SU Nations Involvement with The Worldwide Community Discussion – Description
Do you believe that cultural/ideational factors could be helpful to explain U.S. interactions with the outside world? Explain why, or why not. Regardless of your answer, offer a plausible hypothesis about the effects of culture on America’s foreign policy, and discuss ways to test this hypothesis empirically.
Instructions: Please respond to at least 2 other students:
I do believe cultural and ideational factors are helpful in explaining U.S. interactions with the outside world. I do think this a two-fold response as U.S. culture and ideations have a strong impact on forming our doctrine and our interactions but also other nations’ cultures and ideational factors must be taken into account for how the U.S. works with each individually.
The first is potentially a larger reason with how the U.S. decides to get involved in regional or global conflicts such as the rise of global terrorism. Kier (1995, 67) states, culture is not simply derivative of functional demands or structural imperatives. Culture has an independent explanatory power.” Although I do agree that culture is not a derivative of function and structure, I don’t necessarily agree that culture is an independent driver. The U.S. routinely supports or fights other nations ‘in the name of democracy and freedom’ which is comprises a large amount of the foundations of our nations. For developed nations formed in democracy, culture is often a large part of the foundation and structure (albeit the culture in some aspects is outdated as of 2023) and the constant changes of that government’s policies are conducted out of changes in culture.
The second reasoning of other nations’ cultures shaping how we as a nation interact with them has become a more recent development in the last 30 years or so. This shift was dramatically seen in wartime during the shift in campaigns in the Middle East to the necessity of learning about cultures we are working with to form better and more meaningful interactions. This shift became part of our military doctrine.
second:
I believe that understanding both the cultural and ideational factors of the U.S. is the best way to begin to explain U.S. interactions with the outside world. This applies in the similar aspect that if one’s goal was to improve communications, possessing an objective understanding of each participant’s background and point of view would increase the probability of successful communications. As U.S. citizens, we understand that our country is a melting pot of diversity and opportunity. However, this makeup has often created divisions and biases within different cultures and ideations. This has been prominently displayed by the extreme polarization between the 2 major political parties which hold power within the U.S. government. Throughout my travels around the world, many people that I meet are intrigued and often opinionated regarding the U.S. political landscape. I have found that most often the primary cause of much of the concern is based on personal opinions developed through world news and other media outlets that often promote specific ideas depending on the source’s agenda. This type of information does not encourage an objective understanding of the culture and ideas that make up the U.S. and will continue to promote prejudice and biases. Performing research, if most of the sources used to gather data are biased toward a specific outcome, then the result of the study will have a similar outcome based on the information recovered from the data.
Hypothesis:
If the U.S. included more diversity within our political landscape, we could better represent our culture while directing foreign policy.
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