After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
- Trace the major policies pursued by the United States during the era of the Cold War.
- Identify the major policymakers involved in making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy.
- Explain why presidents and others at the governmental level of analysis often play a more formative role in shaping foreign policy than in determining domestic policy.
- Evaluate the role of corporations and interest groups in making American foreign policy.
- Consider the question of whether covert operations necessarily conflict with the idea of democracy.
- Investigate the role that the American public plays in making foreign policy.
- Explain why democratic control is more difficult and less complete in foreign policymaking than in domestic policymaking.
- Understand what structural level factors are responsible for U.S. superpower status.
- Understand how the democratic process affects foreign and defense policies.
- Understand the causes of the Cold War and explain how and why the United States emerged from the Cold War as the only remaining superpower.
- Identify key terms and concepts used in Chapter 18.
