustrate that each of America's endeavors met with disappointment. The following factors account for the American misadventures to reconstruct the international system: inappropriate preparation, lack of a defined agenda, and the inability to account for a series of hierarchical changes. Finally, the author concludes that, as a result of America's inability to fulfill its promises of a new order, the international system invariably drifted towards disorder after World Wars I and II as well as following the collapse of bipolarity and the end of the Cold War.