Study On Relations Of American Culture And Its Foreign Policy

It is difficult to fully understand the content and motivation in U.S. foreign policy without study on the context of American culture because American foreign policy has been deeply marked with its culture. The ideas of values, the core of culture, are stable identification and evaluation fixed in the long history of a certain society. The relations between culture and foreign policy should be paid more attention to based on the functions and connotation of culture itself.Culture is helpful to answer such fundamental identification questions as "who are we?", so it is obvious that culture is a part of the essence and the main spirit of one nation, as well as one of the key elements influencing foreign policy. Just as political, economic and military factors, culture is the basic motivating power of American foreign policy influencing its trend and mode. So this study has its theoretical and practical meanings.China and U.S. have totally different cultural traditions, history development and political systems of their own, which have been obstacles for establishing harmonious Sino-U.S. relations. Americans have their unique view angles, greatly different with others, to watch and understand the world system and to make its foreign policy for its special cultural background among all the complex reasons. If we can recognize and understand these, we can objectively comprehend the inner logic of American Hegemony and its foreign policy with the logo of'freedom, democracy and human right' spreading in the whole world. It will help us to correctly understand the differences between China and U.S. so as to properly solve delicacy problems in international relations and constitute the new cooperating framework between these two countries based on cultural symbiosis and cultural consciousness through studying the meaning of American culture, analyzing the influence of American culture on its foreign policies, and exploring the existing major cultural factors in Sino-U.S. relations.The major issues this dissertation focuses are ones, such as what is the core of American culture? How American culture influences its foreign policy? What are the major cultural problems in the Sino-U.S. relations and how to solve them? According to the targets above, this dissertation is divided into two parts:theoretical study and demonstration.This dissertation includes six parts with Introduction. Introduction includes the following contents:descriptions of the topic selecting motivation and the meanings of the study topic, the literature review, the research category and research methodology and innovation.The first chapter discusses the roots and connotation of American culture. Through systematic research, the chapter proposes that American cultures are mainly produced from i religious spirits and European Liberalism thoughts, and the four fundamental contents of American culture are Puritanism, Individualism, liberalism and Pragmatism.The second chapter discusses cultural status and function in American foreign policy making. Like other public policies, the making of foreign policy is a dynamic process so that the relations of culture and American making-policy groups, American national interests and the making of American foreign policy object.The third chapter mainly discusses the position and functions of culture in American foreign policy decisions. The same as any other public policies, American foreign policy making is a dynamic process. From three aspects of culture and formation of American decision groups, culture and American national interests judgments, and culture and American foreign policy targets making, this chapter interprets the influences of culture on American foreign policies.The forth chapter mainly discusses the cultural factors in Sino-U.S. relations. Through analyzing the American cultural hegemony strategy, and the differences and conflicts in political cultures of the two nations, it proposes the answers on Chinese cultural strategy enacting, that we should construct new International Cultural Order following the strategic idea of cultural symbiosis so as to improve the cultural strategy of China.The fifth chapter analyzes the Human Rights diplomacy, the democracy exporting strategy and the cultural diplomacy in Clinton administration. As democratic president, Clinton had eventually established his own global strategy with "Participation and expansion" as the main content and "improving security, develop prosperity and push forward democracy" as the main targets with multiple amendments of the American global strategy.This dissertation engages in constructing the theoretical framework for study on the relationship between American culture and its foreign policy with five parts, and explains the functions, influences of the cultural factors in Sino-American relations, as well as the answering strategies of China, for Sino-American relations are one of the key points for China to properly handle relations with major powers in the world. Also, this dissertation tries to deeply explore and study the essential contents like cultural factors in the American foreign policies and Sino-American relations, expand study fields, and provide some valuable references for the healthy and stable development of the two nations.