John J. Tierney Jr.

  Coming on the “heels” of the top twelve foreign policy statements in U.S. history, I now have the (unpleasant) task of rating the bottom six episodes. I write “unpleasant” since nobody wants to know his/her “dark” side or even to acknowledge that such things even exist. Well, they do, and, as we all know,…

Below are the “top twelve” statements on foreign policy that I consider “critical” to an understanding of how America went from an isolated set of Atlantic-coast colonies to a global “superpower” in approximately two centuries. It is important to remember that these are “arbitrary” (“subjective”) and that they represent only tiny segments of the full…

The best book on American nationalism was written by a foreigner. This is not unusual but typical. Hans Kohn (d. 1971) was born in 1891 inside the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in what is now The Czech Republic (Prague). He is widely known as the “architect” of nationalism, having devoted his life to the subject; he…

The Monroe Doctrine (1823) may well be the most famous and long-lasting foreign policy in world history – certainly since the beginning of the “nation-state” system (1648) that ended historic “empires” and inaugurated “countries” as the main participants in world politics. Two things, however, are beyond challenge: 1) it is the only item in his…

The United States, properly speaking, has always been a “maritime” world power, defined as a country that takes priority on its navy, rather than its army, for its “first line of defense.” In practical terms, that means that the country’s status as a global power has depended on its control of the sea lines and…

First, an explanation. The term “portent” is strictly defined as “omen,” or “warning,” “prophetic insight” of something momentous to come, something even larger than the original. This definition should cause either disbelief or anguish that its author (myself) has “wandered off” his “reservation.” Understandable, as anything remotely connected to a tiny Central American nation nearly…

In another essay, I described “motivation” between the offense vs. the defense in foreign policies generally. This time, I will apply the sports expression “Big D” (Defense) as it applies to the beginnings of American foreign policy. From this beginning, one point stands out: that such analogies are far more “circumstantial” than “deliberate” and that…

For the record, I wanted to submit a “positive” take on American history, having been saturated with the darker side of the subject over the past several years: the country did have slavery and Jim Crow, immigration was restricted, women couldn’t vote until 1920, “whites” had “supremacy,” natives were expelled, slums did exist, there was…

Motivation is critical in the formulation of practically everything, but certainly in foreign policy. Much depends on motivation, the “why” of any human activity. It obviously makes a difference as to whether you are doing something for yourself or for others, against something (someone) or for them, for defense (self-protection) or offense (self-expansion). Examples abound…

For the near future (two to five years), the issue of Taiwan and its position between China and the U.S. offers the greatest potential in the world for the outbreak of either conventional or nuclear war. Still worse, we may even see such fears realized within weeks or months in what could well be the…