Sean Byrnes - Disunited Nations: US Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism, and the Rise of the New Right

Disunited Nations explores American reactions to hostile world opinion, as voiced in the United Nations by representatives of the Global South (i.e., regions outside North America and Europe), from 1970 to 1984. In the wake of the Vietnam War, Americans not only suffered self-doubt at home but searing condemnation abroad-especially in the third or underdeveloped world-becoming a focal point for criticism of the prevailing international order. Contrary to the attention that it receives in the existing literature, Sean Byrnes suggests this challenge from the Global South had a significant impact on U.S. policy and politics-shaping, in particular, the rise of the New Right and neo-liberal visions of the world economy. As such, his study integrates developments in American political and diplomatic history with the international history of what some historians have called the idea of the Third World, a project for a more equitable world order originating in the anti-colonial movements of the Global South. Byrness study conveys this history by focusing on U.S. interactions with and reactions to the United Nations-in particular, its representatives from the Third World-between 1970 and 1984. After considering U.S. efforts to establish a liberal world order following World War II and subsequent criticism of American global leadership, he explores in detail various U.S. policy and political reactions to anti-American sentiment in the United Nations. Byrnes examines Nixons policies toward the United Nations and the Global South in the context of the perceived radicalization of the Third World bloc at the United Nations. He considers how the U.N. emerged as a problem in American politics by exploring the anger and worry (particularly on the American right) that followed the expulsion of the Nationalist Chinese (Taiwan) from the General Assembly in 1971. He discusses how Third World hostility in the U.N. became a problem for U.S. diplomacy following the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the subsequent General Assembly resolution calling for a New International Economic Order. Next, Byrnes focuses on the controversial ambassadorship of future Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and growing outrage on the American right at President Gerald Fords supposedly weak foreign policy. In the latter portion of the study, he analyzes the subsequent U.S. administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and their attempts to transform the nations relationship with the Global South according to their divergent critiques of the Ford Administration. As a study of American political and policy reactions to decolonization and the emergence of the post-colonial world, Disunited Nations contributes to the examination of that critical aspect of twentieth-century history. The work also makes significant contributions to our understanding of American politics after 1970-primarily with regard to the emergence of the New Right and the so-called Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Along with this, it adds to our understanding of major transitions in U.S. foreign policy in these years as the United States moved away from the expansive internationalist global commitments of the immediate postwar era towards a more nationalist and neoliberal understanding of international affairs--